Rastko Močnik
316.75:141.7
Two Types of
Ideological Interpellation
Abstract: The paper presents a contribution to the theory of ideology based on Althusser’s idea of ideological interpellation. Ideological interpellation is conceptualised along a simplified re-elaboration
of Oswald Ducrot’s treatment of Bakhtinian polyphony. The text distinguishes between interpellation by identification (reproductive) and
interpellation by subjectivation (disruptive and eventually innovative,
with reference to Rancière). Finally, the text attempts to describe the
articulation between political and theoretical practices on the historical
case of Lenin’s polemics against the “otzovism”.
Keywords: Theory of ideology, ideological interpellation, polyphony,
identification, subjectivation, political effects of theoretical practices.
I
n the present paper I shall attempt a contribution to the theory of ideology. How theories of ideology matter can easily be shown if we consider
the political consequences of a particular theory. In Lukács’s History and
Class Consciousness, for example, the only true classes are the bourgeoisie
and the proletariat, the line of their confrontation is historically objectively determined, and the outcome of their struggle depends upon how successful each particular class will be at its class composition which, in turn,
depends on their “achieving” or “realising” their class consciousness.1 In
practical political terms, this boils down to the doctrine of the Bolshevik
type party, committed to the Leninist “introduction of consciousness into
the proletariat”.2 If, to the contrary, we develop a theory of ideology around
“[…] when the final economic crisis of capitalism develops, the fate
of the revolution (and with it the fate of mankind) will depend on the
ideological maturity of the proletariat, i.e. on its class consciousness.”
G. Lukács, History and Class Consciousness.
2“Social-Democracy leads the struggle of the working class […]. Social-
1
Rastko Močnik
| 35
a certain interpretation of the Gramscian concept of hegemony, we may get
Berlinguer’s doctrine of “historical compromise”.3 In the two doctrines that,
in a sense, mark the range of the 20th century communist politics, we can
discern an undervaluation of the role that ideological pluralism performs
in the reproduction of bourgeois society. Lukács reserves the possibility of
ideological interpellation to the marginal classes like the peasantry or the
petty bourgeoisie, whose consciousness, he writes, “is always borrowed
from elsewhere”, and does not investigate the conditions of the possibility
of such “borrowing”. Such an investigation might have prompted him to
reflect upon the relevance of ideological interpellation for the proletarian individuals, and might have consequently reduced his historical optimism. On
the other side, Berlinguer seems not to have considered that parliamentary
democracy is the material existence of bourgeois ideological pluralism, and
is thus a mechanism that reproduces bourgeois domination. These theoretical insufficiencies had enormous political consequences. The two paradigmatic political failures of traditional communism, Stalinist politics and the
Euro-communist way, actually shared the two theoretical insufficiencies of
traditional Marxism, the absence of a theory of ideological interpellation
and that of a theory of the material existence of ideology. The Bolshevik
educational stance not only overlooked every individual’s vulnerability to
ideological interpellation coming from discourses other than those presum-
3
Democracy represents the working class […]. We must take up actively
the political education of the working class and the development of
its political consciousness. […] Class political consciousness can be
brought to the workers only from without, that is, only from outside
the economic struggle, from outside the sphere of relations between
workers and employers.” V. I. Lenin, What is to be done?
“L’esperienza compiuta ci ha portato alla conclusione che la
democrazia è oggi non soltanto il terreno su cui l’avversario di classe
è costretto a retrocedere, ma anche il valore storicamente universale
sul quale fondare una società socialista”. Enrico Berlinguer, discourse
in Moscow, 1970. “La gravità dei problemi del paese, le minacce
sempre incombenti di avventure reazionarie e la necessità di aprire
finalmente alla nazione una sicura via di sviluppo economico, di
rinnovamento sociale e di progresso democratico rendono sempre
più urgente e maturo che si giunga a quello che può essere definito
il nuovo grande ‘compromesso storico’ tra le forze che raccolgono e
rappresentano la grande maggioranza del popolo italiano.” (Enrico
Berlinguer, Riflessioni sull’Italia dopo i fatti del Cile. Alleanze sociali e
schieramenti politici, Rinascita, 12 October 1973).
36 | Belgrade Journal for Media and Communications #6
ably belonging to her or his “own” imputed class consciousness, it was also
blind to the material existence of ideology as instantiated in the Bolshevik
party itself. Euro-communist democratism not only ignored the concrete historical character of multi-party parliamentarism as the material existence of
bourgeois ideological pluralism and hence a mechanism of bourgeois class
domination, it also neglected the crucial importance of ideological interpellations operating outside the political apparatus, and thus abandoned the
constitutive tenets of Gramsci’s theory of hegemony. Such considerations
underline the theoretico-political outreach of Althusser’s concepts of ideological interpellation and of the material existence of ideology. The present
paper situates itself within the field delineated by these two Althusserian
concepts.
