50
IDEOLOGY AND IDEOLOGICA STATE APPARATUSES
Louis Althusser
The State Ideological Apparatuses
What are the Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs)?
They must not be confused with the (repressive) State apparatus. Remember that i. Marxist theory, the State Apparatus (SA) contains: the Government, the Admi istration, the Army, the Police, the Courts, the Prisons, etc., which constitute wh I shall in future call the Repressive State Apparatus. Repressive suggests that the Sta Apparatus in question 'functions by violence' - at least ultimately (since repression e.g. administrative repression, may take nón-physical forms).
I shall call Ideological State Apparatuses a certain number of realities which presen themselves to the immediate observer in the form of distinct and specialized institu tions. I propose an empirical list of these which will obviously have to be examine in detail, tested, corrected and reorganized. With all the reservations implied b this requirement, we can for the moment regard the following institutions as Ideo logical State Apparatuses (the order in which I have listed them has no particula significance):
•    the religious ISA (the system of the different Churches);
•    the educational ISA (the system of the different public and private 'Schools');
•    the family ISA;1
•    the legal ISA;2
•    the political ISA (the political system, including the different Parties);
•    the trade-union ISA;
•   the communications ISA (press, radio and television, etc.);
•    the cultural ISA (Literature, the Arts, sports, etc.).
I have said that the ISAs must not be confused with the (Repressive) State Apparatus. What constitutes the difference?
From Althusser, L., 1971, Lenin and Philosophy, New York: Monthly Review Press, pp. 142-6, 162-77.
Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses    557
,'As a first moment, it is clear that while there is one (Repressive) State Apparatus, £re is a plurality of Ideological State Apparatuses. Even presupposing that it exists, é unity that constitutes this plurality of ISAs as a body is not immediately visible. ;As a second moment, it is clear that whereas the — unified — (Repressive) State paratus belongs entirely to the public domain, much the larger part of the Ideolo-bal State Apparatuses (in their apparent dispersion) are part, on the contrary, of e priv-ate domain. Churches, Parties, Trade Unions, families, some schools, most „wspapers, cultural ventures, etc., etc., are private.
We can ignore the first observation for the moment. But someone is bound to ques-on the second, asking me by what right I regard as Ideological State Apparatuses, stitutions which for the most part do not possess public status, but are quite simply ivate institutions. As a conscious Marxist, Gramsci already forestalled this objection one sentence. The distinction between the public and the private is a distinction inter-al to bourgeois law, and valid in the (subordinate) domains in which bourgeois w exercises its 'authority'. The domain of the State escapes it because the latter is -bove the law': the State, which is the State of the ruling class, is neither public nor rivate; on the contrary, it is the precondition for any distinction between public and rivate. The same thing can be said from the starting-point of our Ideological State pparatuses. It is unimportant whether the institutions in which they are realized are public' or 'private'. What matters is how they function. Private institutions can perfectly well 'function' as Ideological State Apparatuses. A reasonably thorough analysis of any one of the ISAs proves it.
But now for what is essential. What distinguishes the ISAs from the (Repressive) 'täte Apparatus is the following basic difference: the Repressive State Apparatus functions 'by violence', whereas the Ideological State Apparatuses function 'by ideology'. : I can clarify matters by correcting this distinction. I shall say rather that every "täte Apparatus, whether Repressive or Ideological, 'functions' both by violence and by ideology, but with one very important distinction which makes it imperative not to confuse the Ideological State Apparatuses with the (Repressive) State Apparatus.
This is the fact that the (Repressive) State Apparatus functions massively and •predominantly by repression (including physical repression), while functioning secondarily by ideology. (There is no such thing as a purely repressive apparatus.) For example, the Army and the Police also function by ideology both to ensure their own cohesion and reproduction, and in the 'values' they propound externally. • In the same way, but inversely, it is essential to say that for their part the Ideological State Apparatuses function massively and predominantly by ideology, but they also ^function secondarily by repression, even if ultimately, but only ultimately, this is very attentuated and concealed, even symbolic. (There is no such thing as a purely ideological apparatus.) Thus Schools and Churches use suitable methods of punishment, expulsion, selection, etc., to 'discipline' not only their shepherds, but also their flocks. The same is true of the Family. . . . The same is true of the cultural IS Apparatus (censorship, among other things), etc.
