kaymac althusser

"Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence (Althusser 44).

I found this quote intriguing because of our discussions of reality, virtual reality, what is real?, etc. I also think it does a good job explaining at least one part of ideology. In it, he's saying that ideology is that little connection that helps us make sense of our lives.

"While admitting that they [ideology] do not correspond to reality, i.e. that they constitute an illusion, we admit that they do not 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 (Althusser 44)."

In our technology drenched age, the line between reality and allusion is very fine. Just think, if you see a man being shot on TV and in films so much, then it is not much of a shock when you see it in real life (going back to what Baudrillard was saying). So because of this, we do not need to the real, materialistic object in order to take an interpretation of it, just some sort of idea of it so that the trueness of the actual object could be found. It's like you don't need the actual painting, maybe some sort of reinterpretation of it that makes sense of the painting's original idea, and with that you are able to understand what caused the original painting in the first place.

I don't know if that makes any sense.