‘I ONLY WISH TO POINT OUT THAT WE ARE ALWAYS-ALREADY SUBJECTS, AND AS SUCH CONSTANTLY PRACTICE THE RITUALS OF IDEOLOGICAL RECOGNITION…’
...ent, his associations – serves as a foundation for, and also conditions, his ideas. Ideas are thus constructed from man’s contact with external reality – or perhaps more correctly, the ideologies which comprise such a perceived ‘reality’. Althusser contends that ideology ultimately has a material existence because ‘an ideology always exists in an apparatus, and its practice, or practices’5. In other words, ideology always manifests itself through actions, which are ‘inserted into practices’6, for example, rituals, conventional behaviour and so on. It is our performance of our relation to others and to social institutions that continually instantiates us as subjects. This is indeed the main purpose of an ideology, according to Althusser; ‘‘constituting’ concrete individuals as subjects’. In order to achieve such a sense that we are truly ‘concrete, individual, distinguishable and (naturally) irreplaceable subjects’7, we constantly practice such ‘rituals of ideological recognition’. Yet in using such ‘rituals’ to do this, we in fact deny ourselves the very thing that we are endeavouring to prove – our status as individuals. We try to achieve consciousness of our individuality, but to recognise that we are subjects and that we function in the practical rituals of simple everyday life seems only to give us the ‘consciousness’ of such incessant rituals themselves. Through a handshake or a greeting in the street, individuals are turned into subjects (which are always ideological); precisely the thing that the individual wished to avoid or disprove. The action in itself certainly does not serve to give us a true sense of what it is to be an individual – we are constantly relying on the Other for such recognition. Hegel mentions that reciprocity is characteristic of human relationships; ‘they recognise themselves as mutually recognising one another’8. So in my reading, Hegel is saying that only if we are willing to acknowledge that the Other is also a self, who has a need and a right to be a ‘being-for-self’, can we satisfactorily satisfy our own selfhood. In a sense then, we require the ‘rituals’ and actions of ideological recognition, despite them being seemingly contradictory to our cause, in order to establish ourselves as individuals and achieve a sense of selfhood. Selfhood is a social product that individuals crave; identity has to be constructed through contentious interaction with and relation to others. Yet it is not only with ‘others’ that we interact, but also with the ideology itself. In one sense, ideology works by making the subject recognise itself in a certain specific way, and simultaneously to construe that specificity as the obvious or natural one for itself. Hence individual subjects are constructed in the image of, or as reflections of, the dominant ideological subject. In Althusser’s example of a Christian religious ideology, this is God; in the street this is the other person whom you greet and are greeted by in return. Subjects are formed, then, in a relationship of subjection to the Other, the Subject, and this relationship is clearly a ‘mirroring’ one. So, if we are constantly subjecting ourselves to the Other through ‘practising the rituals of ideological recognition’, we are, in a way, stripped of free will since we are submitting to a higher authority and the only freedom we have is to accept the fact of our own submission. As Althusser puts it, ‘the individual is interpellated as a (free) subject in order that he shall submit freely to the commandments of the Subject, i.e. in order that he shall (freely) accept his own subjection, i.e. in order that he shall make the gestures and actions of his subjection ‘all by himself’’9. We are, in this way, bound to the Other and can do nothing else but interact therewith, performing the ‘rituals of ideological recognition’. One may question this however, by asking whether we are really so bound to ‘reality’, that is, activity – or whether we are only really bound in the realm of consciousness. Sartre would perhaps argue that freedom is inescapable for conscious beings, since having consciousness makes it impossible to be determined by anything outside of oneself10. I would agree that consciousness is indeed a quality of the individual, yet I believe it is at the same time determined by reality, and is in its essence a product of society. This reflects back to the point that a man’s activity and actions serve as a foundation for his ideas and not vice versa. As Marx states, ‘Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life’. One must not begin with abstract ideas and hope to arrive at reality11. The human essence is not such an abstract, inherent in the single individual; in its reality, it is the ensemble of social conditions. We see ourselves through the eyes of the Other and our relation to that Other; we accordingly develop a sense of our own consciousness. The child develops a sense of self largely because others treat it as a self – and the self will be socially constructed in different ways, depending on how it is treated. Selves are not born, but made in a dialectical social process of interrelationships between selves12. This argument beings us on to the question of free will, which has already been mentioned briefly. If our sense of self, our consciousness, is determined by society and through our relation to the Other, how then can we be responsible for the consequences of our actions? A completely free action is itself a cause and not an effect, but the argument is that in fact each of our actions are determined by our consciousness, which is itself determined by the society in which we live. Therefore, all of our decisions are ultimately determined by society. Hegel reinterprets freedom as service of will to the state. It is not the power to do what one likes according to individual desire; it is making the general will one’s personal will in such a way that what was once enforced is now desired: The tremendous strength and depth of the principle of subjectivity, or private personality, is allowed to be carried to its fullest and extreme development, and is yet at the same time reduced i...