Page 117 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

IDEOLOGICAL STATE APPARATUSES

nature (origins and ‘blood’ or genes) rather than made in culture – is
often viewed with alarm within radical circles (see Grossberg, 1996).
Spivak’s notion of ‘strategic essentialism’ (see Landry and Maclean,
1996) tries to get round the problem. It suggests forgoing the notion of
the socially constructed and reclaiming a fixed identity in debates over
cultural politics and policies. For while we may agree that, for
instance, sexuality is a culturally constructed signifier, the rights and
privileges awarded to heterosexual and homosexual individuals are
markedly different. Here, ‘strategic essentialism’ supports the notion of
a group of individuals coming together under the identity of ‘gay’ to
participate in debates over equality, access and vilification. Similar
arguments may be made about ethnic identity (see Gray, 2000) and
ethno-nationalism, including Indigenous politics. Here, ‘identity’
means more than ‘living as and being accepted by others in that
culture’; it means having authenticated bloodlines showing a certain
ethnic descent, consequential upon which may be various entitlements
and rights, from land to welfare, policed, some have suggested, by
DNA testing. Such a development in other domains of identity
politics – for example in relation to the sometimes posited ‘gay gene’ –
would be highly controversial.
Examples such as this illustrate that identity politics is by no means
self-evidently radical or progressive, despite the fact that it is usually
associated with marginal groups and with bringing disparate
individuals together in the name of social, political and cultural
equality. Another recent development in identity politics that
demonstrates its reactionary potential is the rise of the men’s
movement (see Biddulph, 1994). Doubtless there are issues to do
with masculine identity that need airing, but ‘marginal’ would not be
the way to describe them. Some of the rhetoric of the men’s
movement is explicitly designed to undermine feminist positions; here
‘identity’ is presented as embattled when challenged from a marginal
position.

IDEOLOGICAL STATE APPARATUSES

The material or institutional form taken by ideology in specified
historical circumstances in class societies. Known in the trade as ISAs,
and distinguished from RSAs or repressive state apparatuses, the two
terms were coined by the French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser
(1971).

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