Ideology, Discourse, and Cultural Studies: The Contribution of Michel Pêcheux

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© Canadian Journal of Communication
Ideology, Discourse, and Cultural Studies: The

Contribution of Michel Pêcheux 1
Martin Montgomery
Stuart Allan
University of Strathclyde
Abstract: This article offers an evaluative assessment of the potential contribution of Michel
Pêcheux's research to a current movement within cultural studies to secure a conceptual
framework for the critical discourse analysis of the linguistic mechanisms of ideology
(examples of which are drawn from news accounts).
Résumé: Cet article propose une appréciation et une évaluation de la contribution potentielle
qu'apportent les travaux de recherche de Michel Pêcheux à un courant actuel des études sur
la culture qui vise à appuyer sur un cadre conceptuel toute analyse critique du discours et
des mécanismes linguistiques d'une idéologie (des exemples sont tirés des compte rendus de
nouvelles).
Introduction
In his exploratory article ``What Is Cultural Studies Anyway?'' Richard Johnson (1987) likens linguistics
to a ``positive treasure-chest for cultural analysis,'' one just now beginning to emerge from its burial in
the grounds of a ``heightened technical mystique and academic professionalism'' (1987, p. 59). Perhaps
not surprisingly, practitioners of cultural studies have long been wary of linguistics due to its frequent
claims to an explanatory autonomy or scientificity and, moreover, its tendencies to an ahistorical
formalism, amongst other considerations. Reservations as serious as these ones, after all, contributed to
cultural studies adopting from the outset a Saussurean variant of semiotics when grappling with the
materiality of the linguistic component of cultural phenomena.
The semiotic project offered the promise of breaking with approaches which reduced language to a
``neutral'' instrument through which ``reality'' is expressed. By foregrounding the arbitrary nature of the
signifying fields in everyday life, it suggested fascinating new ways to think through the Williamsian
maxim that what was at stake for cultural theory was the investigation of the complex of patterned
relationships between elements of culture as a whole way of life (Williams, 1961). Moreover, semiotics
allowed for the opening up of what had become a rather empty postulate, namely, that culture is
inherently meaningful, so as to unpack the transparency or naturalness of real meanings rooted in
practical social experience.
http://www.cjc-online.ca/~cjc/BackIssues/17.2/montgome.html 24.07.2003
As has been well documented, however, ensuing attempts over the past two decades to re-centre the
domain of cultural studies so as to make better use of this reflexive set of methodologies have
culminated today in an acute crisis: how to define the limits of language? Is there a world outside of the
text? Where does non-discursive reality end and language begin? (see, for example, Allor, 1988;
Chevalier, 1990; Charland, 1990; Franklin, Lury, & Stacey, 1991; Grossberg, 1983; Hall, 1985;
Johnson, 1987; Laclau & Mouffe, 1985; MacCabe, 1985; Morris, 1990; Nelson & Grossberg, 1988;
Robinson & Straw, 1984; Spivak, 1987). Clearly, in some hands, the tools of semiotics have been
wielded in such a way as to reify a view of language process antithetical to a critical understanding of
the linguistic object. This is particularly so where language has ostensibly become divorced from its
materiality, thereby effacing from the purview of study the very historical conditions of its existence.
In some cases, this impasse has stemmed from a reluctance to rework certain idealist precepts
underpinning Saussure's (1966) own formulations, the ensuing theoretical commitments usually
engendering a reductive division between ``form'' and ``content.'' That said, even those theorists who
have endeavored to secure a symptomatic reading of Saussure frequently fall victim to the economistic
trap of asserting that the declared limits of language are strictly determined vis-à-vis the prefigured
needs of a society organized to reproduce a specific arrangement of power relations. Semiotics is then
held responsible for allowing a rigidly functionalist view of the power/resistance dynamic to creep into
the resultant conceptual frames.
Hence one possible explanation for the increasing attention being paid to linguistics and discourse
analysis in cultural studies, at the expense of semiotics, is directly tied to this problem of accounting for
contradiction, and thus struggle, in the play of ideology and power. Other possible explanations for the
growth of interest in the concepts and categories of discourse analysis range from the difficulty of
rendering Althusserian notions of ideology into operative concepts (Althusser, 1971, 1969), to the loss
of linguistic specificity in the alternative categories borrowed from Foucault's work on the enunciative
function of statements (Foucault, 1972, 1971), and, finally, to the growing prevalence of postmodernist
arguments that the term ``discourse'' be purposefully stretched so as to encompass processes formerly
identified as falling under the regions of representation, ideology and signification respectively (see
Bauman, 1988; Murphy, 1988; Nicholson, 1990; Ross, 1988).
For those practitioners of cultural studies unwilling to allow the sharp edge of the term ``discourse'' to be
blunted, yet forced to concede that no suitable alternative avenue is immediately available, a provisional
step is often advocated: namely, that the social factors that condition or shape the meaning of any given
utterance simply be recognized as dialectical. This maneuver is, of course, far from satisfactory; but will
a turn to discourse analysis eventually reward cultural studies with the requisite means to explicate the
materiality of discursive processes? The answer remains open to question: a number of serious
difficulties associated with the ``borrowing'' of concepts will have to be surmounted first, yet in our view
discourse analysis certainly holds promise as a means to reconstruct the problem of the consensual
nature of meaning anew and in a much more elaborate fashion.
It is with this aim in mind that we begin the task of re-assessing the critical discourse analytic
framework advanced by Michel Pêcheux (1988, 1983a, 1983b, 1982), for we believe that his approach is
remarkably resonant with potential strategies for just such a cultural studies project. His work provides
an incisive challenge to what has become, after certain postmodernist formulations, a politics of
discursive surfaces while introducing, in turn, an elegant refutation of a traditional structuralist
linguistics where the abstract system (the code) is accounted for at the expense of the actual
implementation of the code in situations of use. This article will therefore proceed to examine the
analytical agenda on offer to cultural studies by this theorist precisely as he speaks to the profound
silences of Saussurean and Marxist linguistic orthodoxy alike. In addition, it is hoped that through this
appraisal the general contours of a trajectory out of the conceptual impasse marked off by the
language/reality paradox will also be highlighted.
Ideology in the Past

