E 341 Lecture Notes - Louis Althusser, Retail Park
Document Summary
Tries to answer the question: if as marxist thinkers seem to prove certain classes are exploited or that the capitalists state uses/commodifies labor in a way that alienate the workers. The answer ideology and ideological state apparatuses. Ideology is the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence. The individual is often in a real, exploitative economic and/or political system but ideology obscures this unequal, alienating relation of individual with process of production/consumption. Ideology as a representation works like a story we tell ourselves (or that are told to us and we believe) about our relation to the world to function within an unequal system. Maybe paid less than a plumber but better than, more valued than the plumber. Madame butterfly respect and honor of being a wife. Ideology is more than just ideas (marxism is, after all, a materialist system)
