Thirteenth lecture for my students in English 165EW, "Life After the End of the World," winter 2013 at UC Santa Barbara. Course website: http://patrickbrianmooney.nfshost.com/~patrick/ta/w13/ Course website: http://patrickbrianmooney.nfshost.com/~patrick/ta/w13/

1. Lecture 13: “Endless quantities of the Real”*
English 165EW
Winter 2013
25 February 2013
“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why
on earth should that mean that it is not real?”
— Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, ch.
35.
* Rem Koolhaas, “Junkspace,” p. 189

2. Louis Althusser (1918-1990)
● Held prisoner by the Third
Reich for five years before
entering the prestigious
École Normale Supérieure.
● Commonly referred to as a
“structuralist Marxist,” though
he was critical of both the
PCF and the structuralist
movement.
● Best known for Reading
Capital and For Marx (both
1965).

3. Althusser's first thesis
“Ideology represents the imaginary relationships of
individuals to their real conditions of existence.”
(1264)
– For those who are external to an ideological practice, it
seems that an ideology is a false “world outlook,” and
therefore needs to be “interpreted” to “get at” reality.
– Althusser notes: “ideology=illusion/allusion.”
“What is represented in ideology is therefore not
the system of the real relations which govern the
existence of individuals, but the imaginary relation
of those individuals to the real relations in which
they live.” (1265)

4. Althusser’s second thesis
“Ideology has a material existence.” (1265)
– Ideology is not (only) a set of ideas that then have real-world
implications, but is, rather, inscribed in a set of practices.
● Althusser’s primary example: the Christian ( Catholic, for this≅
particular Frenchman) ideology is not merely a set of beliefs, but
the practice of attending Mass, receiving the sacraments, kneeling
to pray, etc. (1266)
● Other examples are provided on 1269.
● Everyone is obliged to act according to his/her beliefs. “If he does
not do so, ‘that is wicked’” and implies ideas contrary to those that
the individual professes. (1266-67)
– “actions inserted into practices […] governed by the rituals
in which these practices are inscribed, within the material
existence of an ideological apparatus.” (1267)

5. Some implications
● “There is no practice except by and in an
ideology.”
● “There is no ideology except by the subject and for
subjects.” (1268)
– One of the primary functions of ideology is to constitute
subjects as subjects. (Althusser sketches out a quick
history of the idea of “the subject,” noting that it goes
by different names in different ideological systems.)
● More specifically, ideology has the function of
producing subjects who live “spontaneously” within
the bounds sketched out by the ideology.

6. “The elementary ideological effect”
As St. Paul admirably puts it, it is in the “Logos,” meaning in
ideology, that we “live, move, and have our being.” It follows
that, for you and for me, the category of the subject is a primary
“obviousness” (obviousnesses are always primary); it is clear
that you and I are subjects (free, ethical, etc. …). Like all
obviousnesses, including those that make a word “name a
thing” or “have a meaning” (therefore including the obviousness
of the “transparency” of language), the “obviousness” that you
and I are subjects – and that that does not cause any problems
– is an ideological effect, the elementary ideological effect. It is
indeed a peculiarity of ideology that it imposes (without
appearing to do so, since these are “obviousnesses”)
obviousnesses as obviousnesses, which we cannot fail to
recognize and before which we have the inevitable and natural
reaction of crying out (aloud or in the “still, small voice of
conscience”): “That’s obvious! That’s right! That’s true!” (1268)

7. “Let us summarize …”
“… what we have discovered about ideology in
general.
The duplicate mirror-structure of ideology
ensures simultaneously:
1. the interpellation of ‘individuals’ as subjects.
2. their subjection to the Subject;
3. the mutual recognition of subjects and Subject,
the subjects’ recognition of each other, and finally
the subject’s recognition of himself;
4. the absolute guarantee that everything really is
so, and that on condition that the subjects recognize
what they are and behave accordingly, everything
will be all right: Amen – ‘So be it.’” (1271)

8. Blindness and ideology
“Pay attention, I’m going to switch off the light and
you can tell me, now, Nothing, What do you mean
nothing, Nothing, I always see the same white, it’s
as if there were no night.” (9; ch. 1)
“Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be
what they truly are, said the doctor.” (126; ch. 8)
“He [the guard at the third ward] had been waiting
for ages for one of his comrades to come and
relieve him, but for this to happen it was necessary
that the other, on hearing the inner voice of duty,
should wake up by himself.” (157; ch. 10)

