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THEORIES OF LANGUAGE AND IDEOLOGY 151

theory of ‘the subject’ is a ‘materialistic’ one and satisfactorily resolves the
problems posed by historical materialism.
4 Further, suppose that we were to accept the validity of Lacan’s theory of the
constitution of the subject, as well as the ‘screen theory’ argument that we
cannot have an adequate theory of language/ideology without taking the
functioning of ‘the subject’ into account. It does not follow that a theory of how
the ‘subject-in-general’ is formed offers, in itself, without further determinations,
an adequate explanation of how historically specific subjects, already
‘positioned’ in language-in-general, function in relation to particular discourses
or historically specific ideologies in definite social formations. The theory of ‘the
subject’ as advanced by ‘screen theory’ may be a necessary part, but it is not yet
a sufficient explanation of particular discourses or specific ideologies and their
functioning. The practices of language, discourse and ideologies may have other
determinations, only some of which can be fixed at the level of ‘the subject’.
Thus other premises, relating to further conditions of existence and having
determinate effects, would have to be introduced in order to move the explanation
—as historical materialism requires— from the level of the ‘in-general’
(compare ‘production-in-general’—what Marx described as ‘a chaotic
abstraction’) to the more concrete, historically determinate level (that is, specific
modes of production under determinate conditions). ‘Screen theory’ seems here
to have fallen prey to the temptation to treat the most abstract/ universal level of
abstraction as the most pertinent—indeed, the only ‘truly theoretical’ —level of
explanation.
In its present, all-embracing form ‘screen theory’ refuses to countenance any
propositions about discourse or ideology which are not reducible to, and
explicable by, the Lacanian theory of ‘the subject’. Thus it claims to explain how
‘the subject’ is positioned in relation to patriarchal ideology-in-general. But it
cannot explain the pertinent differences between different patriarchal ideologies
in different social formations at different times. Even less can it explain how
patriarchal ideologies may be broken, interrupted or contravened: since,
according to the theory, ‘the subject’ cannot help but enter the ‘symbolic’ under
the patriarchal sign, for it is this which, in imposing the ‘Law of Culture’ (the
‘Law of the Symbolic’), establishes the rule of difference on which language
itself is founded. ‘The subject’ is then, by definition, always already inside
patriarchal language/ideology. Thus all ideology is, by definition, the dominant
ideology—the doxa. This reproduces all the problems earlier identified in the
‘functionalism’ of Althusser’s ‘Ideological State Apparatuses’ essay; only now
the ‘functionalism’ of the dominant ideology appears to be given, not at the level
of social formation, but at the level of ‘the subject’.
5 It is, therefore, conceptually impossible to construct, from this position, an
adequate concept of ‘struggle’ in ideology, since (for example) struggle against
patriarchal ideology would be a struggle against the very repressive conditions in
which language as such is itself constituted. No alternative model has been
proposed as to how ‘the subject’ might be positioned in language without also