Louis Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses  (Notes
towards and Investigation)," in "Lenin and Philosophy and other
Essays" (New York:  Monthly Review Press, 1971), pp. 127-186.

Summary:

Ideology is the representation of the imaginary relation of
individuals to their real conditions of existence.

Ideology is the set of obvious statements about the world.

Ideology is misrecognition, ignorance.

It is not merely empty, a dream, as in early Marx -- it is  material,
consisting of acts performed in society.  Ideology has  a material
existence.

Ideology perpetuates the existing processes of production by  defining
the individual as a free subject subjected to a higher  Subject (God,
state, etc.).

Ideology interpellates individuals as subjects, that is, it  assigns a
role and place to individuals that guarantees their  freedom while
effecting their subjugation to the rulers.  The  individual recognizes
himself as a subject at the moment he  begins to inhabit an ideology.

"Ideology," as a relation/representation, is eternal -- all
ideologies have the same structure.

Ideologies are realized in institutions, particularly those of  the
state.

The primary function of an ideology is to replicate itself  through
its constituent institutions.

Ideological State Apparatuses are the battleground and the  spoils of
class struggle; hence the importance and semi- autonomy of art.

***************************

127-134.  [Capitalist production must include the re-production  of
the means of production.  It must therefore also provide for  the
reproduction of the forces of production, namely, the  workers.  This
requires training in the techniques and skills of  capitalist
production, but it also requires ideological  conditioning.]

132-33.  "[T]he reproduction of labour power requires not only a
reproduction of its skills, but also, at the same time, a
reproduction of its submission to the rules of the established  order,
i.e. a reproduction of submission to the ruling ideology  for the
[133] workers, and a reproduction of the ability to  manipulate the
ruling ideology correctly for the agents of  exploitation and
repression, so that they, too, will provide for  the domination of the
ruling class `in words.'"

133.  "All the agents of production, exploitation and  repression, not
to speak of the `professionals of ideology'  (Marx), must in one way
or another be `steeped' in this ideology  in order to perform their
tasks `conscientiously' -- the tasks  of the exploited (the
proletarians), of the exploiters (the  capitalists), of the
exploiters' auxiliaries (the managers), or  of the high priests of the
ruling ideology (its  `functionaries'), etc."

[Thus the workers and the exploiters both inhabit ideology; the  men
are secondary to the productive system; this leads tot he  observation
later that exploitaiton is not the product of some  small clique or
conspiracy -- it is structural.]

134-136.  [The relation of infrastructure to superstructure must  be
understood from the point of view of the need to reproduce  the means
and forces of production.]

140-148.  [Capitalist society perpetuates itself through two  types of
apparatus:  repressive state apparatuses (the army,  police, etc.) and
ideological state apparatuses (religion,  education, family, law,
political parties, trade unions, the  media, and culture, including
art and sports).  Repressive state  apparatuses function by force,
ideological state apparatuses by  ideology).

     [The "relative autonomy" of superstructure from  infrastructure
makes it possible for the ISAs to become sites of  the class struggle,
although by and large they are controlled by  the state by means of
the ideology of the ruling class.]

147.  "[T]he Ideological State Apparatuses may be not only the
"stake," but also the "site" of class struggle, and often of bitter
forms of class struggle.  The class (or class alliance) in power
cannot lay down the law in the ISAs as easily as it can in the
(repressive) State apparatus, not only because the former ruling
classes are able to retain strong positions there for a long  time,
but also because the resistance of the exploited classes  is able to
find means and occasions to express itself there,  either by
utilization of their contradictions, or by conquering  combat
positions in them in struggle."

[This would be true of no ISA more than art, particularly  literature,
as history has shown in and out of the East Bloc.]

149.  [More on the autonomy of ISAs] -- "Whereas the  (Repressive)
State Apparatus constitutes an organized whole  whose different parts
are centralized beneath a commanding  unity, that of the politics of
class struggle applied by the  political representatives of the ruling
classes in possession of  State power, the Ideological State
Apparatuses are multiple,  distinct, `relatively autonomous' and
capable of proving an  objective field to contradictions which
express, in forms which  may be limited or extreme, the effects of the
clashes between  the capitalist class struggle and the proletarian
class  struggle, as well as their subordinate forms."

