Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays

terpellated as a (free) subject in order that he shall submit freely to the commandments of the Subject, i.e. in order that he shall (freely) accept his subjection,

ndividuals are always

the ideological character of ideology by ideology: ideology never says, ‘I am ideological.’ It is necessary to be outside ideology, i.e. in scientific knowledge, to be able to say: I am in ideology (a quite exceptional case) or (the general case): I was in ideo

I might add: what thus seems to take place outside ideology (to be precise, in the street), in reality takes place in ideology.

I shall then suggest that ideology ‘acts’ or ‘functions’ in such a way that it ‘recruits’ subjects among the individuals (it recruits them all), or ‘transforms’ the individuals into subjects (it transforms them all) by that very precise operation which I have called interpellation or hailing, and which can be imagined along the lines of the most commonplace everyday police (or other) hailing: ‘Hey, you there!’

As a first formulation I shall say: all ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects, by the functioning of the category of the subject.

But to recognize that we are subjects and that we function in the practical rituals of the most elementary everyday life (the hand-shake, the fact of calling you by your name, the fact of knowing, even if I do not know what it is, that you ‘have’ a name of your own, which means that you are recognized as a unique subject, etc.)—this recognition only gives us the ‘consciousness’ of our incessant (eternal) practice of ideological recognition—its consciousness, i.e. its recognition—but in no sense does it give us the (scientific) knowledge of the mechanism of this recognition.

. Meaning, there is no ideology except for concrete subjects, and this destination for ideology is only made possible by the subject: meaning, by the category of the subject and its functioning.

• there is no practice except by and in an ideology;
• there is no ideology except by the subject and for subjects. I can now come to my central thesis.

t his ideas are his material actions inserted into material practices governed by material rituals which are themselves defined by the material ideological apparatus from which derive the ideas of that subject.