Is it necessary to add that this determination of the double 'functioning' (predominantly, secondarily) by repression and by ideology, according to whether it is a
558    Louis Aľthusser
matter of the (Repressive) State Apparatus or the Ideological State Apparatuses, it clear that very subtle explicit or tacit combinations may be woven from the inte of the (Repressive) State Apparatus and the Ideological State Apparatuses? Ever life provides us with innumerable examples of this, but they must be studied in di if we are to go further than this mere observation.
Nevertheless, this remark leads us towards an understanding of what constitute, unity of the apparently disparate body of the ISAs. If the ISAs 'function' massi and predominantly by ideology, what unifies their diversity is precisely this funct ing, in so far as the ideology by which they function is always in fact unified, des its diversity and its contradictions, beneath the ruling ideology, which is the ideolog, 'the ruling class'. Given the fact that the 'ruling class' in principle holds State po' (openly or more often by means of alliances between classes or class fractions), and the fore has at its disposal the (Repressive) State Apparatus, we can accept the fact t this same ruling class is active in the Ideological State Apparatuses in so far as i ultimately the ruling ideology which is realized in the Ideological State Apparatus precisely in its contraditions. Of course, it is a quite different thing to act by laws a decrees in the (Repressive) State Apparatus and to 'act' through the intermediary the ruling ideology in the Ideological State Apparatuses. We must go into the detai of this difference - but it cannot mask the reality of a profound identity. To my kno ledge, no class can hold State power over a long period without at the same time exercisi its hegemony over and in the Ideological State Apparatuses.
Ideology is a 'Representation' jpf the Imaginary Relationship of Individuals to their Real Conditions of Existence
In order to approach my central thesis on the structure and functioning of ideology I shall first present two theses, one negative, the other positive. The first concerns tfr object which is 'represented' in the imaginary form of ideology, the second concern" the materiality of ideology.
thesis i: Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.
We commonly call religious ideology, ethical ideology, legal ideology, political ideology, etc., so many 'world outlooks'. Of course, assuming that we do not live one of these ideologies as the truth (e.g. 'believe' in God, Duty, Justice, etc. . . .), we admit that the ideology we are discussing from a critical point of view, examining it as the ethnologist examines the myths of a 'primitive society', that these 'world outlooks' are largely imaginary, i.e. do not 'correspond to reality'.
However, while admitting that they do not correspond to reality, i.e. that they constitute an illusion, we admit that they do make allusion to reality, and that they need only be 'interpreted' to discover the reality of the world behind their imaginary representation of that world (ideology = illusion/allusion).
Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses    539
;here are different types of interpretation, the most famous of which are the mech-
ic type, current in the eighteenth century (God is the imaginary representation of
real King), and the ihermeneutic' interpretation, inaugurated by the earliest Church
hers, and revived by Feuerbach and the theologico-philosophical school which
tends from him, e.g. the theologian Barth (to Feuerbach, for example, God is the
nee of real Man). The essential point is that on condition that we interpret the
ginary transposition (and inversion) of ideology we arrive at the conclusion that in
ology 'men represent their real conditions of existence to themselves in an imagin-
;form'.
^Unfortunately, this interpretation leaves one small problem unsettled: why do men eď this imaginary transposition of their real conditions of existence in order to present to themselves' their real conditions of existence?
The first answer (that of the eighteenth century) proposes a simple solution: Priests .Despots are responsible. They 'forged' the Beautiful Lies so that, in the belief t they were obeying God, men would in fact obey the Priests and Despots, who are ally in alliance in their imposture, the Priests acting in the interests of the Despots vice versa, according to the political positions of the 'theoreticians' concerned. There therefore a cause for the imaginary transposition of the real conditions of existence: t cause is the existence of a small number of cynical men who base their domina-on and exploitation of the 'people' on a falsified representation of the world which ey have imagined in order to enslave other minds by dominating their imaginations. , The second answer (that of Feuerbach, taken over word for word by Marx in his rly Works) is more 'profound', i.e. just as false. It, too, seeks and finds a cause for e imaginary transposition and distortion of men's real conditions of existence, in short, Dr the alienation in the imaginary of the representation of men's conditions of exis-ence. This cause is no longer Priests or Despots, nor their active imagination and the 'assive imagination of their victims. This cause is the material alienation which reigns n the conditions of existence of men themselves. This is how, in The Jewish Question nd elsewhere, Marx defends the Feuerbachian idea that men make themselves an lienated (= imaginary) representation of their conditions of existence because these onditions of existence are themselves alienating (in the 1844 Manuscripts: because these conditions are dominated by the essence of alienated society - 'alienated labour''). i  All these interpretations thus take literally the thesis which they presuppose, and on which they depend, i.e. that what is reflected in the imaginary representation of the world found in an ideology is the conditions of existence of men, i.e. their real world. Now I can return to a thesis which I have already advanced: it is not their real conditions of existence, their real world, that 'men' 'represent to themselves' in ideology, but above all it is their relation to those conditions of existence which is represented to them there. It is this relation which is at the centre of every ideological, i.e. imaginary, representation of the real world. It is this relation that contains the 'cause' which has to explain the imaginary distortion of the ideological representation of the real world. Or rather, to leave aside the language of causality it is necessary to advance the thesis that it is the imaginary nature of this relation which underlies all the imaginary distortion that we can observe (if we do not live in its truth) in all ideology.