Orientation towards another discourse
and double inscription of discursive sequences
Within the above sketched theoretical horizon, we shall approach the problem of ideological interpellation by first examining discursive phenomena
like the one we can observe in Shakespeare’s verse
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun
Sonnet 130, v. 3
It would be a simplistic reduction to contend that a reader not familiar with
the cliché “breasts white like snow” would not be able to understand this
verse. It would be more productive, and probably also more realistic (for
how often do we really encounter this kind of clichés nowadays?) to argue
that a reader educated in the present scholarly canon would be able to understand the verse regardless of the biographical contingency of having ever
come across the concetto or not.4
4
The same phenomenon occurs when we interpret utterances like: “I
believe in God”; “I believe in friendship”; “I believe in democracy”;
etc. These utterances offer no indication as to what is to be believed
regarding God, friendship, democracy etc., and still we have no trouble
to understand them as saying “I believe … that God exists; … that
friends are loyal to each other; … that democracy has beneficent effects
generally ascribed to it; …” etc.
Rastko Močnik
| 37
We will try to show that this self-supporting enlightenment on the part of the
interpreter results from ideological interpellation in the Althusserian sense.
If we deploy the process condensed in Shakespeare’s verse we may get an
initial idea about the components of interpellation:5
If snow be white, then breasts should be like snow. If breasts should be like
snow, why then her breasts are dun.
Two features should retain our attention: 1. the utterance alludes to a sequence that, although not enunciated, contributes to its meaning (the sequence in italics); 2. a component of the sequence is reduplicated and appears in two positions of the reasoning, first as a conclusion and next as a
premise. In Shakespeare’s verse, the two mechanisms are condensed in the
same string.
The following less artistic utterance will help us to further elaborate our conceptual framework:
If you got trouble, get a lawyer. Then you got more trouble, but at least you
got a lawyer.6
We can present this string as an argumentation in three phases:
1. The first argumentation consists of an argument and a conclusion. The
argument runs: “If you got trouble, you need a trouble-shooter.”
The conclusion drawn from this argument states: “Therefore the best thing to
do is to get a lawyer.”
5
6
As a sonnet is an artistic, not an ideological formation, it may
seem abusive to probe it for ideological mechanisms. However,
as we conceptualise aesthetic practice as a secondary elaboration
upon ideological elements, an artistic formation entails ideological
mechanisms which it transforms in a specific (“aesthetic”) way.
In the original: “Whenever you got business trouble the best thing
to do is to get a lawyer. Then you got more trouble, but at least you
got a lawyer.” (Chico in: Marx Brothers, At the Circus, 1939.) – In
the present paper, I re-elaborate certain motifs of my past theoretical
attempts; I also re-analyse some cases that I have, in a different way,
worked upon in the past. The present example was first used in: Beseda
besedo (Ljubljana: ŠKUC, 1984).
38 | Belgrade Journal for Media and Communications #6
2. The conclusion of the first argumentation figures as the argument of the
second argumentation: “Having a lawyer –”
and leads to the second conclusion: “you got more trouble.”
3. The third argument: “But at least you’ll have a lawyer.”
– invites the addressee to draw a conclusion of her-his own.
Sequences written in italics are left unspoken. The articulation of the first
argumentation upon the second one is secured by the double inscription of
“having a lawyer”, presented first as a remedy to the trouble, and next as its
source. The economical procedure of the double inscription of a single signifier into two differently oriented argumentations contributes to the effect of
the witticism. The third inscription completes it.
It seems that we should more closely consider the mechanism that combines
polysyllogistic linking of arguments (conclusion of the preceding argumentation operates as the argument of the following argumentation) with an allusion to an absent sequence that generates the meaning of the utterance.
(1) Although Serbs are inclined to authoritarian government, it will
depend upon the opposition and the civil society whether Serbia will
become authoritarian.
Vili Einspieler, Authoritarian government without opposition – Elections in Serbia, Delo, Ljubljana, 15. 3. 2014
In grammar “although” is a concessive subordinate conjunction: for our purpose, we will say that it inverts the conclusion which would normally follow
from the clause it introduces. Like:
Although the weather is fine, I will not go for a walk.
Although I studied a lot, I failed the exam.
Or, in general terms:
Although A is an argument for the conclusion C, the speaker is not going to conclude to C.
Interpretation of the “although-utterances” obviously hinges upon the assumption that, were it not for the expression “although”, the argumentation
would run:
Rastko Močnik
| 39
The weather is fine, I will go for a walk.
I studied a lot and I passed the exam.
The link that connects the argument (or the ground) and the conclusion (or
the claim) is called warrant by Stephen E. Toulmin and topos by Oswald
Ducrot. This link is not explicitly mentioned in the utterance: it is tacitly proposed by the speaker and admitted by the addressee. In our examples, Ducrot
would reconstruct the connecting links as: “When the weather is fine, it is to
be expected that the walk is pleasant” and “If one studies, it is to be expected
that one passes the exam”.
