Page 9 - Vinkler, Jonatan, Ana Beguš and Marcello Potocco. Eds. 2019. Ideology in the 20th Century: Studies of literary and social discourses and practices. Koper: University of Primorska Press
P. 9
Introduction:
The Crossroads of Literature
and Social Praxis
Marcello Potocco, Ana Beguš, Jonatan Vinkler
When researching ideology, it would be unimaginable to disregard the
work of Louis Althusser and his followers in the early 1970s. One of Al-
thusser’s central theses describes ideology as ‘imaginary’: ideology is the
imaginary relation of an individual to the material conditions of his ex-
istence. Yet the ideological attitude is not treated merely as a possible cog-
nition of the world, instead it is defined as inevitable consciousness, since
each relation to the world is conscious and given as an imaginary relation.
Ideology is the mechanism that provides the ‘evidentness of meaning’, i.e.
an individual is given the ‘evident truth’ on how things are to be under-
stood. According to Althusserians, an individual is thus presented with
seemingly only one possible signification. The meaning of an utterance
depends on what Michel Pêcheux calls the inter-discourse, a set of discur-
sive formations which are themselves “imbricated with the complex of
ideological formations”. The signification of utterances therefore comes
into being according to the position their speakers (users) assume in rela-
tion to ideological formations.
Althusserians understand ideology as constitutive for the subject’s
identification, and vice versa, the subject is constitutive for ideology, since
ideology is in itself acting through the subject, it is an ideological inter-
pellation of an individual as a subject. Within this conceptual frame, ide-
ology is conceived as general ideology that supposedly permeates both
the entire social system as well as each of the subject’s identifications. The
subject’s relation to the world, his/her ability of the imaginary is uniform,
and ideology becomes the only possible form of the imaginary.
The Crossroads of Literature
and Social Praxis
Marcello Potocco, Ana Beguš, Jonatan Vinkler
When researching ideology, it would be unimaginable to disregard the
work of Louis Althusser and his followers in the early 1970s. One of Al-
thusser’s central theses describes ideology as ‘imaginary’: ideology is the
imaginary relation of an individual to the material conditions of his ex-
istence. Yet the ideological attitude is not treated merely as a possible cog-
nition of the world, instead it is defined as inevitable consciousness, since
each relation to the world is conscious and given as an imaginary relation.
Ideology is the mechanism that provides the ‘evidentness of meaning’, i.e.
an individual is given the ‘evident truth’ on how things are to be under-
stood. According to Althusserians, an individual is thus presented with
seemingly only one possible signification. The meaning of an utterance
depends on what Michel Pêcheux calls the inter-discourse, a set of discur-
sive formations which are themselves “imbricated with the complex of
ideological formations”. The signification of utterances therefore comes
into being according to the position their speakers (users) assume in rela-
tion to ideological formations.
Althusserians understand ideology as constitutive for the subject’s
identification, and vice versa, the subject is constitutive for ideology, since
ideology is in itself acting through the subject, it is an ideological inter-
pellation of an individual as a subject. Within this conceptual frame, ide-
ology is conceived as general ideology that supposedly permeates both
the entire social system as well as each of the subject’s identifications. The
subject’s relation to the world, his/her ability of the imaginary is uniform,
and ideology becomes the only possible form of the imaginary.
