LightningBolt, Althusser

“to recognize that we are subjects and that we function in the practical rituals of the more elementary everyday life….this recognition only gives us the ‘consciousness’ of our incessant (eternal) practice of ideological recognition…but in no sense does it give us the (scientific) knowledge of the mechanism of this recognition” (47)

Althusser presents an interesting idea that ideology is only made possible by the subjects. He then goes on to explain that we are all subjects all the time. By participating in these “everyday” acts we as subjects are providing them meaning and importance. Althusser’s quote that I presented demonstrates that it is one thing to be aware of the fact that you are giving in to ideological practices and by doing this, you yourself are helping the creation of these ideologies. Knowing this however, does not give us the ability to examine scientific, or subjectless, discourse on ideology.

This is similar to the way I feel about our Critical Media Studies major. We are all well aware of the power that the media has to fill our head with thoughts and ideas. Although the major does allow us to be more aware of when ideological ideas are being pushed upon us, this knowledge does not seem to stop many of us from allowing this persuasion to happen. To some degree it is impossible to avoid all of the ideological concepts that exist in our world, but by watching TV and reading tabloid magazines we are allowing ourselves to be exposed to these concepts. Althusser suggests that just realizing we are the subjects of these ideological concepts is not enough to study ideology in-depth. We must remove ourselves from situations where we could possible be exposed to these concepts, thus there would be no subject for the ideology to exist from.