The “missing link” determines the meaning of the utterance – and is not
perceived as “missing” either by the speaker or by the interpreter. Contrary
to Toulmin and Ducrot, we will not conceive it as a frozen stereotype that
hovers above a given discursive universe and determines the cultural horizon
of a communicational community. We will rather conceptualise it as a fragment of the “discourse of the other” (čužoe slovo) in the Bakhtinian sense, to
which the utterer and the interpreter spontaneously refer while producing the
sense of their intercourse. As long as it is undergone in the manner of a reified Aristotelian topos,7 it is the material support of ideological interpellation
that reproduces the existing ideological constellation. If it is made to operate
as a piece of discourse towards which the explicit sequences of an utterance
polemically point, it may effectuate a disruptive interpellation, and it may
become, in Vološinov’s words, “the arena of the class struggle”.
One cannot easily imagine the link which in (1) connects the argument to
the conclusion.8 On the other hand, readers of Ljubljana daily Delo have no
difficulty understanding it. We may surmise that an ordinary Delo-reader
interprets (1) as: “Although Serbs are inclined to authoritarian government,
it will depend upon the activities of the opposition and the civil society after
the elections whether Serbia will become authoritarian”.
7
8
Cf. Aristotle’s definition of the topos: “[…] those opinions are
‘generally accepted’ which are accepted by every one or by the majority
or by the philosophers – i .e. by all, or by the majority, or by the most
notable and illustrious of them.” Aristotle, Topics, Book I, Chapter 1,
translated by W. A. Pickard.
There would be no problem to interpret an utterance like: “Although
Serbs are inclined to authoritarian government, they are not likely to
elect an authoritarian government this time” .
40 | Belgrade Journal for Media and Communications #6
Understanding of (1) seems to depend upon a particular representation of the
multi-party parliamentarian system according to which the electoral body
does not have much to say once the elections are over. Although the sequence
that would convey such a representation is missing from (1), its writer and
his readers seem to be able to accede to the meaning it generates. The missing link is proposed as self-evident and by way of a tacit suggestion smuggled into the communicational interaction as one of its material supports.
Completed with the missing sequence, (1) would run as follows:
(1’) Although Serbs are inclined to authoritarian government, the attitude of the body politic will not affect the final political outcome, whatever the result of the elections; it will depend upon the opposition and
the civil society whether Serbia will become authoritarian.
Note that the utterance has the structure of a double enthymeme: the missing
conclusion of the first argument figures as the missing argument of the final
conclusion:
Argument1 Although Serbs are inclined to authoritarian government,
Conclusion1 the attitude of the body politic will not affect the final political
outcome, whatever the result of the elections;
Argument2 [as] the attitude of the body politic will not affect the final political
outcome,
Conclusion2 it will depend upon the opposition and the civil society whether
Serbia will become authoritarian.
Consequently, it is not only the obvious element of chauvinism that supports
the ideological operation in (1) (i.e., Serbs as an authoritarian nation); much
more performing is the non-obvious element that presents the bourgeois parliamentarism first as “normal” and second as beneficent, since it corrects the
Serbs’ sinister mores.
The tacitly suggested component is doubly inscribed in the argumentation
scheme: first as the conclusion of the first argumentation sequence and next
as the argument of the following one. The scheme of (1) could be represented
as follows (the explicit components are in bold and the tacitly suggested
components are in italics):
Rastko Močnik
| 41
A1
C1 = A2
C2
This seems to be a frequent ideological mechanism. The following utterance
offers its expanded version.
(2) Without Crimea, Ukraine probably has an even better chance to become a reformed democratic state. It will be more pro-European, since
it lost so much pro-Russian population.
Roman Szporluk, professor emeritus, Harvard University, interview in Delo, Ljubljana, 12. 4. 2014
Completing the missing sequences, we can re-write (2) as follows:
Argument1 Ukraine lost a lot of pro-Russian population.
Conclusion1 [therefore] it will be less pro-Russian.
Argument2 [as] Ukraine will be less pro-Russian,
Conclusion2 it will be more pro-European.
Argument3 [as] Ukraine will be more pro-European,
Conclusion3 it will be more democratic.
Argument4 [As] Ukraine will be more democratic,
Conclusion4 it has a better chance to become a reformed democratic state.
It is the tacit components that construe semantic features which support the
argumentation: the opposition “pro-Russian vs. pro-European” and the equation “pro-European = democratic”. The poly-enthymemic scheme is thus a
flattening formalisation of a polyphonic process where “orientation towards
another discourse” (in the Bakhtinian sense: ustanovka na čužoe slovo) produces ideological effects. The reference to another discourse generates the
meaning of the utterance, and occurs automatically in the act of interpretation. Consider the following argumentation:
(3) There are no more Stalinists in our Party; we liquidated the last one
yesterday.
(3) would not produce the comical effect it does were it not for the reference to another discourse that undermines its seemingly logical argumenta-
42 | Belgrade Journal for Media and Communications #6
tion. The reference intervenes between the argument “We liquidated the last
Stalinist yesterday” and the conclusion “therefore there are no more Stalinists in our Party”. The reference that triggers the humorous effect is automatic with everybody who masters the particular “Stalinist-Party” jargon:
Argument1 We liquidated the last Stalinist yesterday;
Conclusion1 [therefore:] we resorted to Stalinist methods.