Almost 10 years have passed since the tragic death of Michel Pêcheux, yet his research interventions
continue to be regarded by many individuals engaged in the work of critical discourse analysis as a rich
source of practicable ideas (see, for example, Cousins, 1985; Eagleton, 1991; Fairclough, 1989; Frow,
1986; Goodrich, 1982; Hall, 1982; MacCabe, 1985; Macdonnell, 1986; Morley, 1980; Thompson,
1984). Born in France in 1938, Pêcheux attended the Lycée Descartes and studied under Louis Althusser
at the École normale supérieure from 1959 to 1963. His major works include Sur l'histoire des sciences,
Analyse automatique du discours, Les vérités de la palice (published in English as Language, Semantics
and Ideology), and La langue introuvable (written with Françoise Gadet). He was also responsible for a
series of influential articles, several of which were published under the pseudonym Thomas Herbert. At
the time of his death in 1983, Pêcheux held the position of research director at the Centre national de
recherche scientifique.
Today, Pêcheux's commitment to a research program derived from Louis Althusser's reconstruction of
historical materialism has been thrown into sharp relief, especially when many former advocates will
acknowledge only a vestigial loyalty to it, insisting as they do that the resultant political framework has
proven intractable. Still, the influence of Althusserian Marxism on cultural studies has yet to be
eclipsed, and to dismiss the import of this presence is to impoverish the discussion. A defining concern
for cultural studies research continues to be its commitment to theorizing the ways in which social
divisions and hierarchies are naturalized or ex-nominated (placed ``beyond discourse''), a project which
has its roots in the Althusserian moment. Indeed, the struggle Althusser initiated over two decades ago
to displace an essentialist logic mobilized to anchor a conception of ideology as a series of ideas
separated from material practice (along with the parallel view to a rational, self-constituted unitary
human subject) has, for the most part, been fought and won.
Much of the terminology has been recast, of course, in the light of insights drawn from the work of the
neo-Gramscians, Foucaultians, deconstructionists, and most importantly in our view, feminist
researchers. Significantly, many of the post-Althusserians and their critics still share Althusser's interest
in elucidating the very obviousness that language ``transparently'' makes a word ``name a thing'' or
``have a meaning.'' In general, they are in agreement that this `ìdeological effect'' is crucial to an
understanding of how the parameters of ``legitimate,'' `àppropriate'' or `àuthoritative'' discourse are
policed. Pêcheux is thus one of several researchers who, following Althusser's lead, avoids positing the
meaning of a word as existing `ìn itself'' for a human subject to then ``decode.'' Equally inappropriate, it
follows, is the presupposition that the word can somehow be analyzed irrespective of how discourses
constitutive of this subjectivity (such as those of class, gender or ``race'') are themselves the terrain of
ideological contestation. Nevertheless, it is precisely at this point that several of the most serious
difficulties with this conceptual approach have arisen. For while Althusser appeared to be posing several
of the most vital questions, the provisional nature of his answers was such that they have eluded
rigorous application.
As many commentators have pointed out, one of the most perplexing aspects of Althusser's formulations
on ideology is the absence of an elaborated stance regarding the possibilities for the realization of a
resistant or counter-hegemonic politic at the level of the text-subject encounter. How to succeed in
making ``common sense'' uncommon? More often than not, we would argue, Althusserian categories are
being deployed in such a way as to render indistinct the imbrication of language with the conditions
(institutional sites) of its use, thereby making it much more difficult to theorize the production of a
particular range of (tendential) subject positions in relation to a socially contingent discursive formation.
Alarmingly, the resultant claims are frequently made to rest on vague references to the ``manipulative
practices'' of Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs), of which the mass media are considered to be of key
significance. For others, moreover, ``misrecognition'' comes to stand in for the terrain formerly marked
off as ``false consciousness.'' This when Althusser was at considerable pains to show how it is that this
ideological misrecognition is unavoidable: there simply is no ``true'' consciousness floating about in
limbo.
Althusser is also to be credited, in our view, with pinpointing the need to problematize the procedures
through which the ``dominant'' or ``preferred'' terms and definitions of ``ruling'' ideologies are ultimately
translated as natural or inevitable. Still, this formulation of the ISA-interpellation linkage does not
devote adequate attention to a strategic understanding of the linguistic mechanisms working to produce
terms of address for a human subject as he or she negotiates possible identifications with a reality `òut
there.'' This is a serious dilemma which other theorists, arguably the most conspicuous of which are the
Foucaultians, have chosen to sidestep. Hence the import of Michel Pêcheux's theoretical intervention, as
it constitutes a rare attempt to address the very site where the play of power and ideology in discourse,
or--in the Lacanian idiom which he adopts, ``the politics of the signifier''--configure: the site of
interpellation itself.
Here we will undertake to examine the implications of this radical move to locate the determining
effects of heterogeneous socio-historical conditions in and through linguistic mechanisms, as opposed to
an exclusive imposition at the level of the human subject proper. As will be shown, Pêcheux's
integration of an Althusserian position on ideology with a fresh approach to discourse analysis creates
the conceptual space necessary to begin the work of explicating the constitution and potentialities of the
forces governing subjectivity, and furthermore, the conditions for an oppositional politics of meaning
production. Considered in this light, his work promises to spark a decisive reappraisal of the basic
assumptions underpinning recent efforts to secure new forms of critical discourse analysis for cultural
studies.
Langue and Parole Revisited

The rudimentary elements of Pêcheux's research pertinent to our concerns here are first highlighted in
his declared opposition to any attempt to constitute the object of linguistic study in terms of a distinction
between `àbstract system'' versus ``contingent and unsystematic event,'' especially where this distinction
is used to focus upon the former to the exclusion of the latter. That is, in refusing to isolate the abstract
linguistic system from social processes, Pêcheux (1982) is moving to dismiss from the outset any notion
of fixed or stable meaning invariably attached to specific linguistic entities. As he writes, `à word,
expression or proposition does not have a meaning of its own, a meaning attached to its literality. [...]
Meaning is always a word, expression, or proposition for another word, another expression, or another
proposition'' (1982, p. 188). If meaning for Pêcheux does not reside in a predetermined way in properties
of the langue (for example, the interrelationships of the lexicon or the syntax), it follows that it can not
be theorized `òutside'' of history (the immutability of the sign). Meaning, then, ``does not exist
anywhere except in the metaphorical relationships (realized in substitution effects, paraphrases,
synonym formations) which happen to be more or less provisionally located in a given discursive
formation: words, expressions, and propositions get their meanings from the discursive formation to
which they belong'' (1982, p. 188). Thus in looking to recast versions of the langue versus parole
dichotomy, Pêcheux is intending to reformulate the distinction between system and event as a new one
between linguistic basis and discursive process.
To support this assertion Pêcheux must first clear the way to challenge certain Saussurean precepts with
an eye to emphasizing the role of discursive process itself. Like other critical linguists before him (the
contributions of the Bakhtin Circle also figure prominently), he strongly objects to the manner in which
discourse has been reduced to the concrete acts of language use. In most instances, the situation of the
utterance is dismissed as ``subjective'' or circumstantial, thereby ensuring that questions concerning the
social determination of meaning are left largely unattended. Similarly, the langue/parole opposition has
routinely been invoked so as to constitute the object of linguistic study in an unnecessarily constrained
way, such that language as system becomes the centre of concern to the exclusion of issues of rhetoric,
poetics, politics, and ideology. Linguistics in the Saussurean tradition, according to Pêcheux, `ìs in the
end condemned to regress behind the break which inaugurated it, by a kind of `return of the repressed'
whose central element (forming its weakest link) is located in the region of semantics and articulated
around the langue/parole couple'' (1982, p. 174).2 He thus rejects Saussure's way of posing the
opposition and reintroduces, in turn, the discarded areas of parole by way of a different pair of
categories, namely, linguistic basis and discursive process. Accordingly, Pêcheux seeks to relate the
operation of definable linguistic units outwards to larger formations, for as we shall see, the operation of
particular compositional tendencies, such as relative clauses, are related to discursive and ideological
formations and thus to the struggle for political hegemony.
To some extent, even when recasting the langue/parole distinction, Pêcheux seems to accept much that
is implied in the traditional definition of langue. Every linguistic system, he stresses, `às a set of
phonological, morphological and syntactic structures, is endowed with a relative autonomy that makes it
subject to internal laws which constitute, precisely, the object of linguistics'' (1982, p. 58). It then
follows that every linguistic system is to be endowed with a relative autonomy from relations of class
(narrowly defined) which, in turn, makes it subject to internal laws: the system of langue, after all, `ìs
indeed the same for the materialist and the idealist, for the revolutionary and the reactionary'' (1982, p.
58). Furthermore, it is on the basis of these internal laws that discursive processes develop (once again
processes of substitution, synonymy and paraphrase) that, having been established through the unity of
langue, are always inscribed (overdetermined) in relations of power and resistance. Perhaps not
surprisingly, Pêcheux also looks to radically re-conceptualize the domain of parole by framing it in
terms of this discursivity or discursive process. Discursivity is not to be conflated with parole: that is,
`ìt is not a `concrete,' individual way of inhabiting the àbstraction' of the langue'' (1982, p. 58). Still,
discursivity may, admittedly, be predicated upon langue ``which is the indispensable prerequisite of any
discursive process'' (1982, p. 58), since `ìt is on the basis of these internal laws (of langue) that
discursive processes develop'' (1982, p. 58).
At the same time, however, although language--the relatively autonomous linguistic basis (langue)--may
be indifferent to political struggle, discursivity is decidedly not, because `èvery discursive process is
inscribed into an ideological class relationship'' (1982, p. 59). This is the crux of the matter for Pêcheux;
and his claim here matches closely Bakhtin & Volosinov's (1973) well-known assertion that `èvery sign
is subject to the criteria of ideological evaluation,'' so that as a result ``sign becomes an arena of the class
struggle'' (1973, pp. 10, 23). Indeed, Pêcheux's notion of ``relatively autonomous internal laws
constituting the linguistic basis'' versus `ìdeologically informed and differentiated discursive processes,''
which are predicated upon that basis but distinct from it, seems close in spirit to Bakhtin & Volosinov's
distinction between meaning and theme, whereby meaning as the lower limit of linguistic significance--
an abstract self-identical element--`ìs subsumed under theme and torn apart by theme's living
contradictions so as to return in the shape of a new fixity and self-identity only for a while, just as it had
before'' (1973, p. 106).
The Materiality of Ideological Struggle

