Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Two Types of
Ideological Interpellation
Abstract: The paper presents a contribution to the theory of ideol-
ogy based on Althussers idea of ideological interpellation. Ideologi-
cal interpellation is conceptualised along a simplified re-elaboration
of Oswald Ducrots treatment of Bakhtinian polyphony. The text dis-
tinguishes between interpellation by identification (reproductive) and
interpellation by subjectivation (disruptive and eventually innovative,
with reference to Rancire). Finally, the text attempts to describe the
articulation between political and theoretical practices on the historical
case of Lenins polemics against the otzovism.
I
n the present paper I shall attempt a contribution to the theory of ideol-
ogy. How theories of ideology matter can easily be shown if we consider
the political consequences of a particular theory. In Lukcss History and
Class Consciousness, for example, the only true classes are the bourgeoisie
and the proletariat, the line of their confrontation is historically objective-
ly determined, and the outcome of their struggle depends upon how suc-
cessful each particular class will be at its class composition which, in turn,
depends on their achieving or realising their class consciousness.1 In
practical political terms, this boils down to the doctrine of the Bolshevik
type party, committed to the Leninist introduction of consciousness into
the proletariat.2 If, to the contrary, we develop a theory of ideology around
Rastko Monik | 35
a certain interpretation of the Gramscian concept of hegemony, we may get
Berlinguers doctrine of historical compromise.3 In the two doctrines that,
in a sense, mark the range of the 20th century communist politics, we can
discern an undervaluation of the role that ideological pluralism performs
in the reproduction of bourgeois society. Lukcs reserves the possibility of
ideological interpellation to the marginal classes like the peasantry or the
petty bourgeoisie, whose consciousness, he writes, is always borrowed
from elsewhere, and does not investigate the conditions of the possibility
of such borrowing. Such an investigation might have prompted him to
reflect upon the relevance of ideological interpellation for the proletarian in-
dividuals, and might have consequently reduced his historical optimism. On
the other side, Berlinguer seems not to have considered that parliamentary
democracy is the material existence of bourgeois ideological pluralism, and
is thus a mechanism that reproduces bourgeois domination. These theoreti-
cal insufficiencies had enormous political consequences. The two paradig-
matic political failures of traditional communism, Stalinist politics and the
Euro-communist way, actually shared the two theoretical insufficiencies of
traditional Marxism, the absence of a theory of ideological interpellation
and that of a theory of the material existence of ideology. The Bolshevik
educational stance not only overlooked every individuals vulnerability to
ideological interpellation coming from discourses other than those presum-
Within the above sketched theoretical horizon, we shall approach the prob-
lem of ideological interpellation by first examining discursive phenomena
like the one we can observe in Shakespeares verse
Sonnet 130, v. 3
Rastko Monik | 37
We will try to show that this self-supporting enlightenment on the part of the
interpreter results from ideological interpellation in the Althusserian sense.
If we deploy the process condensed in Shakespeares verse we may get an
initial idea about the components of interpellation:5
If snow be white, then breasts should be like snow. If breasts should be like
snow, why then her breasts are dun.
Two features should retain our attention: 1. the utterance alludes to a se-
quence that, although not enunciated, contributes to its meaning (the se-
quence in italics); 2. a component of the sequence is reduplicated and ap-
pears in two positions of the reasoning, first as a conclusion and next as a
premise. In Shakespeares verse, the two mechanisms are condensed in the
same string.
The following less artistic utterance will help us to further elaborate our con-
ceptual framework:
If you got trouble, get a lawyer. Then you got more trouble, but at least you
got a lawyer.6
Sequences written in italics are left unspoken. The articulation of the first
argumentation upon the second one is secured by the double inscription of
having a lawyer, presented first as a remedy to the trouble, and next as its
source. The economical procedure of the double inscription of a single signi-
fier into two differently oriented argumentations contributes to the effect of
the witticism. The third inscription completes it.
It seems that we should more closely consider the mechanism that combines
polysyllogistic linking of arguments (conclusion of the preceding argumen-
tation operates as the argument of the following argumentation) with an allu-
sion to an absent sequence that generates the meaning of the utterance.
Rastko Monik | 39
The weather is fine, I will go for a walk.
The link that connects the argument (or the ground) and the conclusion (or
the claim) is called warrant by Stephen E. Toulmin and topos by Oswald
Ducrot. This link is not explicitly mentioned in the utterance: it is tacitly pro-
posed by the speaker and admitted by the addressee. In our examples, Ducrot
would reconstruct the connecting links as: When the weather is fine, it is to
be expected that the walk is pleasant and If one studies, it is to be expected
that one passes the exam.