Argument2 [As] we resorted to Stalinist methods,
Conclusion2 there are no more Stalinists in our Party. (??)
Until now, we have been considering cases where the argument and the conclusion were explicitly stated, while the conclusion could only be reached
from the argument by the mediation of “another” discourse which secured
the connection C1 = A2. The following is an utterance where only the first
argument is explicitly proposed, and the interpreter has to provide both the
mediating sequence and the final conclusion.
(4) This is a choice between Europe and the Balkans.
Slovene Prime minister Janez Drnovšek, interview,
Dnevnik, Ljubljana, 3. 6. 1995
(4) can be analysed as follows:
This is a choice between Europe and the Balkans.
Argument1 Conclusion1 [therefore:]it is the choice between civilisation and barbarism.
[As] it is the choice between civilisation and barbarism,
Argument2
Conclusion2 one/we/you can only chose Europe.
(4) actually offers you a choice: you can chose Europe either because it is
civilised or because it is the opposite of the barbaric Balkans. The horizon of
democratic deliberation here stretches between Balkano-phobia and Europhilia.
Utterances (1) – (4) share the common feature that their interpretation or
their “uptake” depends upon the interpreter’s reconstruction of the “other”
discourse to whom they refer – not in their meaning, but by way of their
structure, by the constraints of their argumentation procedure. However, this
strictly formal completion of the utterance yields its meaning: the interpreter,
by completing the utterance with the sequence towards which it is oriented,
Rastko Močnik
| 43
assumes this decisive ideological component and, by the act of understanding, in a certain way “ratifies” the ideological element. This is the mechanism
of ideological interpellation; or, better yet, this is one of the mechanisms of
ideological interpellation, the one that relies, in Bakhtin’s terminology, upon
one-directional double-voicedness.9 We will call this type of ideological interpellation interpellation by identification, since the interpreter, by identifying her/himself with the addressee of the utterance, transforms her/himself
into the individual, interpellated as the Ego (and not directly as the subject,
as in Althusser’s famous formula).10
Before analysing the second type of interpellation, we shall examine a transitional kind that emerged at the beginning of Western individualism in French
classical tragedy. We shall consider the case of Chimène in Corneille’s Le Cid.
However, rather than taking the elaborated way in which Corneille presents
Chimène in his tragedy, we shall look at the blunt ideological presentation
of Chimène’s dilemma that Corneille found in a Spanish historia and which
struck his mind. After quoting the passage in Spanish, Corneille comments:
Ceux qui entendent l’espagnol y remarqueront deux circonstances:
l’une, que Chimène, ne pouvant s’empêcher de reconnaître et d’aimer
les belles qualités qu’elle voyait en don Rodrigue, quoiqu’il eût tué
son père, alla proposer elle-même au roi cette généreuse alternative, ou
qu’il le lui donnât pour mari, ou qu’il le fît punir suivant les lois; l’autre,
que ce mariage se fit au gré de tout le monde.
(Corneille, Avertissement, 1648.)
How did Chimène arrive at the idea to propose this generous alternative to
the monarch? We can reconstruct her reasoning as follows:
9
10
In chapter 5 “Discourse in Dostojevskij” of Problems of Dostojevskij’s
Poetics (1963: Problemy poètiki Dostoevskogo, Moskva: Sovetskij
pisatel’), Bakhtin gives a classification of discourses where he first
distinguishes single-voiced discourse (edinogolosnoe slovo) from
double-voiced discourse (dvugolosnoe slovo). The differential feature
of the double-voiced discourse is its orientation towards another
discourse (ustanovka na čužoe slovo). The double-voiced discourse can
be one-directional (where the directions of the two discourses are the
same) or pluri-directional (where the two directions differ). Parody is a
multi-directional double-voiced discourse. Examples of one-directional
double-voiced discourse are stylisation, skaz’, Icherzählung.
Or, in Freudian terms: the interpreter …
44 | Belgrade Journal for Media and Communications #6
Argument1 I have a choice.
Conclusion1 [therefore:] I am free.
[As] I am free,
Argument2
Conclusion2 I can delegate my being free to the monarch.
The sequence relies upon the triple inscription of the signifier “free”: first
the familiar double inscription at the articulation C1 = A2, and next the third
inscription in C2 that changes the direction of the argumentation and transforms freedom into subjection. It is perhaps this almost Hobbesian logic in
Chimène’s reasoning that fascinated Corneille: the transition from the first
argument to the second is secured by the reproductive interpellation C1 =
A2, while the disruptive third inscription ends up in the act of subjection.
Chimène’s tour de force consists in accomplishing the act of subjection as
an act of freedom. This seems to be an extravagant illustration of Althusser’s
intuitive equation of subjectivation with subjection.