540    Louis Althusser
To speak in a Marxist language, if it is true that the representation of the real ditions of existence of the individuals occupying the posts of agents of production, exp tion, repression, ideologization and scientific practice, does in the last analysis arise the relations of production, and from relations deriving from the relations of pro' tion, we can say the following: all ideology represents in its necessarily imaginary-, tortion not the existing relations of production (and the other relations that derive t them), but above all the (imaginary) relationship of individuals to the relation, production and the relations that derive from them. What is represented in ideo'l is therefore not the system of the real relations which govern the existence of fi viduals, but the imaginary relation of those individuals to the real relations in w" they live.
If this is the case, the question of the 'cause' of the imaginary distortion of the relations in ideology disappears and must be replaced by a different question: wh the representation given to individuals of their (individual) relation to the social r§ tions which govern their conditions of existence and their collective and individ life necessarily an imaginary relation? And what is the nature of this imaginarin' Posed in this way, the question explodes the solution by a 'clique',3 by a group of iff viduals (Priests or Despots) who are the authors of the great ideological mystincatf just as it explodes the solution by the alienated character of the real world. We s1 see why later in my exposition. For the moment I shall go no further. thesis n: Ideology has a material existence.,
I have already touched on this thesis by saying that the 'ideas' or 'representation etc., which seem to make up ideology do not háve ah ideal [ideale or ideelle] or spi tual existence, but a material existence. I even suggested that the ideal [idéale, idéeL and spiritual existence of 'ideas' arises exclusively iri an ideology of the 'idea' and" ideology, and let me add, in an ideology of what seems to have 'founded' this co ception since the emergence of the sciences, i.e. what the practicians of the scienc represent to themselves in their spontaneous ideology as 'ideas', true or false. Of cour presented in affirmative form, this thesis is unproven. I simply ask that the read be favourably disposed towards it, say, in the name of materialism. A long series arguments would be necessary to prove it.
This hypothetical thesis of the not spiritual but material existence of 'ideas' or oth 'representations' is indeed necessary if we are to advance in our analysis of the natu" of ideology. Or rather, it is merely useful to us in order the better to reveal what eveJ at all serious analysis of any ideology will immediately and empirically show to eve observer, however critical.
While discussing the Ideological State Apparatuses and their practices, I said th each of them was the realization of an ideology (the unity of these different region ideologies - religious, ethical, legal, political, aesthetic, etc. - being assured by the subjection to the ruling ideology). I now return to this thesis: an ideology always exist in an apparatus, and its practice, or practices. This existence is material.
Of course, the material existence of the ideology in an apparatus and its practic" does not have the same modality as the material existence of a paving-stone or rifle. But, at the risk of being taken for a Neo-Aristotelian (NB: Marx had a ver
Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses    341
h regard for Aristotle), I shall say that 'matter is discussed in many senses', or her that it exists in different modalities, all rooted in the last instance in 'physical' tter.
{Having said this, let me move straight on and see what happens to the 'individuals'
o live in ideology, i.e. in a determinate (religious, ethical, etc.) representation of the
rid whose imaginary distortion depends on their imaginary relation to their condi-
ns of existence, in other words, in the last instance, to the relations of production
d to class relations (ideology = an imaginary relation to real relations). I shall say
at this imaginary relation is itself endowed with a material existence.
