Althusser's Theory Of Ideology

Essay I: Ideology, a term that we all know exists, but very few truly understand the essence that lies behind such a word. Many questions arise when one thinks of ideology such as, but not limited to, “What is ideology?” and “Where do individuals come to acquire their ideology, as in is it born into the genetics that make up who they are, or is it created through the experiences of their life?”. Louis Althusser was a 20th century French philosopher that devoted much of his life to the study of what ideology truly is. Through his studies, he was able to develop a series of theses that, once completed, were released in his essay, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. The first thesis of Althusser’s work aims to define ideology. In this thesis, Althusser claims that, “ideology is a ‘representation’ of the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence”. (Norton Anthology, pg. 1498) By this, he means that ideology is constructed by its …show more content…
He makes this claim in while writing the Essay on Epistemology when he explains that “a historian does not say what the Roman Empire was, nor what the French Resistance in 1944 was, but what it is still possible to know about it,” because the knowledge that have gained about the subject is not plainly objective. It is for this reason that Veyne also claims that, “history is a city visited for the pleasure of seeing human affairs in their diversity and naturalness, without seeking in it any other interest or any