[Applied to literature, this can lead to Jameson's notion of
literature as the field for fictitious resolution of class  conflicts
and social contradictions.  Althusser, however, seems  less sanguine
about the utopian tendency -- what we get in the  "objective field" is
struggle, not resolution.]

148-157.  Education has replaced the Church as the primary ISA.
                       
On Ideology per se:

159-60.  [According to early Marx, ideology has no history, is a  pure
dream, empty of significance in and of itself.]

162-165.  [According to Althusser, ideology is not empty -- it  has a
determinate structure the same eternally.]

162.

First of Two Theses:

"THESIS I:  Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of
individuals to their real conditions of existence."

[See also p. 165.]

"[W]hile admitting that [ideologies or `world views'] do  not
correspond to reality, i.e. that they constitute an  illusion, we
admit that they do make allusion to reality, and  that they need only
be `interpreted' to discover the reality of  the world behind their
imaginary representation of that world  (ideology =
illusion/allusion)."

[Obvious applications to literary criticism:  but what will be  the
method of intepretation?]

164.  "[I]t is not their real conditions of existence, their  real
world, that `men' `represent to themselves' in ideology,  but above
all it is their relation to those conditions of  existence which is
represented to them there.  It is this  relation which is at the
centre of every ideological, i.e.  imaginary, representation of the
real world.  It is this  relation that contains the `cause' which has
to explain the  imaginary distortion of the ideological representation
of the  real world.  Or rather, to leave aside the language of
causality  it is necessary to advance the thesis that it is the
imaginary nature of this relation which underlies all the imaginary
distortion we can observe (if we do not live in its truth) in  all
ideology."

165ff.  [Ideology has a material existence, in acts, rituals,
institutions, etc.]

165.

Second of two Theses.

"THESIS II:  Ideology has a material existence."

169-177.  [Ideology creates the "subject" -- the indivudals's
imagination of himself as the free subordinate of a higher  power.
The subjectivity of the individual is thus determined by  and
inhabiting the ideology, which means that all things  "obviously true"
to the subject are obvious because dictated by  the ideology.
Ideology is universal, and always connected with  subjectivity.]

169-70.  [Althusser's structuralism] --  "Ideas have disappeared  as
such (insofar as they are endowed with an ideal or spiritual
existence), to the precise [170] extent that it has emerged that
their existence is inscribed in the actions of practices  governed by
rituals defined in the last instance by an  ideological apparatus.  It
therefore appears that the subject  acts insofar as he is acted by the
following system (set out in  the order of its real determination):
ideology existing as a  material ideological apparatus, prescribing
material practices  governed by a material ritual, which practices
exist in the  material actions of a subject acting in all
consciousness  according to his belief."

172.  "you and I are always already subjects"

175.  [Only escape from ideology is through science, including
Marxism; but ideology colors even scientific discourse.]

182-3.  [Last definition of ideology] --  "The reality in  question in
this mechanism, the reality which is necessarily  ignored (meconnue)
in the very forms of recognition [182]  (ideology =
misrecognition/ignorance) is indeed, in the last  resort, the
reproduction of the relations of production and of  the relations
deriving from them."

[I.e., this last is precisely what we do not get in an  ideology.]

185-86.  [Ideologies are born not of the ISAs, but directly of  the
realities and forms of the class struggle.]

*********

"Lenin and Philosophy."

32.  "Objective knowledge" is that knowledge which is arrived  at
through a THEORY, a method.

