Language and ideology: Althusser's theory of ideology

Althusser's work constitutes a decisive moment in the problem of ideology by conceptualizing it as a universal element of society operating on its own materiality: ideology is not a simple error, false consciousness or misrepresentation but rather a system of representations (images, myths, ideas or concepts), the fundamental mechanism of which depends on Lacan's theory of the symbolic. Though Althusser imports Lacan's theory of the symbolic in elaborating the theory of ideology, his theorization disagrees with Lacan's. Lacan privileges language as the structure of the unconscious. Althusser, while suggesting that the general theory of the signifier could provide a general theory for the theory of the unconscious, warns that "the general theory of the signifier should be distinguished from the regional theory of language". In fact, Althusser did not confine the general structure of the unconscious and thus of ideology to a linguistic model but rather addressed it in more general terms to the extent that he associated it with gestures, feelings, modes of behaviour, prohibitions, permissions, and so on. But it is also true that he did not elaborate on this point. Thus, I would like to 1) reveal a theoretical tension in Althusser's theorization of ideology: the linguistic and nonlinguistic (Pascal model) aspects of interpellation, and 2) ask whether it is possible to extend it beyond the linguistic model (of Lacan and others) by way of Lecercle's linguistic reformulation of interpellation and Laplanche's and Foucault's non-linguistic models of the unconscious ("enigmatic signifier" as displacement of the Lacanian symbolic). Lastly, 3) I will examine how Althusser's and Lacan's notions of the symbolic effectively deny contradictions in the symbolic by privileging the real as the place of contradictions, and I will argue that Balibar's conceptualization of "symbolic universality" complements what remains unnoticed (in Lacan's case) or underdeveloped (in Althusser's case) in their theories. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.