It is, therefore, clear that what is omitted is of no less importance than what is included in a text, or a practice. What the United States declines or neglects to incorporate in the resolutions of the Security Council, in its own statements, in the debate with its allies and, ultimately, in its decisions and actions, teaches us about America and its motives, its worldview and cultural-social milieu, its past and present, its mentality and its practices. We learn from its omissions as much as we do from its commissions.
The problematic of a text reveals its historical context ("moment") by incorporating both inclusions and omissions, presences and absences, the overt and the hidden, the carefully included and the deliberately excluded. The problematic of the text generates answers to posed questions - and "defective" answers to excluded ones.
Althusser contrasts the manifest text with a latent text which is the result of the lapses, distortions, silences and absences in the manifest text. The latent text is the "diary of the struggle" of the un-posed question to be posed and answered.
Such a deconstructive or symptomatic reading of recent American texts reveals, as in a palimpsest, layers of 19th century-like colonialist, mercantilist and even imperialist mores and values: "the white man's burden", the mission of civilizing and liberating lesser nation, the implicit right to manage the natural resources of other polities and to benefit from them, and other eerie echoes of Napoleonic "Old Europe".
But ideology does not consist merely of texts.
"(It is a) lived, material practice - rituals, customs, patterns of behavior, ways of thinking taking practical form - reproduced through the practices and productions of the Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs): education, organized religion, the family, organized politics, the media, the cultural industries..." (ibid, p.12)
Althusser said that "All ideology has the function (which defines it) of 'constructing' concrete individuals as subjects".
Subjects to what? The answer is: to the material practices of the ideology, such as consumption, or warfare. This (the creation of subjects) is done by acts of "hailing" or "interpellation". These attract attention (hailing) and force the individuals to generate meaning (interpretation) and, thus, make the subjects partake in the practice.
The application of this framework is equally revealing when one tackles not only the American administration but also the uniformly "patriotic" (read: nationalistic) media in the United States.
The press uses self-censored "news", "commentary" and outright propaganda to transform individuals to subjects, i.e. to supporters of the war. It interpellates them and limits them to a specific discourse (of armed conflict). The barrage of soundbites, slogans, clips, edited and breaking news and carefully selected commentary and advocacy attract attention, force people to infuse the information with meaning and, consequently, to conform and participate in the practice (e.g., support the war, or fight in it).
The explicit and implicit messages are: "People like you - liberal, courageous, selfless, sharp, resilient, entrepreneurial, just, patriotic, and magnanimous - (buy this or do that)"; "People like you go to war, selflessly, to defend not only their nearest and dearest but an ungrateful world as well"; "People like you do not allow a monster like Saddam Hussein to prevail"; "People like you are missionaries, bringing democracy and a better life to all corners of the globe". "People like you are clever and won't wait till it is too late and Saddam possesses or, worse, uses weapons of mass destruction"; "People like you contrast with others (the French, the Germans) who ungratefully shirk their responsibilities and wallow in cowardice."
The reader / viewer is interpellated both as an individual ("you") and as a member of a group ("people like you..."). S/he occupies the empty (imaginary) slot, represented by the "you" in the media campaign. It is a form of mass flattery. The media caters to the narcissistic impulse to believe that it addresses us personally, as unique individuals. Thus, the reader or viewer is transformed into the subject of (and is being subjected to) the material practice of the ideology (war, in this case).
Still, not all is lost. Althusser refrains from tackling the possibilities of ideological failure, conflict, struggle, or resistance. His own problematic may not have allowed him to respond to these two deceptively simple questions:
What is the ultimate goal and purpose of the ideological practice beyond self-perpetuation?
What happens in a pluralistic environment rich in competing ideologies and, thus, in contradictory interpellations?
There are incompatible ideological strands even in the strictest authoritarian regimes, let alone in the Western democracies. Currently, IASs within the same social formation in the USA are offering competing ideologies: political parties, the Church, the family, the military, the media, the intelligentsia and the bureaucracy completely fail to agree and cohere around a single doctrine. As far as the Iraqi conflict goes, subjects have been exposed to parallel and mutually-exclusive interpellations since day one.
Moreover, as opposed to Althusser's narrow and paranoid view, interpellation is rarely about converting subjects to a specific - and invariably transient - ideological practice. It is concerned mostly with the establishment of a consensual space in which opinions, information, goods and services can be exchanged subject to agreed rules.