Important differences emerge, however, in the way the set of distinctions between the linguistic and the
discursive are developed. For Bakhtin & Volosinov, the distinction leads to a fairly direct route back
into the social process in terms of the determining power of extra-verbal contexts, ``which are in a state
of constant tension, or incessant interaction and conflict'' (1973, p. 80).3 For Pêcheux, on the other hand,
the distinction leads him from discursivity on to the very power/resistance dynamic itself as it ``passes
through'' the field of the Ideological State Apparatuses or ISAs. Briefly, he elects to adopt a revised
Althusserian framework for conceptualizing the ritualized means of hegemonic subjugation vis-à-vis the
mass media, the school, the family, the courts, the church and so on, all of which are organized
hierarchically into ideological formations depending on their regional properties (their ``specialization''
in knowledge, politics, religion and so forth). Once again, the terrain across which ideology operates is
conditioned by social forces (those of class, gender and ``race'' are particularly pronounced), its overall
function being delimited to depoliticizing or naturalizing those correlative inequalities ascribed to the
determinate logics of capital accumulation. In place of analyses which attribute to each class or group its
own respective ideology, one which then encounters its opposite in an ISA, here the ISAs are regarded
as being greater than the expression of the ideology of the hegemonic faction. The ISAs are thus held to
represent ``simultaneously and contradictorily'' both the site and the ideological conditions of the
transformation of social divisions and hierarchies. These ideological conditions are constituted, in turn,
by the complex set of ISAs: that is, all of the ISAs do not contribute equally to
reproduction/transformation processes. Instead, due to their regional and class properties, there exist
relations of contradiction-unevenness-subordination between the elements of this complex set of ISAs.
If it is accepted that the relations of contradiction-unevenness-subordination between different ISAs are

the stake in the ideological struggle (given the struggle to impose inside the complex set new
relationships of unevenness-subordination), for Pêcheux the effectivity of hegemonic ideology is to be
characterized as the ``winning out'' of the reproduction of social divisions over their transformation
(1982, p. 100). Ideological struggle between two antagonistic classes or groups is, once again, not
symmetrical: this process of ``winning out'' is achieved largely through obstruction or suppression.
Neither seeks ``the same thing'' as the other, thus the reproduction/transformation relation is
characterized by movement and not an objective form of inertia (1982, p. 101). To begin the task of
resolving the principal difficulty at issue here: namely, the question of how to secure for analysis the
ideological conditions of the reproduction/transformation of social hierarchies in ideas, Pêcheux moves
to reconfigure Althusser's (1971) controversial notion that ideology interpellates individuals as subjects.
First then, the very ``self-evidentness'' of the human subject as he or she is ``hailed'' into hierarchical
relations of subjugation needs to be treated with much greater precision. Crediting Althusser's notion of
how the human subject ``works by itself'' as the principal point of departure, Pêcheux suggests that it is
through the examination of the means by which unconscious repression and ideological subjection are
materially linked that critical efforts may best transcend the limitations of earlier formulations which
held that ideologies are ideas (not material forces) that have their sources in human subjects. It is
therefore his intention to problematize
the processes of `ìmposition-concealment'' that constitute that subject by ``putting him [or
her] into place'' (by signifying to him [or her] what he [or she] is) and by concealing from
him [or her] at the same time that ``putting into place'' (that subjection) thanks to the
illusion of autonomy constitutive of the subject, such that the subject ``works by
himself'' [or ``by herself'']. (1982, p. 91)
After all, he points out, slogans such as Althusser's `ìdeology is eternal,'' or Freud's ``the unconscious is
eternal,'' simply can not ``fill the yawning absence of a worked out conceptual articulation between
ideology and the unconscious: we are still at the stage of theoretical `glimmers' in a prevailing
obscurity'' (1982, p. 104).
Consequently, having affirmed that the articulation of ideology with the unconscious is concealed within
a ``web of subjective evident truths,'' Pêcheux locates the linkage between the constitution of meaning
and that of the constitution of the human subject within the figure of interpellation itself. It is there that
the discrepancy in the formulation individual/subject (the ``paradox'' by which the human subject is
called into existence) may best be designated. Pêcheux notes that Althusser's formulation carefully
avoids presupposing the existence of the human subject on whom the operation of interpellation is
performed. As opposed to stating that the ``subject is interpellated by ideology,'' Althusser suggests that
the non-subject is interpellated/constituted as a subject by ideology. Herein lies the aforementioned
paradox, however, as Pêcheux argues that interpellation so conceived possesses a ``Munchausen effect'':
that is, given that every individual hailed by ideological discourse is `àlways-already a subject,'' a
circular or ``retroactive'' effect results. To illustrate this point, Pêcheux calls forth the image of the
immortal Baron Munchausen who, according to legend, lifted himself out of a bog and into the air by
pulling ``with all the strength of one arm on a lock of his own hair.''
How to escape this difficulty, then? As will be shown, for Pêcheux the initial step is to establish that
``the effect of the preconstructed as the discursive modality of the discrepancy by which the individual is
interpellated as subject [...]while still being àlways-already a subject' '' nevertheless operates by
contradiction (1982, p. 107). This manoeuvre then allows the ``transparency of language'' to be grappled
with concretely: that is, this apparent contradiction between the formulation, after Lacan (1977), of
human subjects as processes of representation (``caught'' in a network of signifiers) and the recruitment
of subjects (via interpellation) from individuals who accept as evident the meaning of what they hear,
say, read and write as ``speaking subjects,'' will be opened up for investigation (1982, pp. 108- 109).
The Transparency of Language