The missing link determines the meaning of the utterance and is not
perceived as missing either by the speaker or by the interpreter. Contrary
to Toulmin and Ducrot, we will not conceive it as a frozen stereotype that
hovers above a given discursive universe and determines the cultural horizon
of a communicational community. We will rather conceptualise it as a frag-
ment of the discourse of the other (uoe slovo) in the Bakhtinian sense, to
which the utterer and the interpreter spontaneously refer while producing the
sense of their intercourse. As long as it is undergone in the manner of a rei-
fied Aristotelian topos,7 it is the material support of ideological interpellation
that reproduces the existing ideological constellation. If it is made to operate
as a piece of discourse towards which the explicit sequences of an utterance
polemically point, it may effectuate a disruptive interpellation, and it may
become, in Voloinovs words, the arena of the class struggle.
One cannot easily imagine the link which in (1) connects the argument to
the conclusion.8 On the other hand, readers of Ljubljana daily Delo have no
difficulty understanding it. We may surmise that an ordinary Delo-reader
interprets (1) as: Although Serbs are inclined to authoritarian government,
it will depend upon the activities of the opposition and the civil society after
the elections whether Serbia will become authoritarian.
Note that the utterance has the structure of a double enthymeme: the missing
conclusion of the first argument figures as the missing argument of the final
conclusion:
Argument2 [as] the attitude of the body politic will not affect the final political
outcome,
Conclusion2 it will depend upon the opposition and the civil society whether
Serbia will become authoritarian.
Rastko Monik | 41
A1
C1 = A2
C2
(2) Without Crimea, Ukraine probably has an even better chance to be-
come a reformed democratic state. It will be more pro-European, since
it lost so much pro-Russian population.
Roman Szporluk, professor emeritus, Harvard Univer-
sity, interview in Delo, Ljubljana, 12. 4. 2014
It is the tacit components that construe semantic features which support the
argumentation: the opposition pro-Russian vs. pro-European and the equa-
tion pro-European = democratic. The poly-enthymemic scheme is thus a
flattening formalisation of a polyphonic process where orientation towards
another discourse (in the Bakhtinian sense: ustanovka na uoe slovo) pro-
duces ideological effects. The reference to another discourse generates the
meaning of the utterance, and occurs automatically in the act of interpreta-
tion. Consider the following argumentation:
(3) There are no more Stalinists in our Party; we liquidated the last one
yesterday.
(3) would not produce the comical effect it does were it not for the refer-
ence to another discourse that undermines its seemingly logical argumenta-
Until now, we have been considering cases where the argument and the con-
clusion were explicitly stated, while the conclusion could only be reached
from the argument by the mediation of another discourse which secured
the connection C1 = A2. The following is an utterance where only the first
argument is explicitly proposed, and the interpreter has to provide both the
mediating sequence and the final conclusion.
(4) actually offers you a choice: you can chose Europe either because it is
civilised or because it is the opposite of the barbaric Balkans. The horizon of
democratic deliberation here stretches between Balkano-phobia and Euro-
philia.
Utterances (1) (4) share the common feature that their interpretation or
their uptake depends upon the interpreters reconstruction of the other
discourse to whom they refer not in their meaning, but by way of their
structure, by the constraints of their argumentation procedure. However, this
strictly formal completion of the utterance yields its meaning: the interpreter,
by completing the utterance with the sequence towards which it is oriented,
Rastko Monik | 43
assumes this decisive ideological component and, by the act of understand-
ing, in a certain way ratifies the ideological element. This is the mechanism
of ideological interpellation; or, better yet, this is one of the mechanisms of
ideological interpellation, the one that relies, in Bakhtins terminology, upon
one-directional double-voicedness.9 We will call this type of ideological in-
terpellation interpellation by identification, since the interpreter, by identify-
ing her/himself with the addressee of the utterance, transforms her/himself
into the individual, interpellated as the Ego (and not directly as the subject,
as in Althussers famous formula).10
How did Chimne arrive at the idea to propose this generous alternative to
the monarch? We can reconstruct her reasoning as follows:
The sequence relies upon the triple inscription of the signifier free: first
the familiar double inscription at the articulation C1 = A2, and next the third
inscription in C2 that changes the direction of the argumentation and trans-
forms freedom into subjection. It is perhaps this almost Hobbesian logic in
Chimnes reasoning that fascinated Corneille: the transition from the first
argument to the second is secured by the reproductive interpellation C1 =
A2, while the disruptive third inscription ends up in the act of subjection.
Chimnes tour de force consists in accomplishing the act of subjection as
an act of freedom. This seems to be an extravagant illustration of Althussers
intuitive equation of subjectivation with subjection.