Interpellation, therefore, is about convincing people not to opt out, not to tune out, not to drop out - and not to rebel. When it encourages subjects to act - for instance, to consume, or to support a war, or to fight in it, or to vote - it does so in order to preserve the social treaty, the social order and society at large.
The problematic of a text reveals its historical context ("moment") by incorporating both inclusions and omissions, presences and absences, the overt and the hidden, the carefully included and the deliberately excluded. The problematic of the text generates answers to posed questions - and "defective" answers to excluded ones.
Althusser contrasts the manifest text with a latent text which is the result of the lapses, distortions, silences and absences in the manifest text. The latent text is the "diary of the struggle" of the un-posed question to be posed and answered.
Such a deconstructive or symptomatic reading of recent American texts reveals, as in a palimpsest, layers of 19th century-like colonialist, mercantilist and even imperialist mores and values: "the white man's burden", the mission of civilizing and liberating lesser nation, the implicit right to manage the natural resources of other polities and to benefit from them, and other eerie echoes of Napoleonic "Old Europe".
"(It is a) lived, material practice - rituals, customs, patterns of behavior, ways of thinking taking practical form - reproduced through the practices and productions of the Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs): education, organized religion, the family, organized politics, the media, the cultural industries..." (ibid, p.12)
Althusser said that "All ideology has the function (which defines it) of 'constructing' concrete individuals as subjects".
Subjects to what? The answer is: to the material practices of the ideology, such as consumption, or warfare. This (the creation of subjects) is done by acts of "hailing" or "interpellation". These attract attention (hailing) and force the individuals to generate meaning (interpretation) and, thus, make the subjects partake in the practice.
The application of this framework is equally revealing when one tackles not only the American administration but also the uniformly "patriotic" (read: nationalistic) media in the United States.
The press uses self-censored "news", "commentary" and outright propaganda to transform individuals to subjects, i.e. to supporters of the war. It interpellates them and limits them to a specific discourse (of armed conflict). The barrage of soundbites, slogans, clips, edited and breaking news and carefully selected commentary and advocacy attract attention, force people to infuse the information with meaning and, consequently, to conform and participate in the practice (e.g., support the war, or fight in it).
The explicit and implicit messages are: "People like you - liberal, courageous, selfless, sharp, resilient, entrepreneurial, just, patriotic, and magnanimous - (buy this or do that)"; "People like you go to war, selflessly, to defend not only their nearest and dearest but an ungrateful world as well"; "People like you do not allow a monster like Saddam Hussein to prevail"; "People like you are missionaries, bringing democracy and a better life to all corners of the globe". "People like you are clever and won't wait till it is too late and Saddam possesses or, worse, uses weapons of mass destruction"; "People like you contrast with others (the French, the Germans) who ungratefully shirk their responsibilities and wallow in cowardice."
The reader / viewer is interpellated both as an individual ("you") and as a member of a group ("people like you..."). S/he occupies the empty (imaginary) slot, represented by the "you" in the media campaign. It is a form of mass flattery. The media caters to the narcissistic impulse to believe that it addresses us personally, as unique individuals. Thus, the reader or viewer is transformed into the subject of (and is being subjected to) the material practice of the ideology (war, in this case).
Still, not all is lost. Althusser refrains from tackling the possibilities of ideological failure, conflict, struggle, or resistance. His own problematic may not have allowed him to respond to these two deceptively simple questions:
What is the ultimate goal and purpose of the ideological practice beyond self-perpetuation?
What happens in a pluralistic environment rich in competing ideologies and, thus, in contradictory interpellations?
There are incompatible ideological strands even in the strictest authoritarian regimes, let alone in the Western democracies. Currently, IASs within the same social formation in the USA are offering competing ideologies: political parties, the Church, the family, the military, the media, the intelligentsia and the bureaucracy completely fail to agree and cohere around a single doctrine. As far as the Iraqi conflict goes, subjects have been exposed to parallel and mutually-exclusive interpellations since day one.
Moreover, as opposed to Althusser's narrow and paranoid view, interpellation is rarely about converting subjects to a specific - and invariably transient - ideological practice. It is concerned mostly with the establishment of a consensual space in which opinions, information, goods and services can be exchanged subject to agreed rules.
Interpellation, therefore, is about convincing people not to opt out, not to tune out, not to drop out - and not to rebel. When it encourages subjects to act - for instance, to consume, or to support a war, or to fight in it, or to vote - it does so in order to preserve the social treaty, the social order and society at large.
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