Pêcheux finds convincing Althusser's argument that this sense of `èvidentness,'' what `èveryone
knows'' through ``habit'' and `ùsage,'' is accomplished through ideology: ideology ``takes up the slack,''
it designates both what is and what ought to be (1982, p. 110). Moreover, ideology supplies the
evidentness that makes a word or an utterance ``mean what it says,'' thus what Pêcheux terms the
material character of the meaning of words and utterances is subsequently ``masked'' in the
``transparency of language'' (1982, pp. 110-111). This ``masking'' process is theorized as being the
outcome of the articulation of representational practices (at times antagonistically) across the field of the
ISAs. An uneven, contradictory relationship of correspondence is in this way constructed, the precise
nature of which Pêcheux proceeds to specify via two radical theses. The first proposition holds that
``words, expressions, propositions, etc., change their meaning according to the [ideological] positions
held by those who use them, which signifies that they find their meaning by reference to those positions;
that is, by reference to the ideological formations [once again, the configuration of ISAs] in which those
positions are inscribed'' (1982, p. 111). The semiotic polyvalence of which Bakhtin (1981) writes is here
recognized as being constrained by a hierarchical set of rules tied to ideological contestation; that is, a
specific word ``finds its meaning'' by reference to its inscription within one or more positions located
across an institutional configuration. This set of rules, to be theorized as constitutive of a discursive
formation, marks the normative limits of ``what can and should be said'' in a historical conjuncture. A
discursive formation, caught up in a multiplicity of struggles over appropriateness, accomplishes certain
``meaning effects'' for the human subject while, simultaneously, concealing the contradictory character
of the subject's own discourse to him or herself.
What Pêcheux is offering here is a formal account of discursive processes both within discourses and
between one discourse and another, rather than a substantive account of particular ideologies and
discursive formations in a concrete, situated fashion. According to this definition, a discursive formation
seems best understood as a set of regulative principles that underlie actual discourses but remain
separate from them. This formulation suggests then that words, expressions, and propositions obtain
their meaning from the determinate discursive formation in which they are produced (the linguistic
elements selected, how they are combined), thus meaning becomes an effect upon an active human
subject, and not a stable property. Once again, an expression or proposition does not have a meaning `òf
its own'' perpetually attached to it. Pêcheux stresses the attendant point that given the emergence of this
``matrix of meaning,'' individuals are then interpellated `às speaking subjects (as subjects of their
discourse) by the discursive formations which represent ìn language' the ideological formations that
correspond to them'' (1982, pp. 111-112). Such a conception leads Pêcheux to declare that the human
subject is ``forgetful'': he or she misrecognizes or occludes the ``cause'' or determination of his or her
discourse, thinking instead the he or she is its author `ìn reality.'' By highlighting how the naturalness
or obviousness of words or expressions will, in turn, ``change their meaning'' as they ``slide'' or ``slip''
from one determinate discursive formation to another, Pêcheux substantively refines the notion of
intertextuality (the passage from one sign system to another) posited by Bakhtin. Here, the interweaving
of elements between contending discursive formations is to be specified as the outcome of the dictates of
hegemonic struggles traversing the social field.
The second thesis Pêcheux advances dictates that `èvery discursive formation, by the transparency of
the meaning constituted in it, conceals its dependence on the `complex whole in dominance' of
discursive formations, itself imbricated with the complex of ideological formations'' (1982, p. 113). At
first sight, articulating discourse to ideology in this way seems to have the merit of opening up the study
of ideology to a more concrete, socio-historical analysis. If discourse instantiates or enunciates ideology
then the latter is made tangible and present to study in particularly practicable ways. In the elaboration
which follows, however, Pêcheux refuses to define the precise nature of this correspondence beyond the
notion of an imbrication. He is unable to be specific about the nature of the relationship between
ideological formations and discursive formations. At moments he seems to suggest that ideological
formations provide principles of coherence that underpin the intelligibility of their corresponding
discursive formations; but the relationship of one to another remains persistently vague. Similarly, his
conception of discursive formations remains ill-defined. It is not clear whether they are best understood
in terms of institutional provenance (e.g., ``the discourse of the defence establishment'') or topical scope
(e.g., ``the discourse of nuclear deterrence''). Nor, crucially, is it clear at what level of abstraction from
actual utterances they should be recognized as operating on. And since no hint is given as to how the
boundaries of any discursive formation may be identified, it is difficult to see how the substantive
constituents of a given discursive formation can be specified in practice. Thus, a major putative gain in
the delineation of ideologies in concrete situations is thrown away.4
Notwithstanding this difficulty, however, Pêcheux demonstrates in a convincing manner the advantages
of theorizing meaning as a function, not of particular words or wordings, but rather of the discursive
formation in which such expressions occur. This is not to suggest that meaning is purely accidental and
contingent. Although variable, certain generalized and stable mechanisms or processes may be seen as
underlying this productivity, all of which fall under the domain of the notion of discursive process
outlined above (briefly, a system of relationships of substitution, paraphrases, synonymies, and so forth,
which operate between linguistic elements or signifiers in a given discursive formation). These
processes work to secure the play of meaning within the ``complex whole of the discursive formations''
into a universal (or naturalized) hierarchy. More precisely, any instance of enunciated discourse has its
intelligibility ensured, at least in part, by the operation of rules of inclusion and exclusion or
interdiscourse. That is, the means by which a specific arrangement of discursive formations, itself the
localized expression or product of ideological hegemony, is mediated with a text is via these rules. The
declared ``meaning'' of a given text is in this way removed from the author as speaking subject
exclusively (usually aligned with a view to his or her intentionality) and is instead confirmed as the
effect of relationships of language use within and between this ``complex whole of discursive
formations.''
At issue now is the need to push forward from this contention that the human subject's misrecognition of
autonomy and centredness (the illusion of a unified self-identity) is anchored within the play of his or
her `òwn'' discourse, and thus those of the dominating discursive formations dispersed unevenly across
the social field. Pêcheux proceeds by looking to further unravel the ``thread of the discourse of the
subject.'' Here he discerns two principal elements of this ``thread'' or interdiscourse, namely, the
``preconstructed'' and `àrticulation,'' both of which are embedded in the materiality of the human
subject and his or her Other. Briefly, the preconstructed in this formulation corresponds to the `àlways-
already there'' of the ideological interpellation as it supplies/imposes already available positions: that is,
the ``raw material'' of ``reality'' and its ``meaning'' in the form of universality (the ``world of things,'' the
`èvident facts'' or ``what everyone knows to be real'') or obviousness (1982, pp. 115, 121). Thus the
preconstructed stands in contrast with that which is said to be ``constructed'' by the utterance.
Alternatively, the element of articulation (support effect) sustains the human subject in a relation to that
meaning (`às I have said before'' or `às I shall say afterwards'') as if it were something exclusively
internal to him or her. In this sense, their domain of operation is the syntagmatic chain of discourse, a
plane of relationships that Pêcheux may now refer to as intradiscourse or the operation of discourse with
respect to itself.
Intradiscourse, then, is always the ``discourse of a subject,'' while interdiscourse is embedded in

previous statements: the word, symbol or concept, to be recognizable as such, must be linked with a pre-
existent ``given'' before being absorbed into a particular text. However, with respect to the meaning
effects produced along the horizontal plane of discourse (intradiscourse), Pêcheux notes how these
intradiscursive relationships may be impinged upon, and affected, by discourses from elsewhere. That is,
from somewhere within the complex whole in dominance of discursive formations; in other words, from
interdiscourse. He is thereby signalling that it is interdiscourse which determines the domination of the
subject form by making it take up positions as a speaking subject, thereby ensuring the human subject an
experience of unity that would otherwise be denied (1982, pp. 115, 121). At particular crucial points in
the plane of intradiscourse, elements from interdiscourse may erupt as `àlready there'': these
preconstructed elements are lateral reminders of material established in another discursive formation. In
this way, one ``line'' or ``plane'' of discourse may intersect with another, providing tacit support from
elsewhere in interdiscourse to an intradiscursive enunciation. When the intelligibility of an
intradiscourse leans for support on its intersection with pre-established discursive material from
interdiscourse, Pêcheux chooses to call this phenomenon transverse discourse.
Two mechanisms stand out as being heavily implicated in the operation of transverse discourse, viz.
determinative and explicative relative clauses. As grammatical constructions (corresponding to the
distinction in grammatical description between defining and non- defining relative clauses) these could
be seen as part of what Pêcheux has described as the linguistic basis. They provide him, however, with
instructive examples of the way in which, on the basis of these internal laws (of langue), discursive
processes develop. For both kinds of construction provide points where intradiscourse is susceptible to
the workings of transverse discourse: in other words, each construction in its own way allows material to
infiltrate by means of transverse discourse into the enunciated intradiscourse. This can be seen more
clearly by concrete illustration.
Explicative and Determinative Relative Clauses as Discursive