Commentary on this:  "Objectivity" is that which is known or  verified
through appeals to a theoretically organized set of  observable or
deducible facts.  Its opposite would be a  "subjectivity" (for
Althusser, a lived ideology) which in the  final instance appeals to
the intuitive obviousness of its  assertions.  Objective knowledge
would be inter- or rather  trans-subjective, hence not limited to
individual claims, but  to the abstractly, theoretically organized
claims of a  community of individuals.  Subjective thinking claims to
appeal  to direct, observable, incontrovertible fact, to common sense,
whereas it actually selects those data that support a  wholly
subjective predisposition or prejudice, dismissing  conflicting data
as meaningless or irrelevant.  Example:  a  white student hangs a
Confederate flag out his dorm window,  offending his black neighbor.
The black student complainsthat  the flag is a symbol of racism.  The
white student insists that  the flag is not a symbol of racism, but a
symbol of  independence and nobility.  Setting aside the analysis that
could be performed on the notions of "independence and  nobility," it
is possible to argue that the black and white  students are both
correct when they assert that the flag  symbolizes X-value, but that
the white student errs in claiming  that the flag is not a symbol of
anything besides the things he  (supposedly) wishes it to represent.
(The black student would  likewise err if he denied the contrary,
white evaluation of the  flag.)  Thus the white student's subjective
interpretation of  the flag's meaning is refutable, in part, by appeal
to the  history of the flag's use as a symbol, which can be
demonstrated concretely and conclusively; the white student's  claim
that the flag means only what he says it does is  therefore either
naive or disingenuous (cf. Humpty Dumpty).  An  extension of this
thinking could be applied to an ideological  debunking of those terms
"independence and nobility" -- that  the use of these terms grew out
of a systematic justification  for racism and slavery.  The terms
originated in a historic  social context that is still relevant, hence
the claim that  they are free and exclusive meanings for the
Confederate flag  is a merely mystification of the historic meaning of
the flag  and of the real issue at stake, namely, racial equality.
Although the white student may not be conscious of the ultimate
significance of the flag, or of his rationale for displaying  it, both
are, objectively speaking, from the viewpoint of the  white vs. black
class struggle, combative tactics in that  struggle, as is indeed the
"innocence" of the white student,  who believes sincerely that he is
not a racist, and "therefore"  cannot be accused of racism.  The black
student is justified in  refusing to accept or acknowledge the "good
faith" of the white  student, because the display of the flag and the
white rhetoric  surrounding it is, objectively (observed in its
materially real  character as a moment in a class struggle, rather
than from the  voluntarist viewpoint of any particular subject) an
offensive  act.  As in the sciences, the proof is in the theory's
effectiveness in accounting for the known, observable facts,  and in
this case, the black student can support his contention,  whereas the
white student can only appeal to his private,  subjective viewpoint,
intentions, beliefs, etc.
                      
37-38.  [Criticising the "German Ideology" in general, but
provisionally agreeing with it here]  "'The German Ideology' bases
this suppression of philosophy on a theory of philosophy  as a
hallucination and mystification, or to go further, as a  dream,
manufactured from what I shall call the day's residues  of the real
history of concrete men, day's residues endowed  with a purely
imag-[38]inary existence in which the order of  things is inverted.
Philosophy, like religion and ethics, is  only ideology; it has no
history, everything which seems to  happen in it really happens
outisde it, in the only real  history, the history of the material
life of men.  Science is  then real itself, known by the action which
reveals it by  destroyinh the ideologies that veil it:  foremost among
these  ideologies is philosophy."

41.  Definition:  "A science in the strict sense:  a  theoretical,
i.e. ideal (ideelle) and demonstrative discipline,  not an aggregate
of empirical results."

52.  "Politically, Lenin is famous for his critique of  `spontaneism,'
which, it should be noted, is not directed  against the spontaneity,
resourcefulness, inventiveness and  genius of the masses of people but
against a poltiical ideology  which, screened byan exaltation of the
spontaneity of the  masses, exploits it in order to divert it into an
incorrect  politics.  But it is not generally recognized that Lenin
adopts  exactly the same position in his conceptions of scientific
practice.  Lenin wrote:  `without revolutionary theory there can be no
revolutionary movement.' He could equally have  written:  without
scientific theory there can be no production  of scientific
knowledges.  His defence of the requirements of  theory in scientific
practice precisely coincides with his  defence of the requirements of
theory in political practice.   His anti-spontaneism then takes the
theoretical form of anti- empiricism, anti-positivism and
anti-pragmatism."

