Notes on Interpellation

The term interpellation was an idea introduced by

Louis Althusser (1918-1990) to explain the way in which ideas get
into our heads and have an effect on our lives, so much so that
cultural ideas have such a hold on us that we believe they are our
own. Interpellation is a process, a process in which we encounter
our culture’s values and internalize them.

Interpellation expresses the idea that an idea is not simply yours

alone (such as “I like blue, I always have”) but rather an idea that
has been presented to you for you to accept. Ideologies – our
attitudes towards gender, class, and race – should be thought of
more as social processes. Accepting or not accepting a culture’s
given attitudes places one in a particular relationship with power.

For Althusser, interpellation works in a manner much like giving a

person a name, or calling out to them in the street. That is,
ideologies “address” people and offer them a particular identity
which they are encouraged to accept. However, one is not forced
to accept that role through violence. Because those roles are
offered to us everywhere we look, or even assigned to us by
culture, they are presented in such a way that we are encouraged
to accept them. This works best when it is an invisible, but
consensual process. It works best when we believe these values
are our own, and reflect the most obvious, logical way to live.

Ideologies, therefore, play a crucial role first in constructing our

identities and then giving us a particular place in society. To say
that someone is fully interpellated is to say that he or she has
been successfully brought into accepting a certain role, or that he
or she has accepted values willingly.

Here is how one of my students from a past semester put it in her

notes:
~Interpellation is the idea that we are “bred” to think, act and react
in certain ways.
~We are interpellated from the day that we are born into specific
roles that society has created for us.
~Girls being portrayed in magazines playing with dolls and loving
the color pink is an example of gender role interpellation
~Interpellation is subtle—the point of interpellation is for a person
to feed into something without even realizing that they are doing
so.
~ Interpellation is used in almost every aspect of our society,
especially in the marketing of merchandise
~Interpellation can be found in many situations, but the most
prominent example of interpellation that I always think of is the
typical male and female roles that we are “assigned” from a very
early age. There are certain things that are “normal”, if not
expected of a boy, simply because he is a boy. By the same
token, there are certain things that are expected of a girl to
maintain her societal femininity. From a young age, we are lead to
believe that boys are the dominant, more powerful sex. Females
are portrayed as care takers and are often seen as being more
compassionate and caring than males are. Men are expected to
rougher and less sensitive. The men are expected to work hard to
bring home money to support their families. Females are often
portrayed as being more in touch with their emotions. None of
these ideas applies to any one person any more so then do
personality traits, but our society interpellates these ideas into our
minds every minute of every day.
~We seem to idealize wealthy families in our society because we
are under the warped impression that they are happier than
ourselves because they have everything that they want. Children
who are born into wealth and privilege are showcased in reality
television and documentaries, further rubbing our noses in the
fact that there are parents who can provide for their children in
ways that you or I could never imagine (from a material
standpoint). Our culture seems to go out of its way to display this
quality, to make those who have more feel better about
themselves and those who have less feel worse. We
are interpellated to be jealous of other peoples luck and fortune.
~We are interpellated to believe that the main centers of power
and authority in our society, i.e. the government, our parents, the
president, are inherently good and always right—they (the powers
that be) do this to try and keep us in our place. They want to keep
power in the hands of those who have always had it, and usually
one of the only ways to do that is to interpellate society to believe
that that is where the power and authority belong in the first place.
~ We are interpellated through religion, politics and the school
systems.

Apparatuses of Power
Althusser argued that the process of interpellation works
best when it is invisible, when individuals accept cultural notions
as though they are obvious, or natural, when it seems natural, for
instance, that men act one way and women act another. At best,
interpellation works when individuals give no thought to
being interpellated in the first place.