Rastko Monik | 45
(5) We are all German Jews!12
There is a relevant difference in the way how the double inscription, the
pivot of ideological mechanism, operates in Marchaiss original and in
the students riposte. Marchaiss utterance proposes the standard interpel-
lation by identification, anchored in the non-uttered redoubled sequence C1
= A2. In the students slogan, the double inscription is more complex: the
doubly inscribed element German Jew refers simultaneously to the con-
Marchais Students
Thirty years later Daniel Cohn-Bendit, adapting the slogan to the spirit of the
epoch, offered a different interpretation: he transformed revolt into a politics
of identity, and thus reduced the disruptive interpellation by subjectivation to
Rastko Monik | 47
a curious interpellation which is disruptive subjectivation with respect to the
contested racist phantom (the counter-inscription of German Jew) and is
reproductive interpellation by identification with respect to the hegemonic
identitary ideology of the nineties (the C1 = A2 inscription of marginalised
person):14
At a first glance, we can resume the two opposing position in the debate as
follows:
Otzovists Lenin
The Duma is a reactionary However, the Duma is also an
political apparatus, therefore ideological apparatus, therefore we
we should boycott it. shall use it as a platform for our
agitation and propaganda.
Rastko Monik | 49
In this immediate form, the debate opposes two ideological discourses. If
we reconstitute the missing link C1 = A2 in the otzovist discourse, we obtain:
Otzovists
1. Political work is not only the work within the frame of bourgeois
political apparatuses. On the contrary: revolutionary political work is
primarily performed outside the bourgeois political sphere, it is the self-
organisation of the proletariat. The main dimension of revolutionary
political work is the construction of an autonomous proletarian political
apparatus, i.e., the organisation of a proletarian party. The proletarian
party engages in two dimensions of the proletarian class struggle:
17 Lenin presented the difference between the main political work among
the masses and the subordinate political operations in the Duma as
follows: The second point is devoted to an explanation of the relation
between direct legislative activity in the Duma, and agitation,
criticism, propaganda, organisation. The workers party regards the
connection between work within and without the Duma very differently
from the way the liberal bourgeoisie regards it. It is necessary to stress
this radical difference of views. On the one hand, there are the bourgeois
politicians, enraptured by their parliamentary games behind the backs
of the people. On the other hand, there is a contingent of the organised
proletariat that has been sent into the enemy camp and is carrying on
work closely connected with the struggle of the proletariat as a whole.
For us there is only one, single and indivisible, workers movement the
class struggle of the proletariat. All its separate, partial forms, including
the parliamentary struggle, must be fully subordinated to it. For us it is
the extra-Duma struggle of the proletariat that is decisive. (Report of
the Commission Formed to Draft a Resolution on the State Duma, 18
/31/ May, V. Congress of the RSDLP, 1907.)
18 Lenin explicitly underlines the asymmetry between the parliamentary
form of the proletarian struggle and its extra-parliamentary forms:
The part must conform to the whole, and not vice versa. The Duma
may temporarily serve as an arena of the class struggle as a whole, but
only if that whole is never lost sight of, and if the revolutionary tasks
of the class struggle are not concealed. (Vladimir I. Lenin, Report of
the Commission Formed to Draft a Resolution on the State Duma, May
Rastko Monik | 51
Lenin
Theory intervenes at the place of the double inscription: the doubly inscribed
sequence is our political work. The signifier our political work is doubly
inscribed both in the otzovist and in Lenins discourse at the locus of the non-
uttered ideological sequence that provides the binding component C1 = A2. In
the otzovist discourse, it belongs to a spontaneous and intuitive notion of po-
litical practice. In Lenins discourse, however, the signifier, before entering
the concrete discursive formation, already belongs to two radically hetero-
geneous discourses, to the theoretical and to the ideological discourse. In the
theoretical register, it is a component of the complex conceptual field struc-
tured by theoretical distinctions (political / ideological, dominant aspect
/ subordinate aspect, proletarian practice-apparatus / bourgeois practice-
apparatus etc.) that produce a theoretical problmatique. In the ideological
register, the signifier our political work is both a projection of a theoretical
concept onto the ideological field, and as such a projection, an ideological
notion participating in the ideological opposition part/whole.
In this case, the redoubled sequence political work supports, within the
ideological argumentation, the trivial interpellation by identification. Its
counter-inscription operates in another dimension within the relation be-
tween ideological discourse and theoretical discourse. Here, the heteroge-
neity of the two inscriptions of the same signifier does not originate in the
opposed directions of the two discourses, since theoretical discourse cannot
have an ideological direction. The allotric character of the double inscrip-
tion resides in the fact that the signifier political work operates as a (theo-
We see that Lenin turned an internal party debate into an opportunity for
theoretical elaboration. We also see that his theoretical elaboration produced
ideological effects within the interior party debate and political effects in the
proletarian class struggle as a whole. This may well be one of the charac-
teristic features of the Leninist practice: the capacity to turn fraction strife
into theoretically productive and practically efficient practice; and the com-
plementary ability to translate theoretical achievements into practical tools.
Rastko Monik | 53
means of productiont
technological unityt
technical composition of labor powert resistance
theoretical to theory:
analysis knowledge
destruction resistance
criticism
political composition of the working classt-1 political compositiont
resistance to criticism
Rastko Monik | 55