61.  "Lenin thus defines the ultimate essence of philosophical
practice as an intervention in the theoretical domain.  Thisn
intervention takes a double form:  it is theoretical in its
formulation of definite categories; and practical in the  function of
these categories.  This function consists of  `drawing a
dividing-line' inside the theoretical domain between  ideas declared
to be true and ideas declared to be false,  between the scientific and
the ideological.  The effects of  this line are of two kinds:
positive in that they assist a  certain practice -- scientific
practice -- and negative in that  they defend this practice against
the dangers of certain  ideological notions:  here those of idealism
and dogmatism.   Such, at least, are the effects produced by Lenin's
philosophical intervention."

[All of this amounts to saying that philosophy is always  political in
both its nature and its effects, combined with a  fleshing-out of the
XI. Thesis on Feuerbach.]

64.
     "Lenin is simly observing that all philosophy is partisan,  as a
function of its basic tendency, against the opposing basic  tendency,
via the philosophies which represent it.  But at the  same time, he is
observing that the vast majority of  philosophers put a great price on
being able to declare  publicly and prove that they are not partisan
because they do  not have to be partisan."

65.  Philosophy mediates between science and politics:

     "We can now advance the following proposition:  philosophy  is a
certain continuation of politics, in a certain domain,  vis-a-vis a
certain reality.  Philosophy represents politics in  the domain of
theory, or to be more precise:  with the sciences  -- and, vice versa,
philosophy represents scientificity in  politics, with the classes
engaged in the class struggle."

68.  "What is new in Marxism's contribution to philosophy is a  new
practice of philosophy.  Marxism is not a (new) philosophy  of praxis,
but a (new) practice of philosophy."

[I.e., new in that it throws its weight on the side of  materialism
rather than (ideological, obfuscatory) idealism,  and does it
self-consciously, understanding itself as a  political intervention in
the realm of theory.]

67.  [Philosophy's claim to transcendence a typical ideological
mystification]  "For if philosophy's birth was induced by the  first
science in human history, this happened in Greece, in a  class
society, and knowing just how far class exploitation's  effects may
stretch, we should not be astonished thyat these  effects, too, took a
form which is classical in class societies,  in which the ruling
classes denegate the fact that they rule,  the form of a philosophical
denegation of philosophy's  domination by politics."

68.  Marxism is not a (new) philosophy of praxis, but a (new)
practice of philosophy.

***********

"Preface to Capital Volume One"

76.  "The experimental scienceshave the `microscope', Marxist  science
has no `microscope':  it has to use abstraction to  `replace' it.
        "Beware:  scientific abstraction is not at all  `abstract',
quite the contrary.  E.g., when Marx speaks of thew  total social
capital, no one can `touch it with his hands'; when  Marx speaks of
the `total surplus value', no one can touch it  with his hands or
count it:  and yet these two abstract concepts  designate actually
existing realities.  What makes abstraction  scientific is precisely
the fact that it designates a concrete  reality which certainly exists
but which it is impossible to  `touch with one's hands' or `see with
one's eyes'.  Every  abstract concept therefore provides knowledge of
a reality whose  existence it reveals:  an `abstract concept' then
means a  formula which is apparently abstract but really terribly
concrete, because of the object it designates.  This object is
terribly concrete in that it is infinitely more concrete, more
effective than the objects that one can `touch with one's hands'
. . . and yet one cannot touch it with one's hands . . . .

94.  While remorselessly abandoning all Hegel's influnce, Marx
continued to recognize an important debt to him:  the fact that  he
was the first to conceive of history as a `process without a
subject'."

100.  "Capital gives [workers] this supplementary political and
theoretical education in the form of objective explanations and
proofs, which helps them to move from a proletarian class  instinct to
an (objective) proletarian class position."

***********

"Lenin before Hegel"

109.  ". . . since philosophy is is politics in theory, it is
therefore politics."

117.
     "For Lenin, as for Hegel, Kant means subjectivism.  In a
quasi-Hegelian phrase, Lenin says that the transcendental is
subjectivism and psychology. . . .  Hence Lenin is in agreement  with
Hegel in criticizing Kant from the point of view of  objectivism
. . . but what objectivism?  We shall see."