Now I observe the following.
- An individual believes in God, or Duty, or Justice, etc. This belief derives (for every-
e i.e. for all those who live in an ideological representation of ideology, which reduces
eology to ideas endowed by definition with a spiritual existence) from the ideas of
e individual concerned, i.e. from him as a subject with a consciousness which con-
jns the ideas of his belief. In this way, i.e. by means of the absolutely ideological
onceptuaľ device [dispositif] thus set up (a subject endowed with a consciousness in
hich he freely forms or freely recognizes ideas in which he believes), the (material)
titude of the subject concerned naturally follows.
The individual in question behaves in such and such a way, adopts such and such .practical attitude, and, what is more, participates in certain regular practices which e those of the ideological apparatus on which 'depend' the ideas which he has in all onsciousness freely chosen as a subject. If he believes in God, he goes to Church to ttend Mass, kneels, prays, confesses, does penance (once it was material in the ordin-ry sense of the term) and naturally repents, and so on. If he believes in Duty, he will ave the corresponding attitudes, inscribed in ritual practices 'according to the correct rinciples'. If he believes injustice, he will submit unconditionally to the rules of the aw, and may even protest when they are violated, sign petitions, take part in a demon-tration, etc.
Throughout this schema we observe that the ideological representation of ideology s itself forced to recognize that every 'subject' endowed with a 'consciousness' and believ-ng in the 'ideas' that his 'consciousness' inspires in him and freely accepts, must 'act ccording to his ideas', must therefore inscribe his own ideas as a free subject in the ctions of his material practice. If he does not do so, 'that is wicked'.
Indeed, if he does not do what he ought to do as a function of what he believes, it
is because he does something else, which, still as a function of the same idealist
cheme, implies that he has other ideas in his head as well as those he proclaims, and
.that he acts according to these other ideas, as a man who is either 'inconsistent' ('no
'one is willingly evil') or cynical, or perverse.
* In every case, the ideology of ideology thus recognizes, despite its imaginary distortion, that the 'ideas' of a human subject exist in his actions, or ought to exist in his actions, and if that is not the case, it lends him other ideas corresponding to the actions (however iperverse) that he does perform. This ideology talks of actions: I shall talk of actions inserted into practices. And I shall point out that these practices are governed by the rituals in which these practices are inscribed, within the material existence of an
542    Louis Althusser
ideological apparatus, be it only a small part ofthat apparatus: a small Mass in a sma a funeral, a minor match at a sports club, a school day, a political party meeti Besides, we are indebted to Pascal's defensive 'dialectic' for the wonderful which will enable us to invert the order of the notional schema of ideology. Pas more or less: 'Kneel down, move your lips in prayer, and you will belie thus scandalously inverts the order of things, bringing, like Christ, not peace bu and in addition something hardly Christian (for woe to him who brings scan the world!) - scandal itself. A fortunate scandal which makes him stick with Ja defiance to a language that directly names the reality.
I will be allowed to leave Pascal to the arguments of his ideological struggl the religious Ideological State Apparatus of his day. And I shall be expected to more directly Marxist vocabulary, if that is possible, for we are advancing in still p explored domains.
I shall therefore say that, where only a single subject (such and such an indiv is concerned, the existence of the ideas of his belief is material in that his ideas a material actions inserted into material practices governed by material rituals whic themselves defined by the material ideological apparatus from which derive the ideas 0 subject. Naturally, the four inscriptions of the adjective 'material' in my proposition, be affected by different modalities: the materialities of a displacement for going to" of kneeling down, of the gesture of the sign of the cross, or of the mea culpa, of a tence, of a prayer, of an act of contrition, of a penitence, of a gaze, of a handshak" an external verbal discourse or an 'internal verbal discourse (consciousness), are one and the same materiality. I shall leave on one side the problem of a theory of; differences between the modalities of materiality.
It remains that in this inverted presentation of things, we are not dealing with an 'in sion' at all, since it is clear that certain notions have purely and simply disappea from our presentation, whereas others on the contrary survive, and new terms app.
Disappeared: the term ideas.
Survive: the terms subject, consciousness, belief, actions.
Appear: the terms practices, rituals, ideological apparatus.
It is therefore not an inversion or overturning (except in the sense in which might say a government or a class is overturned), but a reshuffle (of a non-ministe» type), a rather strange reshuffle, since we obtain the following result.
