Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses
Place on List:
I. Literary Theory and
Criticism
4. Marxism
Louis
Althusser. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” in Lenin
and Philosophy and Other Essays.
Supporting References:
- “Louis Althusser.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2001. 1476-9. Print.
- Lewis, William. "Louis Althusser." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Ed. Edward N. Zalta. Winter Edition. 2009. Web. 15 Aug 2013.
The article with
URL( http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/althusser/
) offers an overview of Althusser and less a discussion on the
above-cited text.
“Louis Pierre
Althusser (1918–1990) was one of the most influential Marxist
philosophers of the 20th
Century. As they seemed to offer a renewal of Marxist thought as well
as to render Marxism philosophically respectable, the claims he
advanced in the 1960s about Marxist philosophy were discussed and
debated worldwide. Due to apparent reversals in his theoretical
positions, to the ill-fated facts of his life, and to the historical
fortunes of Marxism in the late twentieth century, this intense
interest in Althusser's reading of Marx did not survive the 1970s.
Despite the comparative indifference shown to his work as a whole
after these events, the theory of ideology Althusser developed within
it has been broadly deployed in the social sciences and humanities
and has provided a foundation for much “post-Marxist” philosophy.
In addition, aspects of Althusser's project have served as
inspiration for Analytic Marxism as well as for Critical Realism.
Though this influence is not always explicit, Althusser's work and
that of his students continues to inform the research programs of
literary studies, political philosophy, history, economics, and
sociology. In addition, his autobiography has been subject to much
critical attention over the last decade. At present, Althusser's
philosophy as a whole is undergoing a critical reevaluation by
scholars who have benefited from the anthologization of hard-to-find
and previously unpublished texts and who have begun to engage with
the great mass of writings that remain in his archives.”
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