118.
     "Here we see `in the name of what' Lenin criticizes Kant's
subjectivism:  in the name of objectivism, I have said.  This  term is
too easily a pendant of the term subjectivism for it not  to be
immediately suspect.  Let us say rather that Lenin  criticizes Kant's
subjectivism in the name of a materialist  thesis which is the thesis
conjointly of (material) existence  anbd of (scienctific) objectivity.
In other words, Lenin  criticizes Kant from the viewpoint of
philosophical materialism  and scientific objectivity, thought
together in the thesis of  materialism.  This is precisely the
position of Materialism and  Empirio-criticism."

118-119.  Lenin's adaptation of Hegel's critique of Kant's
subjectivism:

     "1.  the elimination of the thing-in-itself and its  reconversion
into the dialectical action of the identity of  essence and
phenomenon; [119]
     "2.  the elimination of the category of the Subject  (whether
transcendental or otherwise);
     "3.  with this double elimination and the reconversion of  the
thing-in-itself into the dialectical action of the essence  and its
phenomenon, Lenin produces an effect often underlined in  Materialism
and Empirio-Criticism:  the liberation of scientific  practice,
finally freed from every dogma that would make it an  ossified thing,
thus restoring to it its rightful living  existence -- this life of
science merely reflecting the life of  reality itself."

119.  Whereas Hegel is criticizing Kant from the viewpoint of  God,
"Lenin uses Hegel's criticism of Kant to criticize Kant  from the
viewpoint of science, of scientific objectivity and its  correlate,
the material existence of its object."

121.  [On the further development of the concept of alienation.]

     "The untenable thesis upheld by Marx in the "1844  Manuscripts"
was that History is the History of the process of  the alienation of a
Subject, the Generic Essence of Man  alienated in `alienated labour'.
     "But it was precisely this thesis that exploded.  The result  of
this explosion was the evaporation of the notions of subject,  human
essence, and alienation, which disappear, completely  atomized, and
the liberation of the concept of a process (proces or processus)
without a subject, which is the basis of all  analyses in 'Capital.'"

124.  This notion of a process without a subject is fundamental  to
both Marx and Freud.

************

"A Letter on Art in Reply to Andre Daspre"

FROM MY FIRST READING OF IT:


*********************

"A Letter on Art," "Lenin and Philosophy," pp. 221-27.

221.  ["Real" art is not an ideology.]

222-23.  ["Authentic" art does not yield knowledge, it enables  us to
"see" and "feel" "something which alludes to reality".]

"What art makes us see, and therefore gives to us in the form of
`seeing', `perceiving' and `feeling' (which is not the form of
knowing), is the ideology from which it is born, in which it  bathes,
from which it detaches itself as art, and to which it  alludes.
Macherey has shown this very clearly in the case of  Tolstoy, by
extending Lenin's analyses.  Balzac and Solzhenitsyn  give us a `view'
of the ideology to which their work alludes and  with which it is
constantly fed, a view which presupposes a  retreat, an internal
distantiation [223] from the very ideology  from which the novels
emerged.  They make us `perceive' (but not  know) in some sense from
the inside, by an internal distance,  the very ideology in which they
are held."

223.  [Lived experience in novels in the inhabiting-by-us of an
ideology.]

"When we speak of ideology we should know that ideology slides  into
all human activity, that it is identical with the `lived'  experience
of human existence itself:  that is why the form in  which we are
`made to see' ideology in great novels has as its  content the `lived'
experience of individuals."

[Very intriguing:  this makes physchological verisimilitude the  final
criterion for a good novel -- can the world view depicted  be imagined
and inhabited by the reader?  Doesn't this betray a  realist bias,
however?  Althusser isn't thrilled with Lukacs,  yet the realist bias
seems present here, too.  Or are we to try  to squeeze the late
chapters of "Ulysses" into a version of  realism?  Rather, those
chapters are a decomposition of what we  had though of as realism into
their constituent language, i.e.,  into the social institution from
which consciousness springs.]

