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30 COMMUNICA TION THEORY
Althusser maintains that this obviousness only comes from people
‘(mis)recognizing’ themselves in the way that ideology ‘interpellates’
them, calls them by their names and in turn ‘recognizes their autonomy’
(162). It is in this imaginary misrecognition that the subject is constituted;
the subject is therefore formed in an imaginary relation – ‘it cannot be the
pure subject of the empiricist notion of experience because it is formed
through a definite structure of recognition’ (Hirst, 1976: 387). Ideology
does not constitute individuals in a singular divine act; rather, ‘ideology
has always-already interpellated individuals as subjects’. For Althusser,
individuals are always-already subjects in the same way that ideology itself
is ‘always-already’ known (Althusser, 1971: 175–6).
As ‘autonomous’ subjects with a unique ‘subject-position’ in the
social formation, individuals willingly ‘work by themselves’ (181) as a
‘centre of initiatives’ (182). However, whilst the subject is a ‘centre of
initiatives’ responsible for its actions, it is also a subjected being who sub-
mits freely to the authority of the Subject – God, Father, institution, the
boss, etc. – that is, a subject through the Subject and subjected to the Subject.

The structure of all ideology, interpellating individuals as subjects in the
name of a Unique and Absolute Subject, is specular, i.e. a mirror-structure,
and doubly specular: this mirror duplication is constitutive of all ideology
and ensures its functioning. Which means that all ideology is centred, that
the Absolute Subject occupies the unique place of the Centre, and inter-
pellates around it the infinity of individuals into subjects in a double-mirror
connection such that it subjects to the Subject. (Althusser, 1971: 168)

* * *

Althusser’s theory represents something of a paradigm earthquake for the
study of broadcast media and its social significance. In suggesting that, firstly,
ideology is not simply a moment of signification but is the very condition
by which it is possible to act as a self-conscious subject, and, secondly, that
structures of interpellation which exhibit specular and centred structures are
the most significant sites of ideology, broadcast media become an extremely
important kind of state apparatus. Althusser’s theory points to a sense in
which ideology – what he calls ideology-in-general – can be considered a
structure of broadcast rather than just content. Ideology as content he
refers to as ideology-in-particular. For Althusser, particular ideologies may
change but ideology-in-general is an enduring structure. This is why, as
Sprinker (1987: 279–80) has argued, the behaviour of media audiences
should be seen not as psychological but as social.
Because, for Althusser, ideology is the very condition of a subject
being a subject at all, he argues that no one in any society can do without
ideology – without a representation of themselves as subjects, of their
world and of their relation to the world. This is why ideology is not
merely a representation of people’s conditions of existence (distorted or