Chimène’s case as presented in the Jesuit father Juan Marianna’s chronicle
thus combines interpellation by identification and the mechanism that we
will analyse as interpellation by subjectivation. For subjectivation is also
the effect of a double inscription of a signifier, only that now the signifier is inscribed in two differently directed discourses. We will exemplify it
with the utterance that Rancière offers as a paradigmatic case of political
subjectivation:11
11In Au bords du politique (Paris: Gallimard, 2004) Jacques Rancière
actually remains within the limits of an intuitive notion of political
subjectivation. Although he rightly opposes subjectivation to
identification, this seems more an essayistic determination a contrario
than the production of a problem field. – We can notice an analogous
inability to proceed from philosophical intuition to theoretical
conceptualisation already in Rancière’s contribution to Lire Le Capital
(Le concept de critique et la critique de l’économie politique des
“Manuscrits de 1844” au “Capital”). There Rancière meticulously
analyses Marx’s “genesis of the value form” and rightly claims that the
theory of the possibility of the “impossible” simple-exchange equation
radically distinguishes Marx from the classical political economy.
However, Rancière purports that the instance of overdetermination (that
makes the “impossible” equation possible) is the capitalist mode of
production and not the simple commodity production (Louis Althusser
and others, Lire Le Capital, Paris: PUF, 1996, 121). By overlooking
Marx’s initial distinction between the simple commodity production
Rastko Močnik
| 45
(5) We are all German Jews!12
There is a relevant difference in the way how the double inscription, the
pivot of ideological mechanism, operates in Marchais’s “original” and in
the students’ riposte. Marchais’s utterance proposes the standard interpellation by identification, anchored in the non-uttered redoubled sequence C1
= A2. In the students’ slogan, the double inscription is more complex: the
doubly inscribed element “German Jew” refers simultaneously to the con-
12
and the capitalist production (which is also an epistemological break
with the classical political economy), Rancière runs into serious
difficulties, and finally fails to interpret Marx’s concept of die
verwandelte Formen, the converted forms. Rancière’s philosophical
blunder blocks theoretical analysis since, “if we ask ourselves about the
structure of the relations among the classes in a given society, […] we
are asking ourselves, in the first place, about the ‘transformed forms’
specific to this society” (Étienne Balibar, Concepts fondamentaux du
matérialisme historique, op. cit., 450; my translation). – It is the same
incapacity to develop a theoretical problem field that prevents Rancière
to conceptually articulate his concrete example (“Nous sommes tous des
juifs allemands”, Au bords du politique, 120) as a disruptive ideological
interpellation within the class struggle that was bringing down the
“structure of the relations among the classes” in a critical moment of
history of French imperialism and Euro-Atlantic core-capitalism.
According to the official site of the National Assembly of the French
Republic (http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/histoire/mai_68/
chronologie.asp, 14. January 2012) the slogan “Nous sommes tous des
Juifs et des Allemands – We are all Jews and Germans” appeared for
the first time on 22 May 1968 on a poster for the manifestation against
the interdiction of the stay in France issued against Daniel Cohn-Bendit
a day before; the same source states that demonstrators gathered that
evening in front of the National Assembly shouted the slogan “We are
all German Jews”. Already on 3 May, L’Humanité, the official daily of
the Communist Party of France, published a text by Georges Marchais,
the organisational secretary of CPF, condemning “the agitation that
goes against the interests of the mass of students and favours fascist
provocations”, led by the Movement of 22 March “under the direction
of the German anarchist Cohn-Bendit”. The slogan “Nous sommes
tous des Juifs allemands – We are all German Jews” acquired notoriety
at the manifestation in the Latin Quarter in Paris on 31 May. (I thank
Todor Petkov for his investigation into the background of the students’
slogan.)
46 | Belgrade Journal for Media and Communications #6
tested phantom utterance and to the un-uttered argument that introduces the
counter-argumentation. Contrary to Marchais’s interpellation by identification where the double inscription relays two discourses having the same direction, students’ interpellation by subjectivation articulates two discourses
pointing at opposite directions.
Marchais
The Movement of 22 March is led
by a German anarchist;
Therefore it is led by a false
revolutionary.
The Movement is led by a false
revolutionary;
therefore it is a false revolutionary
movement.
Students
However, we are all the leaders
of our movement;
therefore: We are all German Jews.
The decisive feature that makes for the interpellation by subjectivation is
the inscription of the same sequence into two discourses with opposite directions. We can call this kind of double inscription counter-inscription.13
However, the direction of the second argumentation that is opposite to the
direction of the first (Marchais’s) argumentation is produced by the second
inscription of the sequence “German Jews”. And so is the reference to the
“other” discourse, the unspoken argument A2 that opposes the argument A1.
The subjectivating sequence operates in a contradictory way: it only acquires
meaning by the reference to the A1 it opposes; and it can oppose A1 because
it is treated as a signifier in its pure materiality “before” any eventual meaning. In this way, it carries the polemics with its own occurrence in the “other”
discourse: in Vološinov’s words, it re-articulates itself into “the arena of the
class struggle”.
