It’s that time. Here are the instructions for your midterm and a link to the template you’ll use to write the exam and upload to Dropbox:

• Due Wednesday March 22nd at 5pm via this upload link
• Exams received after that time but before Thursday at midnight will be penalized one letter grade
• Exams received after Thursday night will receive a zero.
• I estimate the exam should take you about 2 hours, though of course your results may vary and feel free to take as much time as you need
• Feel free to contact me with any issues, logistical or otherwise, via email
• No class on Tuesday Mar 21: see you on Friday Mar 24 as usual
• Write answers right on this document beneath the corresponding question and replace the word “template” above (in “midterm template”) with your last name

Here’s the template. Good luck, everyone!

Louis Althusser’s “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” dives deep into two spheres of social reproduction in society, ISAs, and RSAs, and discusses what these spheres have implemented in society. Firstly, it is essential to point out that our 21st-century definition of ideologies differs from what Althusser means when he speaks of them. We now know that there are many ideologies because people of different backgrounds hold different beliefs. For example, a capitalist will not have the same ideals (thus influencing their ideologies) as a socialist or a Marxist. Althusser defines ideology as ” representing the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.” What is the difference? According to Althusser, ideology does not reflect our natural world but instead reflects the imaginary relationship that we think we have with the world. However, how does that pseudo-relationship manifest, and what upholds these relationships? This is where Althusser begins to break down ISAs and RSAs. RSA, or repressive state apparatuses, are systems in place that are designed to use violence and coercion to uphold and strengthen the ruling class. RSA’s can enforce behavior directly and are things like the police and criminal justice system. ISA, or ideological state apparatuses, are institutions like churches and schools meant to generate ideologies. The two work in conjunction by generating these ideologies (ISA) and forcing us to internalize them (RSA). Althusser’s main point is how do we begin to internalize these ideologies, and how do these ideologies create the inaccurate, imaginary relationship we think we have with the world?

Before he began dissecting this idea, I questioned more ISAs and RSAs. Firstly, do RSAs have internal conflict in the same way that ISAs do? Althusser mentions things like church and school as institutions that fall under ISAs. This idea interested me because historically, there has always been a separation because of church, state, and school. How can the church as an institution collaborate with the school if schools promote secularism?

Furthermore, would changing what institutions we appoint to be ISAs promote or demote internal conflict? It would be disingenuous to point out the internal conflicts also present in RSAs, especially when using a post-2020 lens, but it seems that nine times out of 10, RSAs do a better job at working in concert with each other than ISAs. Is this because ideologies are an intangible culture? Althusser shares his thoughts on whether ideologies are tangible and have a material existence.
His answer starts with defining ideologies vs. ideology. As stated before, ideologies are specific and historical, subject to change when the subject changes. However, ideology is structural. Meaning ideology is “eternal” because it has a place inside of all of us and therefore has a material existence. I disagree with this idea of Althusser’s because what if one decides not to “respond” to the ideological value that calls out to you? What if you chose to ignore the ideological recognition value? On the contrary, does choosing to ignore the ideology value that calls out to you, aren’t you still internalizing it by actively ignoring it?

