Page 103 - Decoding Culture

96 D E C O D I N G C U L TURE

personality, or what have you) but of ideology, and Althusser uses
the term 'interpellation' to describe the process whereby ideology
turns individuals into specific kinds of subjects. Ideology, as it
were, summons individuals, 'hails' them, as he also puts it, situates
them as seemingly natural subjects of a certain kind. Nor is there
any existence outside of this process for, to use another of
Althusser's key phrases, we are 'always-already' subjects. There is
no escape from interpellation and ideology.
This, then, is very much an account of ideology-in-general, so
much so that it would not be unreasonable to conclude that this
concept of ideology more or less equates to a generalized concept
of culture. Two features, perhaps, militate against such a conclu­
sion. First, Althusser does believe that in 'science' it is possible to
find a subjectless discourse, to escape ideology, and secondly,
ideology still constitutes an imaginary relationship of people to
their real circumstances. These views (however difficult it would
be to sustain the former) ensure that Althusser's concept retains
a critical edge which would not necessarily be present in a
descriptive concept of culture, provoking analysis which unpacks
the illusions of subject positioning through which the real cir­
cumstances of people's lives are mediated. The implication for
cultural studies is clear. In as much as the fundamental ideologi­
cal operation is that of constituting subjects, then the first and vital
moment of cultural analysis must be that which shows how spe­
cific forms perform interpellation. What is the nature of subject
formation in, for example, the classic realist text (MacCabe,
1974)? And is it possible (as Screen theory was inclined to argue)
to produce texts and readings of texts which foreground and
undermine these processes of subject formation? The former
leads to an avant-garde aesthetic practice; the latter to an
approach to 'reading' which seeks out the fractures in the text
itself, the slips, the points of subversion of the ideological project.

Copyrighted Material