Thirty years later Daniel Cohn-Bendit, adapting the slogan to the spirit of the
epoch, offered a different interpretation: he transformed revolt into a politics
of identity, and thus reduced the disruptive interpellation by subjectivation to
13
We could also call it “allotric” inscription, from the Greek allótrios:
belonging to another, foreign; contrary, contradictory; alienated, nonadequate.
Rastko Močnik
| 47
a curious interpellation which is disruptive subjectivation with respect to the
contested racist phantom (the counter-inscription of “German Jew”) – and is
reproductive interpellation by identification with respect to the hegemonic
identitary ideology of the nineties (the C1 = A2 inscription of “marginalised
person”):14
Phantom statement
Students according to
Cohn-Bendit, 1998
A German Jew is leading
the movement;
therefore a marginalised person is
leading the movement.
[As] we identify with the marginalised,
We are all German Jews.
The contradictory mechanism of Cohn-Bendit’s re-interpretation, combining
identification by identification with interpellation by subjectivation, is analogous to Chimène’s treatment that led to the voluntary alienation of freedom
to the monarch. The same mechanism that introduced individual freedom at
the beginning of the modern epoch is abolishing it at the end of Modernity. At
the beginning, subjectivation was achieved through subjection to the monarch, at the end it is trapped into self-righteous polemics against a phantom
opponent. At the beginning, interpellation by identification was supported by
the double inscription of the sequence “I am free”, at the end the reproductive redoubled sequence announces identification with the “marginalised”.
14
“Slogan qui reprenait une phrase de Georges Marchais, qui m’avait
traité d’anarchiste allemand pour faire jouer la phobie antiboche:
les étudiants à Nanterre ont crié ce qu’il n’avait pas osé dire: ”juif
allemand“. Depuis, l’anathème raciste contre l’enragé est devenu
anathème antiraciste. Et ce slogan a servi de support au refus de
l’exclusion sous toutes ses formes: ‘Nous sommes tous des immigrés’,
‘Nous sommes tous des étrangers’, ‘Nous sommes tous des sanspapiers’. Il traduit une identification d’une partie de la jeunesse avec
ceux qui sont en marge de la société”. (Nous sommes tous des juifs
allemands. Interview with Daniel Cohn-Bendit, L’Express, 16 April
1998. http://www.lexpress.fr/informations/nous-sommes-tous-des-juifsallemands_628699.html#pjTjK6fT6pv5JJMM.99; 12 May 2014.)
48 | Belgrade Journal for Media and Communications #6
Political practice and theoretical practice
At the beginning of this paper, we showed how particular theories of ideology produce specific political consequences. At this point, we cannot as
yet speculate about eventual political consequences of the above sketched
theory; however, we can already show that our theory makes it possible to
describe the articulation between political and theoretical practices. We shall
examine this articulation on the relatively simple historical example of Lenin’s polemics against otzovizm.15
At a first glance, we can resume the two opposing position in the debate as
follows:
Otzovists
The Duma is a reactionary
political apparatus, therefore
we should boycott it.
15
Lenin
However, the Duma is also an
ideological apparatus, therefore we
shall use it as a platform for our
agitation and propaganda.
After 1906, sharp debates arose in the Russian Social-democratic
Labour Party about whether to participate in the “Second Duma” or to
boycott it. The radical left wing advocated a boycott with the argument
that the Duma is a monarchical and bourgeois political apparatus and
should therefore be destroyed, together with the bourgeois monarchy,
by the proletarian revolution. Against this position, called “otzovizm”
(from the Russian verb “отозвать” – “to call back, to recall” /the
representatives of the revolutionary parties from the Duma – the
tsarist parliament/), Lenin argued that, in class-terms, the Duma
was even worse, since it was the political apparatus of the landlord
and reactionary bourgeois counter-revolution; however, the Duma
was also an ideological apparatus and, as such, it should be used by
revolutionary parties for their agitation and propaganda, as a subsidiary
field of struggle integrated into the over-all class struggle predominantly
led outside the Duma and whose immediate political goal was the
formation of a constituent assembly by revolutionary means. The
positions opposed in this debate were both theoreticaally justifiable: but
only one was politically correct. By developing a superior theory of the
Duma as political and ideological apparatus, Lenin was able to impose
the politically correct response to a historical situation.
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In this immediate form, the debate opposes two ideological discourses. If
we reconstitute the missing link C1 = A2 in the otzovist discourse, we obtain:
Otzovists
The Duma is a reactionary political apparatus,
therefore it is unsuitable to our political work.
It is unsuitable to our political work,
therefore we should boycott it.
Lenin intervened at the place of the un-uttered sequence C1 = A2 that binds
together the argument and the conclusion of the otzovist ideological argumentation. He developed the concept of “political work” that is implicit in
his polemics and can be restored as follows:16
1. Political work is not only the work within the frame of bourgeois
political apparatuses. On the contrary: revolutionary political work is
primarily performed outside the bourgeois political sphere, it is the selforganisation of the proletariat. The main dimension of revolutionary
political work is the construction of an autonomous proletarian political
apparatus, i.e., the organisation of a proletarian party. The proletarian
party engages in two dimensions of the proletarian class struggle:
a. In agitation, propaganda, critique, exposure (of the “real” nature
of other parties): i.e., in ideological work.
b. However, the main dimension of the proletarian struggle in this
historical conjuncture is a direct revolutionary
struggle: strikes, uprisings etc. whose goal is the convocation of a
constituent assembly by revolutionary means.
