Daisy, 10/31

In class on Tuesday, we discussed quotes by Althusser, one that stuck out particularly to me was “the author and the reader…both live…’naturally’ in ideology”(46). The idea behind this quote is that ideology has become normalized within our society, and most of the time we do not realize it. Even the ruling class has to follow their own rules, because it is the job of the dominant class. Like Marx and Engels said the dominant class must “present its interests as the common interest of all the members of society,” “it has to give its ideas the form of universality, and present them as the only rational, universally valid ones” (40). So the ruling class would be contradicting themselves if they did not follow their own rules and this would cause members of society to rise up against them.
Althusser also said “those who are in ideology believe themselves by definition outside ideology” (48). I related this quote to the idea of Hebdige’s subculture. We talked about Hebdige in class on Tuesday and the idea that subcultures know what the hegemony is, but purposefully go against it. Hebdige sees hegemony as the dominant value held by society, the ideology. Subcultures relate to Althusser’s quote because even though members in society who are associating themselves with anti-hegemonic practices, are still functioning within ideology. For someone to go against the dominant hegemonic idea within a culture, they must recognize the idea and attempt to do something different. However, the whole time individuals are trying to be different they are essentially functioning under an American ideology that difference is good. In fact the anti-hegemonic cultures bring capital to our economy and allow new products to be marketed. This happens because eventually, the counter-hegemonic ideas get normalized into our culture. Then the individuals must work even harder to try to do something different. While it is possible to do things differently, it seems hard to be able to escape ideology.