Process
The following sentence, provided by Pêcheux, exhibits an explicative (non-defining) relative clause:
Napoleon, who recognized the danger to his right flank, himself led his guards against the enemy
position. Each clause of the sentence may be seen as corresponding to a separate proposition, viz.: #(1)
Napoleon led his guards against the enemy position. #(2) Napoleon recognized the danger to his right
flank.
A purely grammatical approach to the sentence would claim that the relative clause (in italics) here
merely explicates or adds information in a contingent fashion about some element of the main clause
(see, for example, Sinclair, 1972). Thus, the relative clause here adds information about the referent
``Napoleon'' of the main clause. Pêcheux, however, argues that the information (or the proposition) of
the subordinate clause is not in this case of a purely accessory or contingent nature. On the contrary,
articulating the two propositions together through the use of an explicative has, in this case, the effect of
implying a causal relationship between the two, such that: Napoleon led his guards against the enemy
position because he recognized the danger to his right flank. Indeed, the subordinate clause (who
recognized the danger to his right flank) does, in this reading, express more through its connection with
the main clause than it would in isolation. For the causal relationship to be activated, however, requires
the recognition of some general background assumption, such as: If (being a general, or being
Napoleon) one recognizes a danger threatening, one must oneself lead the attack to ward it off.
Explicative clauses, therefore, act according to Pêcheux as ``lateral reminders,'' prompting a kind of
``return of the known in thought.'' In the illustration above it might be argued that a discourse of motives
and intentions (from somewhere in interdiscourse) intersects with a discourse of strict historical
narration.
Attention now turns to consider the workings of a determinative (defining) relative clause, an illustration
of which is provided with the following sentence: He who discovered the elliptical orbit of the planets
died in misery.
The relative clause in this example (Pêcheux borrows it from Frege's article `Òn Sense and Reference'')
does not so much add information about the referent of a constituent in the main clause but actually
determines, restricts or defines who that referent is. Determinative, or defining, relative clauses, in fact,
typically constitute part of the constituent itself, rather than being in a weaker appositional relationship
to it. Pêcheux claims that this form of embedding allows for the insertion into intradiscourse of elements
preconstructed elsewhere (precisely where `èlsewhere'' is, Pêcheux never says). More particularly, he
claims that in the example given above the discourse of scientific history erupts in a preconstructed
fashion into the discourse of personal biography. In this case, regarding the German astronomer
Johannes Kepler, Pêcheux points to the material conditions in which he died in 1630; `à reality which
has little to do with the discovery of the laws of planetary motion, except of course in a religious or
moral perspective for which misery is the counterpart of genius, and a punishment for knowledge seen
as transgression'' (1982, p. 63). Certainly, it is reasonable to claim that constructions of this type present
a logically necessary entailment (``someone discovered the elliptical orbit of the planets'') as part of a
syntactic nominalization rather than as an independently asserted, and therefore more easily contested,
proposition. Accordingly, the preconstructed surfaces as ``transparent,'' an `àlways-already-there,'' in
which some segment of reality is invoked as if already given in a preconstituted ``world-of-things-as-
they-are.''
These linguistic constructions are from one perspective, by virtue of the grammatical constraints which
govern their operation, located in the linguistic basis. At the same time, however, when implemented in
any intradiscursive enunciation they open up spaces for the operation of transverse discourse, so that the
latter sustains the former, supplying supportive connections by a process of implication between the
propositions of intradiscourse. Inasmuch as explicatives and determinatives are susceptible to the lines
of force running along transverse discourse from interdiscourse, they are from this altered perspective
never less than discursive processes.
It would seem that, for Pêcheux, the relative clause is important because it can be used to illustrate how
a detailed description of the grammar of such constructions cannot in itself account for how discursive
relations of implication can be set up between main and subordinate clauses. Interpretation of these
relations involves a discursive process that leads beyond coded elements of the sentence into
surrounding discursive formations and hence into the sphere of ideology. For Pêcheux, the discursive
relations that an interpreter comes to recognize as connecting a relative clause with its main clause draw
upon what we know already from elsewhere in a taken-for-granted fashion: so that for an interpreter to
recognize an uncoded relationship amounts to a confirmation or ratification of the already-known.
However, some important lacunae and uncertainties remain in Pêcheux's account. It is not clear, for
instance, if he is claiming that every instance of a relative clause will carry an ideological implication;
or, indeed, whether all ideological implications will necessarily be carried only by relative clauses.
Crucially at stake here is the degree to which a discursive effect stands in a one-to-one relationship with
a grammatical process. A fundamental premise of discourse studies as they have developed over the last
15 years is that no simple correlation is to be expected between grammatical (sub-sentential) processes
and discursive processes: it is not possible, in other words, to read off discursive effects from sentential
structures in any direct, one-to-one fashion. Thus, the same discursive effect may be achieved by a
variety of grammatical realizations. Although Pêcheux rightly argues for a separation of the two
domains of grammar and discourse (in his terms ``linguistic basis'' and ``discursive process'') he fails to
follow through the full logic of his argument, which is inhibited by his tendency to work from grammar
to discourse, in line with his principle that discursive processes develop `òn the basis of these internal
laws'' (1982, p. 58). Pêcheux does, admittedly, raise the important issue of how ideological
considerations may underpin discursive processes. But a more radical step, reflecting more fully the
consequences of his position, would entail working from discursive processes as such, conceived in a
more autonomous fashion, and noting the range of grammatical processes that potentially may be
associated with them.
In any case, relative clauses of the type identified by Pêcheux are relatively rare in everyday discourse.
Even a quick glance at the fairly formal prose of a ``quality'' newspaper finds that they may occur with a
frequency of less than one in 10 sentences. The focus on relative clauses seems, in consequence, to be
extremely limiting. In order to develop Pêcheux's substantive insights about ideology in language, then,
it is important to widen the range of constructions considered susceptible to what might be called
`ìdeological effectivity.'' In this respect, a key starting point is provided by the range of constructions
that may stand in the place of full relative clauses and serve a similar function to them.
Relative Clause Type Constructions in a Sample News Text