2.. Political work is performed also, although not primarily, in ideological apparatuses: and it will be possible to transform the Duma into an
ideological apparatus and there to carry out a partial and subordinate
ideological work.
16
We resume Lenin’s implicit theory of political work from: the two
articles in Proletariy of 9 July and 21 August 1906; and from Lenin’s
interventions at the V. Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic
Labour Party (30 April - 19 May - 13 May - 1 June, 1907).
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In Lenin’s polemics, the binding missing link is provided by a transposition
of theoretical discourse onto ideological discourse. In the implicit theoretical
discourse, Lenin introduces a subtle double distinction: first the dominant
distinction between two types of revolutionary practice, and the two apparatuses that correspond to this distinction (the political apparatus and the
ideological one). And next, within the ideological practice, the subordinate
distinction between the primary ideological practice carried out among the
“masses” (“education”) and the secondary ideological practice. The secondary ideological practice is the one performed within the bourgeois political
apparatus, transformed by this practice itself into a subaltern ideological apparatus of the proletarian politics.17 This complex theoretical construction
is condensed within the ideological discourse into a distinction that appeals
to (ideological) intuition, the distinction between a partial form of the proletarian class-struggle and “the struggle of the proletariat as a whole”. An
important practical consequence follows: the part should be subordinated to
the whole.18
17
18
Lenin presented the difference between the main political work among
the masses and the subordinate political operations in the Duma as
follows: “The second point is devoted to an explanation of the relation
between direct “legislative” activity in the Duma, and agitation,
criticism, propaganda, organisation. The workers’ party regards the
connection between work within and without the Duma very differently
from the way the liberal bourgeoisie regards it. It is necessary to stress
this radical difference of views. On the one hand, there are the bourgeois
politicians, enraptured by their parliamentary games behind the backs
of the people. On the other hand, there is a contingent of the organised
proletariat that has been sent into the enemy camp and is carrying on
work closely connected with the struggle of the proletariat as a whole.
For us there is only one, single and indivisible, workers’ movement – the
class struggle of the proletariat. All its separate, partial forms, including
the parliamentary struggle, must be fully subordinated to it. For us it is
the extra-Duma struggle of the proletariat that is decisive”. (Report of
the Commission Formed to Draft a Resolution on the State Duma, 18
/31/ May, V. Congress of the RSDLP, 1907.)
Lenin explicitly underlines the asymmetry between the parliamentary
form of the proletarian struggle and its extra-parliamentary forms:
“The part must conform to the whole, and not vice versa. The Duma
may temporarily serve as an arena of the class struggle as a whole, but
only if that whole is never lost sight of, and if the revolutionary tasks
of the class struggle are not concealed”. (Vladimir I. Lenin, Report of
the Commission Formed to Draft a Resolution on the State Duma, May
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Lenin
However, the Duma is also an ideological apparatus,
therefore it can be made into the arena of a subordinate and partial
dimension of our political work.
It can be made into the arena of a subordinate and partial dimension of our
political work;
therefore we shall use it as a platform for our agitation and propaganda.
Theory intervenes at the place of the double inscription: the doubly inscribed
sequence is “our political work”. The signifier “our political work” is doubly
inscribed both in the otzovist and in Lenin’s discourse at the locus of the nonuttered ideological sequence that provides the binding component C1 = A2. In
the otzovist discourse, it belongs to a spontaneous and intuitive notion of political practice. In Lenin’s discourse, however, the signifier, before entering
the concrete discursive formation, already belongs to two radically heterogeneous discourses, to the theoretical and to the ideological discourse. In the
theoretical register, it is a component of the complex conceptual field structured by theoretical distinctions (“political / ideological”, “dominant aspect
/ subordinate aspect”, “proletarian practice-apparatus / bourgeois practiceapparatus” etc.) that produce a theoretical problématique. In the ideological
register, the signifier “our political work” is both a projection of a theoretical
concept onto the ideological field, and as such a projection, an ideological
notion participating in the ideological opposition “part/whole”.
In this case, the redoubled sequence “political work” supports, within the
ideological argumentation, the trivial interpellation by identification. Its
counter-inscription operates in another dimension – within the relation between ideological discourse and theoretical discourse. Here, the heterogeneity of the two inscriptions of the same signifier does not originate in the
opposed directions of the two discourses, since theoretical discourse cannot
have an ideological direction. The “allotric” character of the double inscription resides in the fact that the signifier “political work” operates as a (theo-
18 (31), 1907, The Fifth Congress of the Russian Social-democratic
Labour Party; in: Vladimir I. Lenin, Collected Works, Volume 12,
Moscow: Progress Publishers and Foreign Languages Press, http://
www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1907/5thcong/12.htm accessed
22. July 2013).
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retical) concept in the theoretical discourse and as an (ideological) notion in
the ideological discourse. Interpellation by subjectivation is thus achieved in
the dimension that articulates the heterogeneous theoretical and ideological
discourses. The specificity of this particular kind of interpellation by subjectivation resides in its being approachable through theoretical elaboration and
thus not being dependent upon the spontaneity of ideological mechanisms.