Italian philosopher and writer, Antonio Gramsci has been enormously influential as a Marxist theorist of cultural and political domination. In one of his essays written during his imprisonment years, “The Formation of Intellectual,” he describes and discussed the concept of the intellectuals and its functional sense in two “strata” which expresses its notions to keep society together and in harmony. These distinct social categories have the role to create consciousness of the importance of one’s position in society. To him, each class produces its own intellectuals, composed of various groups in a society with specific roles in the process of economic, political, and cultural assembly. These intellectuals are identified by Gramsci in first place as the “traditional” and then “organic” intellectuals.
Traditional professional intellectuals are those in the sense of independence and autonomy of the dominant social groups and express a pre-existing historical, social, and cultural situation. Gramsci pointed out, “Traditional intellectuals are the administrators and apologists for existing social and cultural institutions, such as schools, various religious denominations, corporations, the military, the press, political bureaucracies, and the judicial system” (928). They represent a historical continuity that tends to represent and direct the interests of those in power. For example, the school system has a curriculum and standard base to maintain the hegemony of the capitalist state by producing employees instead of independent thinkers. The education system is a group of institutions that provide instructions, so people are “educated” to be part of the society (big masses) in accordance with norms already established by those people in power.
In contrast, organic intellectuals come into existence from the working class in social groups, a specialized scholars with specific both economic and political knowledge who challenged for the minds of the underclass body. They represent those who cannot express for themselves. Gramsci argues that “The organic intellectual does not simply parrot preexisting group beliefs or demands but brings to the level of public speech what has not been officially recognized” (928). They speak for the interests of subaltern populations who are incapable of doing and are able to direct and organize people. For example, Sharice Davids and Deb Haaland are the first Native American women elected to the United State Congress. Native Americans have been considered a marginalized minority and have never produced intellectual at the political level. These two characters have risen to power within their communities to a level never seen before while keeping their ties with their social class.
According to Gramsci, one’s class membership will determine whether one is an organic or traditional intellectual. These two classifications of intellectuals are responsible for social stability and change because they are in charge of the masses’ behavior and consciousness. They are at various levels within a society to defend their established superstructure and ideology.

In Fanon’s The Fact of Blackness excerpt from Black Skin, White Masks, he does quite literally what the title says: he talks about what it means to be black in a white society, in a society where whiteness is dominant and posited as “superior”. Black identity in such a society emerges in relation to whiteness as an other, an outsider. The black individual enters into this world indeed as an individual with infinitely many unique aspects, yet (white) society imposes upon them the weight of what it thinks and expects of them. This is contrary to the white individual who enters this world, where the fact that they are white is never really made apparent to them except as a banal and mundane aspect in the same vein as height or eye-color. Unlike the black individual, white people are not given a definite script or conception that they are constantly expected to conform to in some way. They are allowed to be truly individuals. The dominance of whiteness allows it to be invisible: their culture is not seen as “white culture” but simply culture itself–“normal culture”.

In the beginning of the text, Fanon talks about desperately trying to escape the perception of innate inferiority that society ascribes to him, leading him to discover African history and how–contrary to what white society has people including himself to believe–Africans indeed built great civilizations and had the capabilities to do everything that white society says they cannot do without them. But Fanon represents the reaction from white society when he challenges them with these facts and attempts to stand his ground as a black person who will not be dictated by them as one where white society reiterates its dominance of the world, and how Fanon’s passion and sensitivity now only serves as entertainment. White society demands out of Fanon to meet them on the level of reason, to ground black identity in their rationalist and scientistic terms, for his unearthing of history and his passion is not enough to unshackle him from whiteness.

And when Fanon then attempts to challenge white society on this level, he is again thrusted back into his prior position. He particularly speaks of how Jean-Paul Sartre’s account of black identity simply places it as yet another moment in the necessary progression of history: that the only function and purpose of black identity is to negate white identity, to thrust white identity into a position of instability, and to then engage in a mutual annihilation in order to finally realize a society of racelessness. For Fanon, Sartre disempowers black people and glosses over the uniqueness of their experiences and their oppression by framing black identity this way. Rather than empowering Fanon and black people to stand firm in their identity, their culture, their difference from white society, Sartre simply tells black people that their only purpose is to dissolve themselves into white society to realize some higher, general identity–that their purpose is to simply move the dialectic of history forward.

In this sense, Fanon demonstrates the perpetual frustration of black people to create for themselves an independent identity. At every instance and attempt, they are met with recuperation from white society, and then thrown back into a relation of inferiority and non-subjectivity: the black individual cannot live for themself as themselves, but they must conform to the ascriptions of white society where they are entirely a “toy in the white man’s hands” (1360). To be an subject–that not only experiences the world in a unique manner, but also possesses the agency and ability to act upon it and express themselves as themselves–is a privilege reserved only for white people. In white society, the black individual is only an object to be acted upon by the (white) world. They are relegated to a perpetual state of reaction with any expression of themselves and of their blackness cracked down upon–either by literal, physical/legal, means or by being subtle means of being labelled “offensive”, “unprofessional”, barred from particular opportunities and representation, and so on.

“Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” is the work written by Louis Althusser. He is a 20th century French philosopher which writes this piece as a way to expand and develop the work of Gramsci and Marxist regarding the genesis of ideology. Althusser starts his argument of RSA and ISA, the two components of the ideology. Repressive State Apparatuses, RSA, and Ideological State Apparatuses, ISA, are the two categories of the state and they are used to show us how they keep the power and maintain the order in our society. RAS is the part of society that is connected with higher power and social classes, such as military, police officers and above them all the government, etc. ISA is a more closed society, such as the press, churches, family and political parties, etc. RSA is more of a “set and stone” part of society, the higher powers which choose the rules and laws that are considered wrong and right to the people of the society. They are the ones who like to be in the social world laws, the groups that are able to change the rules based on how they believe is right and that everyone has to follow. Although it is good to have rules that we could stay in track with , these higher powers can abuse their power. They are able to make and change rules, not fair to those of lower power, knowing that they are not able to change them. Althusser talking about this, makes notice on how he views RAS as this ideology that is made high through its violence, with higher powers using their identity to make injustices towards the common people. ISA, on the other hand is something that is very different. It is the more private  aspect of ideology, things like school and the media which help with the reproduction of the dominant ideology. As Althusser says “certain number of realities which present themselves to the immediate observer in the form of distinct and specialized institutions”(1291), to show how these institutions are more private as they do not possess a public status but are more connected to the person. They share the thoughts and beliefs of the people, as being part of this dominant ideology. In conclusion, Repressive State Apparatuses, RSA, and Ideological State Apparatuses, ISA, differ in many different ways, however the main being that RSA functions by repression while ISA functions by ideology and beliefs.

In “Society Must Be Defended” by Michel Foucault, Foucault explores the relationship between power and bodies. He establishes two different kinds of technologies, disciplinary technology and regulatory technology and discusses their role in regulating power dynamics between a “sovereign” and “subject”. Foucault begins the essay by discussing “the right of life and death”, where he explores what it means for a sovereign to have power. Foucault argues that the relationship between the subject and sovereign is contingent on the subject relinquishing power because they are “forced by some threat or need”. This power imbalance facilitates the sovereign’s role in the subject’s life and death. “Kept under surveillance, trained, used and if needed, punished” if the subject is “out of line” the sovereign has the right to sentence them to death, if the subject is in need of assistance, the sovereign has the power to wield medical institutions, welfare funds and insurance in the subjects favor. Foucault emphasizes that this is done to maintain power. He cites how in the 18th century, an increase in disease caused the government to invest in medicine and public hygiene largely to regulate the population in a way that was economically beneficial. More able-bodied people alive meant more able-bodied laborers. Here is where Foucault delves into the distinction between the individual and communal technology and how they contribute to the body. He attributes disciplinary technology to institutions like schools, hospitals and workshops. How we have been conditioned at an interpersonal level to submit to authority and abide by social contracts. The second technology he talks about is regulatory technology. He attributes this to the collection of demographic data- “the ratio of births to deaths, the rate of reproduction, the fertility of a population, and so on” and what goes into maintaining the homeostasis of these demographics. (Medicine, public hygiene, institutions, insurance, fund ect as previously mentioned). In this way, regulatory technology is far less individual and more general in how it impacts the body. Towards the end of the essay, Foucault unpacks how “population politics” have impacted the way death is perceived. He makes the argument that in the eyes of the sovereign, death is a transition of power from the sovereign to a higher power and it is therefore the end of power for the sovereign. And so, death is no longer ritualized but rather a private, shameful matter. In this way, the sovereign ceases to relinquish their power.