225.  "The fact that the content of the work of Balzac and  Tolstoy is
`detached' from their political ideology and in some  way makes us
`see' it from the outside, makes us `perceive' it  by a distantiation
inside that ideology, presupposes that  ideology itself.  It is
certainly possible to say that it is an  `effect' of their art as
novelists that it produces this  distance inside their ideology, which
makes us `perceive' it,  but it is not possible to say . . . that art
`has its own logic'  which `made Balzac abandon his political
conceptions'.  On the  contrary, only because he retained them could
he produce his  work, only because he stuck to his political ideology
could he  produce in it this internal `distance' which gives us a
critical `view' of it."

[Compare this with Kuhn:  The paradigmatic theory need be only a
myth, it need not be true.  Its function is merely to organize  and
make rigorous the observation of a part of the natural  world.  Real
leaps in knowledge occur from the observed  breakdown of the theory;
without the false theory, the questions  asked of nature would be
meaningless or random.  Similarly,  an ideological construction of the
world need not be true in  order to shed light on that world; it
provides a fixed form  against which the real world may be compared.
Althusser's  "distantiation" is the site of comparison between the
predictions of the ideology, and the reply of the world.]

[A consequence:  art is always both ideological and subversive  of
ideology.]


FROM MY SECOND READING OF IT:

221.  "The problem of the relations between art and ideology is a
very complicated and difficult one.  However, I can tell you in  what
directions our investigations tend.  I do not rank real art  among the
ideologies, although art does have a quite particular  and specific
relationship with ideology."

222.  Althusser recommends Macherey on Lenin on Tolstoy as a good  bit
of practical ideological criticism (see the book):

[after Macherey]  "Art (I mean authentic art, not works of an  average
or mediocre level) does not give us knowledge in the  strict sense, it
therefore does not replace knowledge (in the  modern sense:
scientific knowledge), but what it gives us does  nevertheless
maintain a certain specific relationship with  knowledge.  This
relationship is not one of identity but one of  differance. . . .  I
believe that the peculiarity of art is to  `make us see' (nous donner
a voir), `make us perceive', `make us  feel' something which alludes
to reality.  If we take the case of  the novel, Balzac or
Solzhenitsyn, . . . they make us see,  perceive (but not know)
something which alludes to reality.

222-223.  "What art makes us see, and therefore gives to us in  the
form of `seeing', `perceiving'and `feeling' (which is not the  form of
knowing), is the ideology from which it is born, in which  it bathes,
from which it detaches itself as art, and to which it  alludes. . . .
Balzac and Solzhenitsyn give us a `view' of the  ideology to which
their work alludes and with which it is  constantly fed, a view which
presupposes a retreat, an internal  distantiation [223] from the very
ideology from which their  novels emerged.  They make us `perceive'
(but not know) in some  sense from the inside, by an internal
distance, the very  ideology in which they are held."

223.  "When we speak of ideology we should know that ideology  slides
into all human activity, that it is identical with the  `lived'
experience of human existence itself:  that is why the  form in which
we are `made to see' ideology in great novels has  as its content the
`lived' experience of individuals.  This  `lived' experience is not a
given, given by a pure `reality', but  the spontaneous `lived
experience' of ideology in its peculiar  relationship to the real.
This is an important comment, for it  enable us to understand that art
does not deal with a reality  peculiar to itself, with a peculiar
domain of reality in which it  has a monopoly . . ., whereas science
deals with a different  domain of reality (say, in opposition to
`lived experience' and  the `individual', the abstraction of
structures).  Ideology is  also an object of science, the `lived
experience' is also an  object of science, the `individual' is also an
object of science.   The real difference between art and science lies
in the specific  form in which they give us the same object in quite
different  ways:  art in the form of `seeing' and `perceiving' or
`feeling',  science in the form of knowledge (in the strict sense, by
concepts)."

224.  "If I wanted to use Spinoza's language again here, I could  say
that art makes us `see' `conclusions without premisses',  whereas
knowledge makes us penetrate into the mechanism which  produces the
`conclusions' out of the `premisses'."

