Response to Althusser

So apparently I am a little behind here, I guess I missed something last week, because I am posting on the Marx and Althusser readings. I haven’t seen any responses besides Jordan’s in the blog and now I am seeing Hebdige all over the place. I’ll get to him in my next post. If you haven’t read Jordan’s post you can read it here: http://s2010cmc300.blogspot.com/2010/03/pre-class-for-althusser-marx-for-31810.html. He gave a very good example of how an ISA uses both ideology and violence. The main reason I brought it up was to agree with him that this topic is one the most interesting that we have come across. I thoroughly enjoyed discussing it in 100 as well. I was following Althusser’s piece easily until he proposed his two theses, which apparently were apart of some grand central thesis. This is where I started to lose him. He first states that Ideology is an illusion; it does not represent one’s ‘real conditions’ but their relationship to those conditions? I took this to mean that because Ideology is something created in the minds of men to explain the way their world works or should work; it is not reality or actuality, but someone’s interpretation of it. If that’s what he was getting at it seems like there were much simpler ways to put it. If anyone has a clearer idea of this please comment. As far as Ideology having material existence, I believe he was alluding to the fact that Ideology trickles down to its subjects by material means (i.e. propaganda). ISA’s use written text, film, and the like to transmit their ideology. Again, I am a little weary, because he could have just come right out and say that, but it seemed like he was beating around the bush a lot. So perhaps I am not getting it. Again, please comment.