Ideas have disappeared as such (in so far as they are endowed with an ideal spiritual existence), to the precise extent that it has emerged that their existence inscribed in the actions of practices governed by rituals defined in the last instance an ideological apparatus. It therefore appears that the subject acts in so far as he acted by the following system (set out in the order of its real determination): ideolo existing in a material ideological apparatus, prescribing material practices governed by, material ritual, which practices exist in the material actions of a subject acting i all consciousness according to his belief.
But this very presentation reveals that we have retained the following notion subject, consciousness, belief, actions. From this series I shall immediately extract decisive central term on which everything else depends: the notion of the subject.
Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses    545
d I shall immediately set down two conjoint theses:
ere is no practice except by and in an ideology;
ere is no ideology except by the subject and for subjects.
can now come to my central thesis.
Ideology Interpellates Individuals as Subjects
thesis is simply a matter of making my last proposition explicit: there is no logy except by the subject and for subjects. Meaning, there is no ideology except 'concrete subjects, and this destination for ideology is only made possible.by the 'ect: meaning, by the category of the subject and its functioning, y this I mean that, even if it only appears under this name (the subject) with the of bourgeois ideology, above all with the rise of legal ideology,4 the category of the 'ect (which may function under other names: e.g., as the soul in Plato, as God, etc.) he constitutive category of all ideology, whatever its determination (regional or class)
whatever its historical date — since ideology has no history. I say: the category of the subject is constitutive of all ideology, but at the same time . immediately I add that the category of the subject is only constitutive of all ideology •so far as all ideology has the function (which defines it) of 'constituting' concrete indi-als as subjects. In the interaction of this double constitution exists the functioning all ideology, ideology being nothing but its functioning in the material forms of štence of that functioning.
In order to grasp what follows, it is essential to realize that both he who is writing
e lines and the reader who reads them are themselves subjects, and therefore
eological subjects (a tautological proposition), i.e. that the author and the reader of
ese lines both live 'spontaneously' or 'naturally' in ideology in the sense in which
have said that 'man is an ideological animal by nature'.
That the author, in so far as he writes the lines of a discourse which claims to e scientific, is completely absent as a 'subject' from 'his' scientific discourse (for all ientific discourse is by definition a subjectless discourse, there is no 'Subject of ience' except in an ideology of science) is a different question which I shall leave on e side for the moment. , As St Paul admirably put it, it is in the 'Logos', meaning in ideology, that we 'live, ove and have our being'. It follows that, for you and for me, the category of the sublet is a primary 'obviousness' (obviousnesses are always primary): it is clear that you hd I are subjects (free, ethical, etc. . . .). Like all obviousnesses, including those that * ake a word 'name a thing' or 'have a meaning' (therefore including the obviousness f the 'transparency' of language), the 'obviousness' that you and I are subjects — and that that does not cause any problems — is an ideological effect, the elementary ideological effect.5 It is indeed a peculiarity of ideology that it imposes (without appearing to do so, since these are 'obviousnesses') obviousnesses as obviousnesses, which we cannot y«// to recognize and before which we have the inevitable and natural reaction of
344    Louis Althusser
crying out (aloud or in the 'still, small voice of conscience'): 'That's obvious! right! That's true!'
At work in this reaction is the ideological recognition function which is o the two functions of ideology as such (its inverse being the function of misrecog — méconnaissancé).
To take a highly 'concrete' example, we all have friends who, when they k, on our door and we ask, through the door, the question 'Who's there?', answer (s 'it's obvious') 'It's me'. And we recognize that 'it is him', or 'her'. We open the d and 'it's true, it really was she who was there'. To take another example, when recognize somebody of our (previous) acquaintance [(re)-connaissance] in the st we show him that we have recognized him (and have recognized that he has rec; nized us) by saying to him 'Hello, my friend', and shaking his hand (a material rit practice of ideological recognition in everyday life - in France, at least; elsewhd there are other rituals).
In this preliminary remark and these concrete illustrations, I only wish to point that you and I are always-already subjects, and as such constantly practise the ritu of ideological recognition, which guarantee for us that we are indeed concrete, in" vidual, distinguishable and (naturally) irreplaceable subjects. The writing I am current executing and the reading you are currently6 performing are also in this respe rituals of ideological recognition, including the 'obviousness' with which the 'trut or 'error' of my reflections may impose itself on you.