9. Identity and blindness
“Were we not trying to reduce her [the girl with the dark
glasses] to some primary definition, we should finally
say of her, in the broad sense, that she lives as she
pleases and moreover gets all the pleasure she can
from life.” (23; ch. 2)
“he [the doctor] simply stretched out his hands to touch
the glass, he knew that his image was there watching
him, his image could see him, he could not see his
image.” (29; ch. 3)
“dear God, how we miss having our sight, to be able to
see, to see, even if they were only faint shadows, to
stand before the mirror, see a dark diffused patch and
be able to say, That’s my face.” (69; ch. 5)

10. “it seemed he was about to give his name, but
what he said was, I’m a policeman, and the
doctor’s wife thought to herself, He didn’t give
his name, he too knows that names are of no
importance here.” (59; ch. 5)
“No one seemed interested in knowing who
had died.” (87; ch. 6)
“Who is speaking, asked the doctor, A blind
man, replied a voice, just a blind man, for that
is all we have here.” (129; ch. 8)
“our names, what do names matter”*
* 58; ch. 5

11. “many ways of becoming an animal”*
“any day now, we shall no longer know who we are, or
even remember our names, and besides, what use would
names be to us, no dog recognizes another dog or
knows the others by the names they have been given, a
dog is identified by its scent and that is how it identifies
others, her we are like another breed of dogs.” (57; ch. 5)
“Someone protested at the far end of the ward. Pigs,
they’re like pigs.” (93; ch. 6)
“Thieving dogs, that’s what they are, commented a rough
voice.” (105; ch. 7)
The doctor’s wife: “If we cannot live entirely like human
beings, at least let us do everything in our power not to
live entirely like animals.” (116; ch. 8)
* 93, ch. 6

12. “Blindness = [X]” constructions ...
● … are never given in the novel. We are never
told, “interpret blindness allegorically in this way.”
● However, there are a number of partial
constructions that move in the other direction, of
the form “[X] is [also] blindness”:
– “who can say that this white blindness is not some
spiritual malaise” (85; ch. 6)
– “to be dead is to be blind” (108; ch. 7)
– “we were already blind the moment we turned blind,
fear struck us blind, fear will keep us blind.” (129; ch.
8)

13. – The rapists in the third ward are “blinded by lust.”
(167; ch. 11)
– The doctor’s wife: “Perhaps I’m the blindest of all,
I’ve already killed and I’ll kill again if I have to.” (191;
ch. 12)
– “The blind are always at war, always have been at
war, Will you kill again, If I have to, I shall never be
free from this blindness.” (193; ch. 12)
– “in death, blindness is the same for all.” (210; ch. 12)
● The doctor’s wife comes to realize that
continuing to counterfeit blindness is pointless:
“blindness is also this, to live in a world where all
hope is gone.” (209; ch. 12)

14. “we ought to start getting organised
without delay”*
The recorded announcement: “the internees
must organize themselves as the see fit” (43;
ch. 4)
“The blind moved as one would expect of the
blind, groping their way, stumbling, dragging
their feet, yet as if organised, they knew how
to distribute tasks efficiently.” (86; ch. 6)
“Unless we organise ourselves in earnest,
hunger and fear will take over here.” (91; ch.
6)
* the doctor, 45; ch. 4

15. “They [the occupants of the third ward]’re
organized, he [the doctor] thought to himself,
this has not suddenly been improvised.” (145;
ch. 9)
“are we agreed that the hand that stabbed him
was the hand of all of us, or to be more precise,
the hand of each one of us. No one replied.”
(197; ch. 12)
“In this place, age is of no account, nor sex,
therefore don’t forget the women.” (203; ch. 12)
“And how can a society of blind people organise
itself in order to survive, By organising itself, to
organise oneself is, in a way, to begin to have
eyes” (296; ch. 16)

16. A preliminary and a final thought
“Faltering, as if his lack of sight had weakened
his memory, the [first] blind man gave his
address, then he said, I have no words to thank
you, and the other replied, Now then, don’t give it
another thought, today it’s your turn, tomorrow it
will be mine, we never know what might lie in
store for us.” (3; ch. 1)
The girl with the dark glasses: “Inside us there is
something that has no name, that something is
what we are.” (276; ch. 15)

17. Media credits
The photo of Louis Althusser (slide 2) is from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Althusser.jpg.
Wikipedia’s rationale for the use of that photo,
which I believe also applies to my use here, is:
Fair use is claimed because there is no
free-license equivalent, the image is widely
available and has no commercial value,
and is being used for educational
purposes to illustrate an article about the
subject.