225.  "The fact that the content of the work of Balzac and  Tolstoy is
`detached' from their political ideology and in some  way makes us
`see' it from the outside, makes us `perceive' it by  a distantiation
inside that ideology, presupposes that ideology  itself.  It is
certainly possible to say that it is an `effect'  of their art as
novelists that it produces this distance inside  their ideology, which
makes us `perceive' it, but it is not  possible to say, as you do,
that art `has its own logic' which  `made Balzac abandon his political
conceptions'.  On the  contrary, only because he retained them could
he produce his  work, only because he stuch to his political ideology
could he  produce in it this internal `distance' which gives us a
critical  `view' of it."

[Cf. the account of ideology per se:  art here is the  representation
of a relation, that between fantasy and reality.   Thus the
definitions of art and ideology do tend to overlap, or  at least, they
are structurally analogous -- is art then also  without a history?
Presumably YES!  Its reality is elsewhere  than within it -- it lies
in what is alluded to.  What needs  explanation now is how and why
this rigor of retaining a  political ideology determines the outcome
of art and its effects.   This seems to be a mixing of categories --
from logic to fantasy  -- but in Althuusser's terms it is only a move
from fantasy  (ideology) to fantasy (art).  Nonetheless, what are the
mechanisms?  And to what extent are they determinate?  What is  the
nature of "critical distance" anyway, in Marxist term or  otherwise?
And where is agency here, or where is it not?  Who is  distancing whom
from what?  Does ideology imply its own critique  through blind spots,
repressions, as in deconstructive thinking?   Another and more serious
problem with all of this is the  distinction made between good art and
bad art -- what does that  mean?]

*************

"Cremonini, Painter of the Abstract," "Lenin and Philosophy," pp.
229-242.

[Exemplary discussion of an "abstract" painter, which for  Althusser
means a scientific one, in effect.  What happens when  you mix up all
of these notions, though?  I thought that  artdidn't provide
knowledge, but what then is it doing if it is  able to show abstract
relations?]

"Indeed, his whole strength as a figurative painter lies in the  fact
that he does not `paint' `objects' (those dismembered sheep;  those
tortured carcases; that stone; those plants; that 1900  armchair), nor
`places'(the sea, seen from the heavy articulated  skeleton of an
island; seen from awindow open to the air; that  balcony hanging in
the sky; those rooms with polished wardrobes  and beds; that dubious
washroom; that compartment on a night  train), nor `times' or
`moments' (the morning at dawn; the night,  high noon in a courtyard
drenched in sunshine where little girls  play hop-scotch).  Cremonini
`paints' the relations which bind  the objects, places and times.
Cremonini is a painter of  abstraction.  Not an abstract painter,
`painting' and absent,  pure possibility in a new form and matter, but
a painter of the  real abstract, `painting' in a sense we have to
define, real  relations (as relations they are necessarily abstract)
between  `men' and `things', or rather, to give the term its stronger
sense, between `things' and their `men'."

236.  Detailed description of the way various "circles" of
relationship among the figures, people, and objects in the  paintings.

237-238.  Cremonini's faces, which are accused of being ugly, are
actually non-humanistic-religious-soul-revealing faces.  They are  not
"ugly" because ugliness is an idealistic notion.

238.  ". . .Cremonini's faces are not expressionist, for they are
characterized not only by deformity but by deformation:  their
deformation is merely a determinate absence of form, a  `depiction' of
their anonymity, and it is this anonymity that  constitutes the actual
cancellation of the categories of the  humanist ideology.  Strictly
speaking, the deformation to which  Cremonini subjects his faces is a
determinate deformation, in  that it does not replace one identity
with another on the same  face, does not give the faces one particular
`expression' (of the  soul, the subject) instead of another:  ittakes
all expression  away from them, and with it, the ideological function
which that  expression ensures in the complicities of the humanist
ideology  of art."

[I.e., the faces are not those of subjects, in Althusser's  special
sense of the term.]

239.  "That is why they are so `badly' represented, hardly  outlined,
as if instead of being the authors of their gestures,  they were
merely their trace.  They are haunted by an absence:  a  purely
negative absence, that of the humanist function whichis  refused them,
and which they refuse; and a positive, determinate  absence, that of
the structure of the world which determines  them, which makes them
the anonymous beings they are, the  structural effects of the real
relations which govern them."