Alternative constructions to the full, explicative relative clause may be seen italicized in the following
segment (drawn, as are all of the subsequent examples for this section, from one page of the Sunday
Express, December 29, 1991, a British ``broadsheet''): ``Subjects ceased to matter: pupils were taught
`life-skills,' while education's purpose--to excite and satisfy the desire for knowledge--fell aside. In the
Sixties the Plowden Report, by prominent members of the chattering classes, gave official
endorsement.'' The close resemblance of these constructions (a non-finite clause and a prepositional
group, respectively) to explicatives may be confirmed by the ease with which each can be expanded into
a full explicative relative clause with little or no change in meaning. Thus: ``...education's purpose--
(which is) to excite and satisfy....'' ``...the Plowden Report, (which was) by prominent members of the
chattering classes....'' Moreover, it is not difficult to identify an ideological role for these pseudo-
relatives. The page of the Sunday Express from which they come deals with supposed deficiencies in the
publicly-funded education system; and the first explicative in the above example spells out the purpose
of education in partial terms as ``to excite and satisfy the desire for knowledge'' as if this self-evidently
was education's only purpose, instead of it being only a debatable assertion. Similarly, the reference to
``prominent members of the chattering classes'' is a way of denigrating the authorship of the Plowden
Report. In both cases, potentially contentious material is relegated syntactically to constructions that
could in effect be described as reduced or pseudo-relative clauses and made the less questionable
because in such positions their assertive nature is disguised in forms that lack full propositional status.
A further illustration of a reduced explicative (`ègalitarianism'') may be found in the following example,
where again particularly contentious material may be identified both in this explicative and the full
relative clause which succeeds it. `Ìn all these institutions a single damaging philosophy has prevailed
since the 1960s: egalitarianism, which holds that all children are equal and so none should be allowed to
`fall behind.' '' Some assertions of a disputatious nature which are implicated in this statement can be
identified as follows: #(1) A single damaging philosophy has prevailed since the 1960s in all these
institutions (i.e., colleges, education departments, the schools inspectorate, educational journals, and the
DES itself ). #(2) This philosophy is egalitarianism. #(3) Egalitarianism holds that all children are equal
and that none should be allowed to fall behind. Whilst the first assertion is potentially questionable, it
becomes so only in light of the second and third assertions and these significantly are presented in a
non-prominent position and in reduced form. Although Pêcheux generally describes the effect of
explicatives as effecting ``the return of the known in thought,'' in many cases they might more aptly be
understood as transforming the questionable and the contentious into the obvious and the self-evident.
Full determinative relative clauses, like the foregoing explicatives, may be similarly replaced by a range
of alternative constructions. Probably the most frequent is a clause introduced by a non-finite verb
instead of a relative pronoun, as italicized in the following example:
The class, festooned with posters and pictures, is divided into two chattering groups playing
with paper shapes and plastic triangles. [...] But they are not youngsters. They are 21 and in
the fourth year of a teacher training course specializing in the progressive ``child-centred''
approach to learning.
Again, simple paraphrase easily points up their resemblance to determinative relative clauses. Thus:
specializing in the progressive ``child-centred'' approach to learning. is closely related to the full
determinative relative clause which/that specializes in the progressive ``child-centred'' approach to
learning. Moreover, not just clauses but also prepositional groups may perform this function, as in the
following: `À wide-ranging private poll for the Conservative Research Department in August showed
that 76% of voters came out against mixed-teaching ability [sic].'' where for the Conservative Research
Department in August operates as a reduced alternative to which was conducted for the Conservative
Research Department in August.
Thus the range of constructions which can act like full determinative relative clauses is equally as wide
as those that can act like explicatives. To some extent their respective roles might be seen as
overlapping. Consider, for instance, the following sentence: ``Those loudest in defending the system
have been those with the responsibility for improving it--the èducationalists,' whose empire includes
colleges, and education departments, the school inspectorate, educational journals, and the DES itself.''
The phrase, ``those loudest in defending the system,'' may be seen as derived from ``those who are the
loudest in defending the system.'' The role of such reduced determinatives bears close comparison with
Pêcheux's general description of determinatives as giving existential solidity to some segment of reality
which is invoked as if already given in a preconstituted world of ``things-as-they-are.'' In this case, if we
include the succeeding explicatives as well as the opening determinatives of the sentence, we can trace a
complicated series of propositions, such that: #(1) Educationalists exist (as a definable group). #(2) They
have responsibility. #(3) Their responsibility is to improve the system (of education). #(4) They defend
this system. #(5) They are its loudest defenders. #(6) They have an empire. #(7) The empire includes
colleges, and education departments, the school inspectorate, educational journals, and the DES itself.
In the context of this particular opinion column these prove to be quite crucial assertions, all the more so
for being proposed in non-salient positions. How otherwise can the columnist, an avowed ``Right-wing
Professor of Aesthetics,'' writing in the Sunday Express, a decidedly pro-Conservative Party newspaper,
attack the existing educational system without tarnishing the reputation of the Conservative Government
which has had effective control of it for well over a decade? The answer lies in attributing responsibility
to a completely different group, prominent members of which are identified subsequently by name as a
``Socialist dogmatist,'' a ``Communist Professor,'' a ``Professor at London University's pernicious
Institute of Education,'' and so forth.
One final instance of the preconstructed may be identified as nominalization, a phenomenon where
processes capable of being encoded by a verb are encoded by a noun group.5 For instance, to assert that
``standards in state schools have declined'' is a questionable truth claim. However, to write: ``The
decline of standards in state schools has been apparent to university teachers for years, but our warnings
have been dismissed as the rantings of an èlitist' minority'' not only converts a full clause into a noun
phrase, but simultaneously has the effect of transforming the questionable truth claim into a
preconstructed presupposition. Thus it may be seen that a variety of grammatical structures realize
ideological and discursive effects of the kind that Pêcheux sought to draw attention to, even if he
narrowly located then in relative clauses.
Modalities of Subjective Operation