We see that Lenin turned an internal party debate into an opportunity for
theoretical elaboration. We also see that his theoretical elaboration produced
ideological effects within the interior party debate and political effects in the
proletarian class struggle “as a whole”. This may well be one of the characteristic features of the Leninist practice: the capacity to turn fraction strife
into theoretically productive and practically efficient practice; and the complementary ability to translate theoretical achievements into practical tools.
This is a concrete historical instance of the privileged relationship that proletarian political practice enjoys with theoretical practice. We can map Lenin’s
theoretico-political practice upon the scheme we have presented in another
context:19
19
Historical transformation and epistemological discontinuity, Filozofija
i društvo – Philosophy and society, XXIV (4), 2013. There, the scheme
is presented as follows: “A historically given technical composition of
labour power [at the time t] is confronted by a political composition of
the working class historically produced by the workers’ class struggle
[at the time t]. Although at every particular historical moment the class
struggle is determined by the particular technical composition imposed
upon the labour power by the dominant mode of production, class
response to such a technical composition is the response of the working
class, not of the particular labour power trapped in its given historical
technical composition. It is in this sense that class composition is
political: it effectuates a recomposition of the entire class, of all the
various sectors of workers involved in various historically existing
modes of production, dominant or not, and in the many variants of the
dominating mode. Class composition is political as far as it challenges
the ‘technical determinism’ of various historical technical compositions
and reaches beyond the divisions imposed upon the labour power by
the technical existence of the capital as constant capital. By destroying
the fragmentation of workers resulting from the existence of various
technical compositions of the labour force as various historical types
of capital domination and exploitation, political class composition not
only produces a political unity of the working class, it also challenges
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means of productiont
technological unityt
resistance
technical composition of labor powert
theoretical to theory:
knowledge
analysis
destruction
resistance
criticism
political compositiont
political composition of the working classt-1
resistance to criticism
Lenin’s intervention starts as “criticism” against the mechanical transposition to the present of the previously successful former political composition of the working class. (Or, more precisely, Lenin opposes the eventual
present re-actualisation of a component of the previous class-composition,
the boycott of the Duma). Lenin then switches to the theoretical register
and develops an ad hoc analysis of historical conjuncture; he anticipates
“knowledgeable” resistance from the bourgeois side (the “liberals”); having
the domination of the dominating mode of production. While political
composition of the working class results from the class struggle of
the working class under the conditions primarily determined by the
technical composition of the labour force, the technical composition
of the labour force results from the class struggle of the capitalist class
combating the working class political composition [at the previous
historical moment, i.e. at the time t-1]. Accordingly, the technical
composition of the labour force [at the time t] is the response of the
capitalists’ class struggle against the historically antecedent political
composition of the working class [at the time t-1]. This would mean
that the working class has a historical advantage over the capitalist
class under the condition that they succeed in their political class
composition. Permanent technical revolution as one of the basic
features of the capitalist mode should accordingly be considered not
only as the consequence of the competition among individual capitals
to appropriate extra-profit (as it is perceived by the capitalist ideology),
it should primarily be conceived as the result of the permanent struggle
of the capital to break down the political class composition of working
classes.” (Idem, 53; http://instifdt.bg.ac.rs/tekstovi/FiD/2013/FiD-42013/03_Mocnik_2013-4.pdf ; accessed 11 May 2014.)
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constructed the basic conceptual inventory, Lenin translates these concepts
into ideological notions and returns to the ideological register where he combats resistances of the representatives of the previous class-composition (the
Mensheviks), finally proposing the new political line that will result in the
new class-composition, adequate to the new situation.
Rastko Močnik is a sociologist who teaches theory of ideology, theory of
discourse and epistemology of the humanities and social sciences at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. Visiting professor at
the Faculty for Media and Communications, Belgrade. Co-chair of the International Board of Directors of the Institute for Critical Social Studies,
Sofia and Plovdiv. Member of the international advisory board, Eszmélet,
Budapest. Member of the international advisory board, Sociologičeski problemi, Sofia. Member of the editorial board, Vestnik Permskogo universiteta
– Filosofija, psihologija, sociologija, Perm. Member of the editorial board,
Vestnik Novosibirskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Istorija, filosofija.
Vypusk: Žurnalistika, Novosibirsk. Member of the editorial board of the online journal Transeuropéennes, Paris. Member of the editorial board of the
publishing house Založba /*cf., Ljubljana. Doctor honoris causa at the Plovdiv University “Paisiy Hilendarski” (2005).
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| 55