Pre blog post

Ideology as described by our book is the notion of ideas. Marx argues that although ideas something individuals come up with ‘it is not the consciousness of people that determine their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.’ This makes complete sense because we ‘nothing’ else. We grew up watching other people argue and it is not the argument itself that has already happened but further what comes out in the argument, such as gender issues. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels say it the best, ‘the idea of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas.’ The ruling class controls the media, the films, the news and our TV shows; what we see there weather consciously or unconsciously we seem to act similarly by copying their actions. Therefore all we are really doing is following in the steps of ideology…

To Althusser the Ideological State Apparatuses function ‘by ideology’. By the Ideological State Apparatuses (as we have previously learnt) he means the religious ISA, the educational ISA, the family ISA, the legal ISA, the political ISA, the trade-union ISA, the communications ISA and the cultural ISA. All of these apparatuses function ‘by ideology’. Althusser presents two theses: Thesis I being ‘ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence’ the II Theses being, ‘ideology has a material existence’. I believe what Althusser is saying that we build a relationship to these apparatuses that we have created that isn’t really real but imaginary. We use them, knowing that they do not correspond to reality, to discover what is behind that imaginary reality itself. All apparatuses are the ‘imaginary, representation of the real world’. Ideology already presents to us something fake, unreal and that is our imaginary relationship that we have to those apparatuses mentioned. We therefore believe we are not following the ideologies set forth but are actually exactly doing that!