But to recognize that we are subjects and that we function in the practical rituals the most elementary everyday life (the handshake, the fact of calling you by your nam the fact of knowing, even if I do not know what it is, that you 'have' a name of you own, which means that you are recognized as a unique subject, etc.) - this recognitor only gives us the 'consciousness' of our incessant (eternal) practice of ideologies recognition — its consciousness, i.e. its recognition - but in no sense does it give us th (scientific) knowledge of the mechanism of this recognition. Now it is this knowledg that we have to reach, if you will, while speaking in ideology, and from within ideology we have to outline a discourse which tries to break with ideology, in order to dar to be the beginning of a scientific (i.e. subjectless) discourse on ideology.
Thus in order to represent why the category of the 'subject' is constitutive o_ ideology, which only exists by constituting concrete subjects as subjects, I shall employ a special mode of exposition: 'concrete' enough to be recognized, but abstract enough to be thinkable and thought, giving rise to a knowledge.
As a first formulation I shall say: all ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects, by the functioning of the category of the subject.
This is a proposition which entails that we distinguish for the moment between concrete individuals on the one hand and concrete subjects on the other, although at this level concrete subjects only exist in so far as they are supported by a concrete individual.
I shall then suggest that ideology 'acts' or 'functions' in such a way that it 'recruits' subjects among the individuals (it recruits them all), or 'transforms' the individuals into subjects (it transforms them all) by that very precise operation which I have called
Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses    345
fpellation or hailing, and which can be imagined along the lines of the most
.nionplace everyday police (or other) hailing: 'Hey, you there!'7
Assuming that the theoretical scene I have imagined takes place in the street,
hailed individual will turn round. By this mere one-hundred-and-eighty-degree
sical conversion, he becomes a subject. Why? Because he has recognized that the
1 was 'really' addressed to him, and that 'it was really him who was hailed' (and not
,;-Leone else). Experience shows that the practical telecommunication of hailing is such
t they hardly ever miss their man: verbal call or whistle, the one hailed always
ognizes that it is really him who is being hailed. And yet it is a strange phenomenon,
d one which cannot be explained solely by 'guilt feelings', despite the large numbers
ho 'have something on their consciences'.
Naturally for the convenience and clarity of my little theoretical theatre I have had present things in the form of a sequence, with a before and an after, and thus in the rm of a temporal succession. There are individuals walking along. Somewhere usually behind them) the hail rings out: 'Hey, you there!' One individual (nine times ut of ten it is the right one) turns round, believing/suspecting/knowing that it is for im, i.e. recognizing that 'it really is he' who is meant by the hailing. But in reality ihese things happen without any succession. The existence of ideology and the hailing r interpellation of individuals as subjects are one and the same thing.
I might add: what thus seems to take place outside ideology (to be precise, in the treet), in reality takes place in ideology. What really takes place in ideology seems there-'bre to take place outside it. That is why those who are in ideology believe themselves by definition outside ideology: one of the effects of ideology is the practical denegation 'of the ideological character of ideology by ideology: ideology never says, 'I am ideological'. It is necessary to be outside ideology, i.e. in scientific knowledge, to be able to say: I am in ideology (a quite exceptional case) or (the general case): I was in ideology. As is well known, the accusation of being in ideology only applies to others, never to oneself (unless one is really a Spinozist or a Marxist, which, in this matter, is to be exactly the same thing). Which amounts to saying that ideology has no outside (for itself), but at the same time that it is nothing but ouside (for science and reality).
Spinoza explained this completely two centuries before Marx, who practised it but without explaining it in detail. But let us leave this point, although it is heavy with consequences, consequences which are not just theoretical, but also directly political, since, for example, the whole theory of criticism and self-criticism, the golden rule of the Marxist-Leninist practice of the class struggle, depends on it.
Thus ideology hails or interpellates individuals as subjects. As ideology is eternal, I must now suppress the temporal form in which I have presented the functioning of ideology, and say: ideology has always-already interpellated individuals as subjects, which amounts to making it clear that individuals are always-already interpellated by ideology as subjects, which necessarily leads us to one last proposition: individuals are always-already subjects. Hence individuals are 'abstract' with respect to the subjects which they always-already are. This proposition might seem paradoxical.
