virtualization of design and production a thesis - Bilkent University

For Althusser, there are two major mechanisms for insuring that people act in
subjection to the power mechanisms, even when it's not in their best interests to
do so. The first is what Althusser calls the RSA, or Repressive State Apparatuses,
that can enforce behavior directly, such as the police, and the criminal justice and
prison system. Through these "apparatuses" the state has the power to force you
physically to behave. More important for communication studies, however, is the
second mechanism Althusser investigates: the ISAs, or Ideological State
Apparatuses. These are institutions which generate ideologies which we as
individuals (and groups) then internalize, and act in accordance with. These ISAs
include schools, religions, the family, legal systems, politics, arts, sports, etc.
These organizations generate systems of ideas and values, which we as
individuals believe (or don't believe); this is what Althusser examines. How do
we come to internalize and believe the ideologies that these ISAs create, (and
thus misrecognize or misrepresent ourselves as unalienated subjects in
capitalism) (Klages 1)
“To my knowledge, no class can hold power over a long
period without at the same time exercising its hegemony over
and in the ideological state apparatuses.” (Althusser 153)
All human societies reproduce themselves in this way through a process of
neutralization. It is through this process –a kind of inevitable reflex of all social
life –that particular sets of social relations, particular ways of organizing the
world appear to us as if they are universal and timeless. This is what Althusser
means when he says ‘ideology has no history’ and that ideology in this general
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