SOCI 380 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Louis Althusser, Judith Butler, Subaltern Studies

• School: Rider University
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOCI 380
• Professor: Werth Robert

Document Summary

At that point you are a subject that is being hailed. The police has the authority to get us to turn around. We recognize ourselves as subjects to the law and the government. We give them permission to have authority over us. The state apparatus is what calls out to us and we give it authority. This is a metaphor of how becoming a subject happens throughout our lifetime. Being a subject is us being giving ideology that we accept. This ideology that althusser is writing about is capitalism. If our subjecthood flows from ideology in some way, then we are always already subjects. We are conscious of ourselves as subjects because of the social being of capitalism. That is our everyday material existence with social being. That ideology is what turn us into subjects. We have a fundamental desire for social recognition. Hailing / interpolating us is putting that ideology into us.