Louis Althusser, a 20^th Century French Philosopher, stretches and adds further backing to Gramsci and Marxist ideologies/beliefs through the reading “From Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.” Through pensive thought and observation of capitalists and other communists, he ignites his argument of a state holding two components: A repressive state apparatus (RSA), which enforces behavior directly by way of law enforcement, the military, and our judicial system. In particular, the above-mentioned apparatuses have the authority to influence etiquette through physicality. On the other hand, an Ideological state apparatus (ISA) maintains complicity and identification through educational institutions, media outlets, sports, family, and churches. The driving force behind these two societal components is Hegemony, which is encompassed by power, dominance, and leadership by a country or different social branches. Althusser has a greater concern for ISAs, which in his opinion, are the engine of a hegemonic state.

He demonstrates (Althusser 1970, 1303), “The individual in question behaves in such a way, adopts such and such a potential attitude, and, what is more, participates in certain regular practices which are these of the ideological apparatus on which ‘depend’ the ideas which he has in all consciousness freely chosen as a subject.” Whether you disagree or agree with Althusser’s perceptions, the above-mentioned statement is quite powerful. Through the generational proliferation of Hegemony, a child, in an unexpressed fashion, is taught a uniform level of umbrellaed societal normalities that provide an influence of values, ideas, expectations, worldview, and overall behavior. For example, via a linear mechanism, the U.S. developed a model of the American Dream; owning property, starting a family, and having stable employment or running and operating a business. American ISA platforms teach and reinforce societal principles to not only grow capitalism but keep the peace as our founding fathers saw fit. Essentially, a child has no chance to forecast its hegemony in the course of a lifespan. In particular, if an individual has a strong epiphany that results in violence against the nationalistic beliefs of the union, the RSA units are then deployed to eliminate, imprison, or detain a person or group to ensure that the remaining citizenry can press onward and perform hegemony. The United States Government is sworn to protect, defend, and value freedom for Americans. However, through nationalistic hegemony, does freedom truly exist? It truly doesn’t due to the very nature of human beings holding the instinct desire to facilitate social mobility and be thought highly of by peers around them. Governments have absorbed human tendencies, enforced their ideologies over time, and made robots out of our people for linear achievement.

Althusser believes hegemony has dominated our civilization and only benefited the ones at the top of the hierarchy. Ideological reform is of the utmost necessity to benefit the totality of society.

In the work By Louis Althusser “Ideology and and Ideological State Apparatuses” he makes the strong argument that society is not only heavily dependent, on Ideology its can be broken down in to two category.  These category are RAS which stands for Repressive State Apparatuses and ISA which stands for Ideological Sate Apparatuses. Without them then society starts to fail their would be a huge shift in the power structure of laws, policies, schools, teaching, and more. When it comes to how RAS fits into society Althusser states that its connected with the higher powers that rule over the lower powers. The higher powers are the government, military, courts, and police force.  The ideology that are express within are a universal morality that everyone must follow we look to them as the base of how our society is kept afloat. The negative aspect of this is that the RAS higher power can set the rules that the lower class has to power to change. Take the government its; filled with an abundance of corruption with its officials and laws. Being able to enact injustices against the working class with zero consequences even getting away with the law when these corrupt officials in government are tried for their crimes.  Althusser sees the RAS class as the ideologies built on oppressions through violence enacted on the common people of society. Even if violence can be found in these systems their a deep rooted control of people that can be found being done by structures fall under the RAS category.

The next one is ISA this is the ideologies that belong to the people in places where the working class is found living their experience within their own freedom of ideology.  Examples of this are school, church, social media, etc. this has power different from RAS on more a social standpoint. RAS controls society has a whole but ISA has a hold on a chunk of society that a different ideology finds its self being practices by. An example of this is Gender Ideology being taught in school their is a huge argument over that because society is trying to dismantle the gender norms we have place.  Althusser states that ISA does not use violence for its ideology like RAS its behavior is to just dismantle and create a new ideology to become the dominants one in the lower class. Althusser ends his piece with the finally conclusion that ideology and all its traits negative or positive must exist to that society can exist and function.