That an individual is always-already a subject, even before he is born, is nevertheless the plain reality, accessible to everyone and not a paradox at all. Freud shows that
546    Louis Althusser
individuals are always 'abstract' with respect to the subjects they always-al are, simply by noting the ideological ritual that surrounds the expectation of a 'b that 'happy event'. Everyone knows how much and in what way an unborn ch expected. Which amounts to saying, very prosaically, if we agree to drop the '. ments', i.e. the forms of family ideology (paternal/maternal/conjugal/fraternal) in i the unborn child is expected: it is certain in advance that it will bear its Father's ISJ and will therefore have an identity and be irreplaceable. Before its birth, the { is therefore always-already a subject, appointed as a subject in and by the spe familial ideological configuration in which it is 'expected' once it has been conce! I hardly need add that this familial ideological configuration is, in its unique highly structured, and that it is in this implacable and more or less 'patholog (presupposing that any meaning can be assigned to that term) structure that-i former subject-to-be will have to 'find' 'its' place, i.e. 'become' the sexual sub (boy or girl) which it already is in advance. It is clear that this ideological constr and pre-appointment, and all the rituals of rearing and then education in the fam have some relationship with what Freud studied in the forms of the pre-genital a genital 'stages' of sexuality, i.e. in the 'grip' of what Freud registered by its effe as being the unconscious. But let us leave this point, too, on one side.
Notes
1.    The family obviously has other 'functions' than that of an ISA. It intervenes in t reproduction of labour-power. In different modes of production it is the unit of producti and/or the unit of consumption.
2.    The 'Law' belongs both to the (Repressive) State Apparatus and to the system of the ISA
3.    I use this very modern term deliberately. For even in Communist circles, unfortunately, is a commonplace to 'explain' some political deviation (left or right opportunism) by t action of a'clique'.
4.    Which borrowed the legal category of 'subject in law' to make an ideological notion: ma
is by nature a subject.
5.    Linguists and those who appeal to linguistics for various purposes often run up agains difficulties which arise because they ignore the action of the ideological effects in al discourses — including even scientific discourses.
6.    NB: this double 'currently' is one more proof of the fact that ideology is 'eternal', sine these two 'currentlys' are separated by an indefinite interval; I am writing these lines April 1969; you may read them at any subsequent time.
7.    Hailing as an everyday practice subject to a precise ritual takes a quite 'special' form i: policeman's practice of 'hailing' which concerns the hailing of 'suspects'.
31
METHOD
Michel Foucault
1.
nee the objective is to analyze a certain form of knowledge regarding sex, not in rms of repression or law, but in terms of power. But the word pomer is apt to lead 'a number of misunderstandings - misunderstandings with respect to its nature, its rm, and its unity. By power, I do not mean 'Power' as a group of institutions and echanisms that ensure the subservience of the citizens of a given state. By power, I not mean, either, a mode of subjugation which, in contrast to violence, has the form the rule. Finally, I do not have in mind a general system of domination exerted y one group over another, a system whose effects, through successive derivations, ervade the entire social body. The analysis, made in terms of power, must not assume at the sovereignty of the state, the form of the law, or the overall unity of a domina-on are given at the outset; rather, these are only the terminal forms power takes. It eems to me that power must be understood in the first instance as the multiplicity of brce relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute their wn organization; as the process which, through ceaseless struggles and confrontations, transforms, strengthens, or reverses them; as the support which these force relations nd in one another, thus forming a chain or a system, or on the contrary, the disjunc-ions and contradictions which isolate them from one another; and lastly, as the strat-gies in which they take effect, whose general design or institutional crystallization is embodied in the state apparatus, in the formulation of the law, in the various social Legemonies. Power's condition of possibility, or in any case the viewpoint which permits one to understand its exercise, even in its more 'peripheral' effects, and which lso makes it possible to use its mechanisms as a grid of intelligibility of the social order, ust not be sought in the primary existence of a central point, in a unique source of sovereignty from which secondary and descendent forms would emanate; it is the moving substrate of force relations which, by virtue of their inequality, constantly engender states of power, but the latter are always local and unstable. The omnipresence of power: not because it has the privilege of consolidating everything under its invincible unity, but because it is produced from one moment to the next, at every point, or rather in every relation from one point to another. Power is everywhere; not because it
From Foucault, M., 1981, The History of Sexuality, Harmondsworth: Penguin, vol. 1, pp. 92-102.