240-241.  "Cremonini thus follows the path which was opened up to  men
by the great revolutionary thinkers, theoreticians and  politicians,
the great materialist thinkers [241] who understood  that the freedom
of men is not achieved by the complacency of its  ideological
recognition, but by the knowledge of the laws of  their slavery, and
that the `realization' of their concrete  individuality is achieved by
analysis and mastery of the abstract  relations which govern them."

["Recognition" here is used in Althusser's special sense as the
response to the ideological "hailing" of the subject.]

241-242.  [All art is ideological, and "culture" is the common  term
for what Marx called "ideology".  But Art also has a special
relationship to ideology, because art's function is to make  ideology
visible.]

242.  "[T]he work of art cannot fail to exercise a directly
ideological effect, . . . it . . . maintains far closer relations  to
ideology than any other object, and . . . it is impossible to  think
the work of art, in its specifically aesthetic existence,  without
taking into account the priveleged relation between it  and ideology,
i.e. its direct and inevitable ideological effect.   Just as a great
revolutionary philosopher, like a great  revolutionary politician,
takes into account in his own thought  the historical effects of his
adoption of a position, even within  the rigorous and objectivesystem
of his own thought -- so a great  artist cannot fail to take into
account in his work itself, in  its disposition and internal economy,
the ideological effects  necessarily produced by its existence.
Whether ths assumption of  responsibility is completely lucid or not
is a different  question."

[We still have the problem of the distinction between good and  bad
art, but her eit is possibly ameliorated in the same breath  by the
dismissal of self-consciousness as a necessary component  of
"objectively" valid thought.  Perhaps, though, this "lucidity"  is
only a biograohical question, not an aesthetic one.]

[We also don't get too far here with the concrete specifics by  which
ideology and critical thinking and art are to be tied  together.  What
can be said is that Althusser's view is  diametrically opposite to
Widerspiegelungstheorie, because of its  foundation on the notions of
internal distantiation, of  difference, and of decentering of
subjectivity.  This provides at  least as much of a theoretical
starting point, however, as all of  Bakhtin's talk about dialogism,
which similarly decenters the  texts he discusses.  When Jameson
applies structuralist linguistics to Althusser to generate his textual
readings, he is  doing the right thing with, it appears, rather
unsatisfactory  tools.  Whatever the method of making the connection
here between  theory, world, and text, it cannot be the a priori
invocation of  untestable categories of eternal literary form.  But
what then?  Can it be grounded in "empirical" reading?  Reader
response?   This isn't satisfactory.  More promising routes for my own
study  might by via Freud/Lacan's analysis of subjectivity or via
Derrida.  At any rate, it seems that more theory is needed to  bridge
the theory gap, theory that is actually convincing in its  origins
(which doesn't recommend psychoanalysis).]

[Now about the business of internal distantiation and difference:
the application of Derrida here might be the route toward prying  open
the texts' ideological determination while maintaining some
intellectual respectability.  What does Jameson do with JD?   Review.
Staying close to Derrida also saves one from some of the  cheaper
determinisms possible (a la New Historicism) once you  start making
causal connections between "world" and text.  Note  that Althusser is
(successfully or unsuccessfully) leaping this  gap himself in the
definition of ideology as a representation of  an men's imaginary
relation to their objectively real conditions  of existence.  Two
levels of fabulation there -- but that doesn't  save you from the
third man regress.

Re-read the "Parergon."  Kant is clearly inadequate in his account  of
the relation between the mind and the world, but he doesn't  escape
Hume's skepticism altogether.  Derrida's skepticism  destroys his
categorical distinctions, but does that mean we are  back to Hume?  In
that case we lose the world as surely as if we  stayed with Kant.

                
Cf.   KUHN
      ALTHUSSER
      DERRIDA

Kuhn would be a useful one to substantiate what Althusser  tosses off
rather lightly as objectivity and method.  What are  Kuhn's
philosophical bearings?

You really could carry this business about method back to the
founders:  Descartes, Bacon, Locke.  Routes out of both illusion  and
total skepticism.

Derrida expects his readings to have consequences in the social
sphere.