To place people in their proper place in

society, Althusser argued that assimilation happens in two ways,
through repressive means, and through ideological means. One
happens through force, the other through ideas. Althusser argued
that there are different apparatuses (to use his word) of the State
(or governing power) that ensure interpellation:

Repressive State Apparatuses – Those mechanisms of power

that force us into our place. These mechanisms operate through
threats of punishment or through the explicit demonstration of
power. Repressive State Apparatuses (or RSA’s) include armies,
police, prisons, or any outright threat of violence.
Ideological State Apparatuses – RSA’s are rare and infrequent;
force is not the most effective means of maintaining
power. Instead, Ideological State Apparatuses (or ISA’s) work by
manufacturing consent among individuals. ISA’s operate through
ideas and representations that we encounter throughout our lives,
training us and conditioning in us certain attitudes and behaviors
that we are led to believe are natural. ISA’s include large social
institutions that train us in the thinking in a certain way and bring
us into ideology: schools, families, churches, toys, art, movies,
books, advertising, music, television, fashion, games, technology,
etc. All of these sources of power provide us with certain
attitudes, behaviors, ideas, perceptions, feelings, values, etc.

Here’s an example: I would like everyone in class to talk and

contribute to our discussions. I can force everyone to talk by
threatening to hit them if they don’t. But I would have to
constantly run around with a stick. I could threaten everyone with
a grade, forcing people to talk even if it is against their will. Or, I
could create an environment where people would like to talk
willingly because they want to.

Imagine you would like to be supreme ruler of a country where no

one questions your will. You could throw everyone in prison who
disagrees with you, kill dissenters, create an army to carry out
your whim. Along with that, however, you could start with
children. From the moment they are born you give them books
that teach them how wonderful you are. You create television
shows that make you out to be a wonderful leader. You train
everyone to accept your views willingly in a way that they never
notice. You create a situation in which any other way of thinking
would be unimaginable.

Both of these examples are misleading because they show one

person wanting to do something. Interpellation is more about how
larger cultural values are shared. Here’s an example. During
World War II many American women went into factories in order
to help with the war movement. After the war, America faced a
particularly difficult cultural crisis since women needed to go back
to their roles as homemakers, but they started to enjoy working
and the freedom it allowed. During the period, therefore, any
number of texts appeared to convince women that their happiness
would come through returning to their role as
homemaker. Television shows, advertisements, movies,
magazines, books, soap operas, clothing stores, department
stores – an emphasis on femininity and purchasing power to
make your family happy through technology flourished.

Texts, in other words, are not simply about the intentions of an

author. Every text bears the stamp of its time, either in
expressing its cultures values of the time, or resisting them. The
Tom Cruise Top Gunand the Sylvester Stallone film Rambo II are
films that spoke to the themes of the 80’s. They fed into and grew
from what people were feeling. After September 11th our culture
had a revival of police dramas on television that week after week
pleased the audience, week after week criminals were punished
and justice was given out.

In order to be thoughtful about this process, to have some agency

over our lives, it is important to be a critical reader. It is important
not only to look for the explicit values that an author brings to the
text, but also the deeper unexamined ideas.

Peter Hollindale makes the distinction between “surface” and

“passive” ideology. Surface ideology is about those explicit
values that an author wants the reader to believe. Passive
ideology is about those broader, unexamined cultural values.

To be a Close Reader is to be the sort of reader who considers

all of the deeper meanings that exist in a book. Most high school
and college Literature courses are good at training you to look for
deeper meanings, whether they are the intention of the author or
connected to the time period you are studying. And so far we’ve
looked at the deeper meanings that are children’s literature (for
instance, The GivingTree can be about our relationship to the
environment). But many tend to feel that because children are
innocent and undeveloped that they can’t see many of these
deeper meanings.

That may be true, but they are affected by passive ideology, since
we don’t have to see or understand those values in order to
accept them because they are presented so often.

In order to be a more critical reader you also have to be

a Resisting Reader – that is, the sort of reader who is attentive to
the unintended representations that a text puts forth as normal. If
we are interpellatedby the texts we encounter, if every text
presents to us certain attitudes, behaviors, ideas, perceptions,
feelings, or values, then we have to resist accepting them as
normal – we have to think about them critically first. We must
resist that process of interpellation by attending to those things
that are supposed to be invisible. That is not to say that most
authors are trying to trick us or brainwash us. In fact, most
authors simply reproduce the assumptions and attitudes they
haven’t examined either. Therefore, we must look not only for
those ideas that the author intended, but also the ideas he or she
didn’t intend if we are to resist being interpellated.