CALLING ALL!

"Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence." Althusser (2001) Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays

How is identity formed? How do people become who they are? How do they form value systems?

Louis Althusser (1918-1990) the French philosopher built on work by Karl Marx and Jacques Lacan relating to people's social roles and the way in which they form a sense of identity, class and individuality. For him, it is impossible to escape ideology, to avoid being subjected to it.

Althusser's uses the term interpellation (calling or hailing, holding or detaining for questioning) to refer to the process of how people step up into existing social positions; people are constituted or constructed by pre-existing social structures (this is a structuralist stance). The power of the mass media is to position the person (called the subject) in such as way that their representations are taken to be reflections of everyday reality.

The term  interpellation is best understood through Althusser's example: a police officer shouts "Hey, you!" in public. An individual turns round and 'by this mere one-hundred-and-eight degree physical conversion, he becomes a subject.' Althusser (1972: 174)