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Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Response To Ideology Takes A Day Off: Althusser And Mass Culture, Janet Staiger
Response To Ideology Takes A Day Off: Althusser And Mass Culture, Janet Staiger
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Chip Rhodes defends Althusser's scientific belief that the subject is a bearer of structures and opposes the humanist claim that the subject functions independently of its contexts. However, recent work in cultural studies examines how identity is constructed and allows us to reconcile the scientific and the humanist view. Ideological interpellation may define our subject positions but we are still able to refuse them. For instance, Rhodes' account of "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" assumes that the subject is a fully interpellated, adolescent, Anglo, middle or upper class, heterosexual male. However, the film also offers various oppositional subject positions, including adolescent …
Ideology Takes A Day Off: Althusser And Mass Culture, Chip Rhodes
Ideology Takes A Day Off: Althusser And Mass Culture, Chip Rhodes
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
As theories of mass culture that focus on empowerment, use value and utopian bribes have become increasingly popular, Althusser's groundbreaking work on structural causality and ideology has been left aside because of its alleged inability to account for social resistance. This is unfortunate because such Althusserian concepts still provide the most productive foundation for a Marxist approach to mass culture that avoids both unwitting apologetics and facile, ethical critiques. Nevertheless, many of Althusser's theoretical claims are in need of revision. As the film Ferris Bueller's Day Off implicitly suggests, Althusser's distinction between ideology and the aesthetic no longer holds in …