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A critical analysis of Louis Althusser's social theory essay "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" (1971). Rather than accept Althusser's contention that his notions of self-representation & subjectivity are appropriated from a Lacanian theorization of Freud, it is argued that Althusser omits addressing the critical role that desire plays in Sigmund Freud's & Jacques Lacan's readings of subjects. The Freudian notion of repetition is necessary to connect social meaning with individual subjects. It is argued that a Lacanian supplement to Althusser's theory breaks the connection between the constitution of the subject & ideological state apparatuses (ISAs). It is therefore concluded that ISAs create antagonisms that then become the sites of interpellation where the constitution of subjects occurs. 12 References. M. Greenberg

Interprets Louis Althusser's essay, "Ideologie et appareils ideologiques d'etat" ([Ideology and Ideological Apparatuses of the State] 1970) as an attempt to answer the question of how it is possible for capitalist relations to exist. It is contended here that this essay represents Althusser's effort to correct his earlier theorizing on ideology in two ways: to move away from a notion of the general social function ideology, & to reconstruct the basis for the claim concerning the illusory character of ideology. In these attempts Althusser was moved to reconsider his notion of the subject. Althusser's reconceived subject is compared to the psychoanalytic rendering of the subject proposed by Jacques Lacan (1977). It is noted that both Lacan & Althusser appeal to the work of Sigmund Freud &, though Althusser's account is held as preferable to Lacan's to the extent that it includes a space for culture in the formation of subjectivity, it is asserted that Althusser's appeal to Freud puts him in a difficult position with regard to the possibility of a truly liberating socialist future: either he must accept that ideology disappears in this future, & thus the unconscious disappears, or he must accept that true emancipation is an illusion. 25 References. D. M. Smith