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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
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 …
Literature In The Abstract: Althusser And English Studies In England, David Margolies
Literature In The Abstract: Althusser And English Studies In England, David Margolies
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Althusser's work arrived just when the disintegrating liberal consensus was shaking the ivory towers of the university. Students protested the war in Vietnam as well as the policies of the university. Althusser offered an understanding of this corrupt world and its distorted self-image. These theories provided an exciting new totalization in which life had meaning and intellectuals, a vital role. In literary studies, students and lecturers assumed that works of literature were anti-scientific, preservers of the status quo, without genuine knowledge. Disillusioned, these students and lecturers condemned Literature as an institution and ignored the individual work. To stop teaching the …