From my understanding of Althusser's text, we come upon a society (our society so to speak) where children are taught at a young age what their social norm should be according to this society. And for this reason, the school has taken over institutions, such as the church who along with the parents represented the moral education of children, and become the number one source for their education: "the 'rules' of good behavior, i.e. the attitude that should be observed by every agent in the division of labour, according to the job he is 'destined' for: rules of morality, civic and professional conscience, which actually means rules of respect for the socio-technical division of labour and ultimately the rules of the order established by class domination" (132). I bring this up because in a way, I have to agree with his view on this subject. Since the first day of kindergarten, children are expected to know that they shouldn't speak out of turn, that school is a source of learning things that they will need to pass on to first grade, that they need to be polite, so and so forth. And with every year that passes within the school system, the student/child should come out with a clear understanding of the societal ladder and have an idea of where they belong in that ladder. With this said, we move into the ideology which Althusser refers to as the "ruling bourgeois ideology" whose focus is to "open up for them the path to the freedom, morality and responsibility of adults" (157) that they've been looking forward to since their institutionalization started. In reality, however, and I believe this is what Althusser is arguing here, this isn't freedom because it's always in the constraints of society and the roles we're supposed to play as members of this system.
Moving on to what Marx defines as ideology according to Althusser, "ideology is a system of the ideas and the representations which dominate the mind of a man or a social group" (158) and furthermore, class is always represented by ideology. In thesis II where Althusser states that ideology has a material existence he exemplifies that the individual will worship what he/she believes in and although this is a text that was written years ago, I believe this concept still holds value today. As individuals in this society we are brought up with certain beliefs, and although not all of us decide to keep those same beliefs, we all believe in something and for the most part, will defend those beliefs over anything. Overall, this is all human nature and this text represents the different types of influence society can have on an individual.
I also agree that we get programmed to act and be a certain way since we are children. I know that this isn't freedom (as Althusser suggests), but on the other hand, it doesn't matter what type of society an individual is placed in- there will always be some sort of guiding structure. So really, one can assume that you can never have complete freedom because you will always be constrained and limited by others. However, I believe the way to freedom is through how we perceive things. What I mean is that although we can't always do exactly as we please or achieve exactly what we want in life, what we do have control over is our outlook towards how we live our lives.
ReplyDeleteIn response to the last sentence of your commentary: is it "human nature"? I´m not so sure, becaue isn´t "nature" an opposing term to "socialization" or brought up a certian way through ISA`s (namely the educational system)
ReplyDeleteMy definition of being an adult - making your bed everyday. It is definitely arguable to say that we are all taught these standards of behavior but it definitely doesn't mean that we all achieve them to the same extent. And what does it mean when we don't achieve it?
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, Hi. I like reading your blogs =p
ReplyDeleteAnd Second of all, on the last part of your thought, I'm going to sort of agree with Tiki. I think this takes us back to the debate on Nature vs Nurture. I think that all these ideologies, beliefs...are acquired by us through the second one: Nurture. You say it when you start by saying that "[a]s [']individuals['] in this society we are [']brought up['] with certain [']beliefs[']..."
So, I guess beliefs are not necessarily an inherent characteristic, but ideas that we assumed to be absolutely true based on what we have been taught?
Another idea that called my attention was "we all believe in something and for the most part, will defend those beliefs over anything". This idea is scary for being, well, true. I wonder why there is this lack of questioning from our part? Is it lack of productive neurons or caused by mare laziness?