A further set of difficulties which may now be addressed concerns the question of how to identify the
play of discursive formations as they work to interpellate human subjects. As we have seen, discursive
formations are particular orders of discourse, each imbricated within an ideological formation, which
secure the meaning of specific words, expressions and propositions. A discursive formation is that
which `ìn a given ideological formation, i.e., from a given position in a given conjuncture determined
by the state of the class struggle, determines what can and should be said (articulated in the form of a
speech, a sermon, a pamphlet, a report, a programme, etc.)'' (1982, p. 111). Unfortunately, since no one
discursive formation is discussed in concrete terms, there is much ambiguity in Pêcheux as to whether
these amount to fashions of speaking (e.g., codes, social dialects, anti-languages, and so forth), officially
ratified or institutionalized fields of discourse defined by topic (``scientific discourses,'' ``medical
discourses,'' ``legal-juridical discourses,'' and so forth), or generic forms of discourse (such as ``jokes,''
`ànecdotes,'' ``speeches,'' or ``sermons'').6
In Pêcheux's account, this problem of definition leads to acute difficulties when exploring the role of
transverse discourse. The sustaining effect which he attributes to this kind of discourse is predicated
upon the intersection of one type of discursive formation with another. This effect, however, is difficult
to demonstrate without clear criteria for distinguishing one kind of discursive formation from another.
And in practice, it seems quite possible for a sustaining effect to be achieved without insisting upon the
background presence of a rival discursive formation. For example, in one of the Sunday Express items
referred to above, it would seem that a recurrent use of explicative relative clauses (or appositional
constructions of an associated type) involves the juxtaposition of one temporal state of affairs with
another. This may also be seen in the following examples drawn from a Sunday Times account: #(A)
``Wright, whom they [his former colleagues] now despise, was one of their most trusted officers.'' #(B)
``Wilson, once so garrulous about MI5, will no longer discuss it...'' #(C) ``But Barbara Castle, then a
cabinet minister, said last week that he [i.e., Wilson] had been incensed by the smear campaign.''
This kind of juxtaposition does, following Pêcheux's argument, create, as it were, an intradiscursive
implicational space which can be filled in various ways. In (A), for instance, the contrast between
present contempt and past trust casts some doubt on the reliability of the judgments exercised by
Wright's former colleagues. In (B), the contrast between Wilson's former garrulity on the subject of MI5
and his present taciturnity suggests some unstated intervening event which causes the change in attitude.
In neither case, however, do the possible implications seem to derive necessarily from a rival discursive
formation. On the contrary, it is quite possible to argue that they issue from within the very discursive
formation upon which the text is predicated. Thus it seems that transverse discourse, especially when
discursive formations themselves are designated in arbitrary terms according to shifting criteria, is not
necessarily dependent upon a rival discursive formation to fill the spaces of intradiscourse (cf.
Chevalier, 1990).
Here it is crucial to recall that implicit to Pêcheux's notion of intradiscourse is an active subjectivity.
Much effort has been expended to illustrate how different forms of selection and combination render the
contradictory text ``coherent.'' The intradiscourse-interdiscourse dynamic has also been thrown into
sharp relief, as it has been shown to be capable of providing critical discourse analysis with the
rudimentary elements to elucidate the interpellation of the individual as the ``forgetful'' subject of its
discourse (and in this way refine substantively Althusser's view to the imaginary relation). Interpellation,
it has been noted, is achieved by the identification of the human subject with the discursive formation
that dominates him or her: that is, the relation in which her or she is constituted as a subject and where
his or her ``complete freedom'' as a speaking subject is located (1982, pp. 114, 125). It is this relation of
identification which, in turn, always acts to reinforce the imaginary unity of the human subject--or does
it?
Here an intriguing problem may be brought to the fore. It would appear that this relation provides
`àlready available'' subject positions for the good subject who, realizing his or her subjection in the
form of the ``freely consented to,'' ``spontaneously'' assumes the position offered by the universal
Subject `ìn all liberty'' (1982, pp. 114, 156). This subject accepts the image of self projected by the
dominant discourse. Pêcheux provides a historical example: ``France is in danger / We are all
Frenchmen / We are at war! [or] À French Soldier never retreats!' `To the last man!' '' (1982, p. 165).
But what of the subject who does not accept the preferred image of self as it is inflected?
The discourse of what then becomes a bad subject ``turns against'' the dominant identification, primarily
by taking up a position that consists of initiating a separation, challenge or revolt against ``what the
ùniversal Subject' `gives him [or her] to think': a struggle against ideological evidentness on the terrain
of that evidentness, an evidentness with a negative sign, reversed in its own terrain'' (1982, p. 157). That
is, Pêcheux argues, the ``trouble-making'' subject does not recognize those meanings lived by the good
subjects as being `òbvious'' or ``natural,'' but rather as achieved contradictorily, and therefore the
identity on offer is refused. The philosophical and political forms of a counter-discourse will then
produce in the ``bad'' subject a counter-identification with the discursive formation imposed on him or
her by interdiscourse, yet one where the evidentness of meaning remains complicit with it, in this case to
be rejected (1982, p. 157). For example: `` Ìt is always the same people who get killed' / `Down with
war!' / `Long live peace!' '' (1982, pp. 165-166).
Pêcheux thus elects to introduce into his scheme a third modality of subjective operation, that of
disidentification, which accounts for the taking up of an antagonistic or non-subjective position, an
effect working to transform or displace (but never escape entirely) the dominant practices of ideological
subjection (1982, p. 159). By operating in ``reverse'' or `òn and against itself,'' ideology as the process
of interpellation threatens to ``rearrange'' or `òverthrow'' both the complex of ideological formations
and the overlapping discursive formations (1982, p. 159). To re-organize the relationships concealed in
the opposition war/peace indicative of the above examples, it would be recognized that `à struggle for
peace which [is] not also at the same time a struggle for socialism is a nonsense, because pacifism is an
illusion so long as socialism has not been established'' (1982, p. 168).
How, then, to continue with this work of theorizing the reactive, contradictory or antagonistic nature of
this process as distinct from ``dominant ideology''? If, as the Althusserians would suggest, to consider
the question of ideology from the standpoint of reproduction also implies, by definition, considering
ideology from the standpoint of resistance to reproduction, then for Pêcheux (1983a) analysis must be
re-situated so as to account for ``the multitude of heterogeneous resistances and revolts which smoulder
beneath dominant ideology, threatening it constantly'' (1983a, p. 26). He thus calls for critical research to
undertake a re-evaluation of dominated ideologies, suggesting that they be treated as a series of
ideological effects to be identified as they emerge from domination and work in opposition to it through
its inherent gaps and failures (1983a, p. 27). Similarly, his observation that analyses must look toward
what is happening ``below'': namely, in the space that constitutes the ordinary of the masses, is an astute
one (1988, p. 645). `Ìt is becoming increasingly obvious,'' Pêcheux writes, ``that we must learn to listen
to this often silent speech enclosed within the urgency of survival. [...] We must hear the articulations
embedded in the òrdinary way' of meaning'' (1988, p. 645).
A Postmodern Other?
The stakes for the type of approach we are developing here have never been higher. An increasing
number of researchers are declaring that at present the foremost theoretical challenge to cultural studies
has ceased to be organized around the competing claims of a radical political economy. In its place are
the contending strands of postmodernism, an arguably more insidious rival as, in Martin Allor's (1987)
words, `ìt denies the importance of mediation itself as a problematic for the analysis of modern power
formations'' (1987, p. 137).7 In our view, theorists content to simply celebrate discontinuity,
fragmentation, pastiche and surfaces, and consequently supplant from critical analysis notions of
totality, coherence, closure, teleology, narrativity, and hierarchy, have taken the path of least resistance.
Such a position does not deny, however, that there are real advantages to be gained via their insistence
that it is inappropriate to assume a necessarily linear correspondence between social position and
cultural experience, between the meanings of a text and its determinate context, or, finally, between a
multiplicity of power relations and the competing logics of social reproduction.
Still, to acknowledge the benefits of a series of disruptive strategies is not to endorse the resultant
conceptual or political project. What some theorists offer in their willingness to abandon the ``the
dialectic between conditions and consciousness'' is frequently purchased, increasingly in the name of
postmodernism, at the price of valourizing the power-resistance dynamic as a principle and not as a
force contingent on concrete historical circumstances. Here we would want to affirm the value of
Pêcheux's view to the dialectic of divergent practices, meanings and identities within the codes or
regimes of signification naturalized as common sense, as the reality of ruling ideology. To confront the
hierarchies of `òtherness,'' of the ``marginal,'' the `àlien,'' or the `ìllegitimate,'' Pêcheux's insight that
the resistance points of a counter-hegemonic politic must be made ``graspable'' precisely as they are
implicated in what he aptly calls the `òrdinary way'' of meaning is crucial.
Therein lies the necessary basis for a politically reflexive form of analysis, as it places the re-articulation
via linguistic mechanisms of social identification and otherness squarely on the agenda. Despite the
limitations of Pêcheux's notion of discursive formation that we have documented above, its capacity for
articulating the relationship between, on the one hand, the normative ``rules'' of ideology and, on the
other hand, aspects of its subjective appropriation or negotiation, offers significant heuristic advantages.
As he himself characterizes his project: `Àll my work finds its definition here, in this linking of the
question of the constitution of meaning to that of the constitution of the subject, a linking which is not
marginal (for example the special case of the ideological `rituals' of reading and writing), but located
inside the `central thesis' itself, in the figure of interpellation'' (1982, p. 105). How, then, to develop
further the connection between the constitution of meaning and the constitution of the human subject?
At first glance, the most straightforward approach would be to extend an adapted Whorfian or
Saussurean account, whereby experience (subjectivity) remains inchoate and in flux until the entry into
the symbolic order, language, which makes available categories, terms and processes, not only for the
rendering of experience, but also for its active shaping and organization.
The problem, however, with developing the linkage in these terms is that the symbolic order--the
language--is conceptualized within Whorfian and Saussurean approaches as a unified totality, implying
in consequence that ideology (here as world view) would be the same for all members of the language
community. Pêcheux's distinction between linguistic basis and discursive process is precisely designed
to offer a different way of articulating this interdependence. Subjectivity is not evenly constituted `òn
the linguistic basis'' in terms of a unified symbolic order. Instead, as we have seen, Pêcheux proposes
that particular meanings are constituted in particular discursive processes; and since `èvery discursive
process is inscribed into an ideological relationship,'' subjectivity is constituted in uneven and
contradictory ways, depending upon the discursive formation that the processes are locked into. Once
again, interpellation is thus predicated upon the discursive operation of the ``preconstructed'' and ``the
sustaining effect.''
In more concrete terms, what seems to be at stake is as follows. Any enunciation within intradiscourse
opens up implicational spaces either for the operation of the preconstructed or for the sustaining effect.
These spaces (inferential gaps) require completion by the subject to secure the intelligibility of whatever
has been enunciated. The subject supplies the sense of the enunciation by recourse to transverse
discourse. Accordingly, supplying the inferential links or filling the implicational space within
interdiscourse is at the same time to be recruited to the terms of that very transverse discourse which
provides the grounds of its intelligibility. But, insofar as the subject in this way makes the enunciation
intelligible, he or she has, by this very act, been interpellated. Crucially, of course, this may occur
outside the level of conscious awareness. It is as if ideology, along the axis of transverse discourse
underpins the obviousness of the enunciation; and--in the act of recognition that subscribes to this
obviousness--the subject is interpellated.
Pêcheux, by focusing particularly on the role of language in this process, supplies more detail about how
ideology is subjectively appropriated in the act of interpellation. His treatment provides a way of
developing the notion of interpellation in such a fashion that it extends beyond the more abstract
characterizations of the positioning of the human subject within ideology typical of much work in
cultural studies. One notable limitation of the Althusserian account, especially when it is rendered in its
most schematic form, is that the role and practice of specific ideologies becomes obscured under an
ahistorical rubric governing the operation of Ideology-in-general: in consequence, his emphasis falls
upon the constitution of the Subject as such (this being justified by reference to it being ``the elementary
ideological effect'') at the expense of exploring particular interpellations into distinct ideologies. In this
respect, Pêcheux's emphasis on discursive process as a mode of interpellation allows precisely for a
greater degree of specificity. As long as it is possible to delineate the precise parameters of concrete
discursive formations, it should be possible to go beyond merely formal accounts of the positioning of
the human subject within ideology, and to address instead the interpellation of him or her by particular
ideologies in enunciated discourses.
To close, then, we are calling for the positive elaboration of Pêcheux's provocative discussion of the
materiality of language. We envision this work proceeding along three crucial trajectories: first, to argue
that the notion of discursive formation is necessary to a materialist theory of language and ideology is, at
the same time, to acknowledge that it still requires a more rigorous definition. If a number of problems
derive from the sheer sketchiness of Pêcheux's demonstration, the most pressing difficulty noted above
is the reductive sense of determination at work, one which operates unidirectionally ``downwards'' from
the utterance to social organization. Second, the notion of discursive process needs to be developed to
include a wider range of practices than those associated with relative clause constructions. Finally,
further attempts must be undertaken to mobilize the heuristic, analytic and strategic possibilities of this
rich, if inchoate, category of disidentification.
As the rigid disciplinary boundaries separating discourse analysis from the realm of cultural theory are
slowly dismantled, cultural studies researchers will be well poised to acquire a new set of linguistic tools
for the explicit purpose of theorizing this play of ideology and power in discourse. At a time when the
conceptual terrain formerly marked off by ``structures of feeling'' and `ìnterpellation'' are consistently
being rewritten into the superficial terms of aesthetic gestures, the struggle to develop and refine a new
critical vocabulary for speaking the world is intensifying. We have therefore endeavored to show how
Pêcheux's research framework is of continuing relevance to cultural studies, possessing as it does much
potential for analyzing concrete instances of ideological and discursive effectivity. 1 We would like to
express our thanks to Jacques Chevalier, Line Grenier, and William Straw, as well as to the editor and
anonymous reviewers of this journal, for their thoughtful critiques of an earlier version of this
manuscript. Funding for this research was provided, in part, by the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada. This is a familiar criticism, one also to be found in Firth (1957), Hymes
(1964), and Halliday (1978). Interestingly, it also recalls Bakhtin & Volosinov's (1973) strictures on
abstract objectivism: ``The actual reality of language-speech is not the abstract system of linguistic
forms [...] but the social event of verbal interaction implemented in an utterance or utterances'' (1973, p.
94). Here care must be taken so as to ensure that a key dimension is not sacrificed in this shift, namely,
the ability to trace the concrete trajectory of the sign's multi-accentuality for the explicit purpose of
identifying both possible and actual points of discontinuity and rupture across the field of hegemonic
articulations (see Laclau & Mouffe, 1985). Significantly, one important attempt to apply aspects of
Pêcheux's work cuts this Gordian knot merely by collapsing the plane of ideology into that of discourse
by speaking of the `ìdeological-discursive formations'' (see Fairclough, 1989). A further example of
how the question of nominalization in news text may be addressed is found in Hodge & Kress, 1988. In
their account, nominalization may be seen as an extreme case of grammatical reduction inasmuch as
nominals, such as ``negotiations'' or ``management,'' are derived from underlying predicate structures
built around a verb. Thus, an example such as: ``Negotiations took place at ACAS'' is treated by Hodge
& Kress as if derived from an underlying structure such as the following: X negotiated with Y at ACAS
where the verb (``negotiate'') functions as a two place predicate in an underlying clause in which the
associated participant roles (X and Y) require specification for the clause to be structurally complete
(such is also the case with: ``The miners negotiated with the Coal Board at ACAS''). Accordingly, they
argue, when a structure such as this is nominalized (e.g., ``negotiations''), one important consequence is
that the participant roles (e.g., ``miners'' and ``the Coal Board'') may easily be deleted, where the
grammatical process of reduction leads to a reification and objectification of the underlying process.
Inasmuch as the process is truly one of objectification, where an action represented by a verb becomes
rendered ``thing-like'' by nominalization, then it bears some comparison with Pêcheux's account of the
``preconstructed,'' in which entities (e.g., ``He who saved the world by dying on the Cross'') assume
existential solidity, even where their existence is denied elsewhere in the same enunciation (e.g., ``He
who saved the world by dying on the Cross does not exist''). A recent account of ``discourses'' attempts
to resolve this kind of ambiguity in the following way: `Àny account of a discourse or a discursive
practice must include its topic area, its social origin, and its ideological work: we should not, therefore,
think about a discourse of economics, or of gender, but of a capitalist (or socialist) discourse of
economics, or the patriarchal (or feminist) discourse of gender. Such discourses frequently become
institutionalized, particularly by the media industries, in so far as they are structured by a socially
produced set of conventions that are tacitly accepted by both industry and consumers. In this sense we
can talk about the discourse of the news, or of advertising: these discourses still exhibit our three
defining characteristics--a topic area, a social location, and the promotion of a particular social
group'' (Fiske, 1987, pp. 14-15). This proposed solution, however, conflates several different and
contradictory levels of abstraction and merely insists by assertion on the existence of those very
discourses it should be at pains to define. Indeed, it is Allor's (1988) contention that postmodernism's
extended disavowal of signification and mediation is itself rapidly forming the site of a new paradox:
namely, that in collapsing the depth model characteristic of semiotics (where the play of signifiers links
with a hierarchy of levels or instances), postmodernism has brought about an increased focus on
discursive and textual analysis (1988, p. 300). That is, this dismissal of a problematic centred on
conventions of human practice (meaning, representation) elides the contradictory effectivity of social
practices, thereby engendering a mode of critique that will ultimately be forced to find refuge in
functionalism. This type of analysis, he argues, can not stand without recourse to `èpochal logics'' to
explain the arrangements of ``surfaces'' under examination.
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Ideology, Discourse, and Cultural Studies: The

language/reality paradox will also be highlighted.

Ideology in the Past

Langue and Parole Revisited

The Materiality of Ideological Struggle

If it is accepted that the relations of contradiction-unevenness-subordination between different ISAs are

The Transparency of Language

Intradiscourse, then, is always the ``discourse of a subject,'' while interdiscourse is embedded in

Explicative and Determinative Relative Clauses as Discursive

Relative Clause Type Constructions in a Sample News Text

Modalities of Subjective Operation

Althusser, Louis. (1969). For Marx. New York: Vintage.

Eagleton, Terry. (1991). Ideology. London: Verso.

Fairclough, Norman. (1989). Language and power. London: Longman.

Firth, J. R. (1957). Papers in linguistics 1934-1951. London: Oxford University Press.

Fiske, John. (1987). Television culture. London: Methuen.

Foucault, Michel. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge. New York: Pantheon.

Goodrich, Peter. (1982). Materialism and linguistics. Radical Philosophy 32.

Halliday, M. A. K. (1978). Language as social semiotic. London: Edward Arnold.

Lacan, Jacques. (1977). Écrits: A selection. New York: W. W. Norton.

Macdonnell, Diane. (1986). Theories of discourse. London: Basil Blackwell.

Morley, David. (1980). The nationwide audience. London: BFI.

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© Canadian Journal of Communication

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