AUIS symp) as).Ur = LTT |. Bessenyei, J.-P. Gotten, F. Haug, W.F. Haug, _T. Heilmann, K. Holzkamp, B. Johansen, M. Kitamura, E. Laclau, K.-H. Ladeur, \A. de Leeuw, T. Metscher, C. Mouffe, D. Némedi, R. Nemitz, A. Neusiss, S.A. Nohrstedt, M. Pécheux, J.M. Ripalda, |K.R. Scherpe, H. Scholtz, R. Sharp, G. Therborn, F.O. Wolf et al... International General/IMMRCInternational Socialism-Discussion 3 Rethinking Ideology: A Marxist Debate edited by Sakari Hanninen and Leena Paldan Contributors: Istvan Bessenyei, Jean-Pierre Cotten, Wieland Elffer- ding, Frigga Haug, Wolfgang Fritz Haug, Thomas Heilmann, Klaus Holzkamp, Baber Johansen, Minoru Kitamura, Ernesto Laclau, Karl-Heinz Ladeur, André de Leeuw, Thomas Metscher, Chantal Mouffe, Dénes Nemedi, Rolf Nemitz, Armhelm Neustiss, Stig Arne Nohrstedt, Michel Pécheux, José Maria Ripalda, Klaus R. Scherpe, Harald Scholtz, Rachel Sharp, Goran Therborn, Frieder Otto Wolf et al. ARGUMENT-SONDERBAND AS 84 Argument- Verlag, Berlin INTERNATIONAL GENERAL/IMMRC New York & Bagnolet, France»Internntional Socialism-Discussion« (ISD) — Background and Objectives The ruling classes und the centers of state power in the western world are close- knit al the International level; they coordinate their strategies. The Left, on the other hand, Is generally nationally isolated Jn Its reactions, and even al the na- tional! level it is often divided against itself. The various currents In the Left should make a contribution to changing this situation, which results In a hope- Jess weakening of the Left as a whole. The ISD series is intended 10 promote this proces. Our first purpose is 10 decument new positions for discussion and for criti~ que. I1 would be senseless here to exclude any particular position All currents which give new impulses or contribute to learning processes aro to be included. ‘The Left in West Germany needs access to the international discussion to avoid | becoming (or perhaps remaining) provincial, and to be able to share in the wealth of experiences, forms, methods, and new Ideas produced by socialist and anti-imperialist moverncnis all around the world. Furthermore, the ad- vance of the sciences demands and makes possible a constant ronowal of the theorctical tools of Marxism and a ré-evaluation of its basic premises. ISD was founded in order to bring discussions from abroad to the attenuion of the German maraist public. Our third number now attempts (0 use this channel in the opposite direction. The Innguage barriers betwocn different countries are not symmetrical. The exchange relations in theoretical fields are quite often one-way sireets. Communication with our comrades abroad re- quires 2 common language; we have opted for English as the most suitable. The present volume is the fruit of a cooperation among Marxist scholars main- ly in West Germany, Finland, and Sweden. We hope that more linguistically jsolated« marvists will join us. We also hope it will be possible to organize ap international sominar at least once a year. Wolfgang Fritz Haug/Wieland Elfferding in Available: Selbstverwaltung (Argument-Sonderband AS 61) Neue soziale Bewegungen und Masxismus (AS 78) Rethinking Ideology (AS 84) Neue Technik und Sozialismus (AS 95) oo. Coppright © Acguevnt- Vorisy GmbH Borlin 1982. All ciihta ~~ including wundlasion Acgumons-Vering: Redukuon: Atoosoin0r. 430, 1009 Bevin 33, Tel. 020/631 40 79. ‘Acpornons-Voricisd: Tenoler Str. 6, 1000 Borlin 65, Tel. 030/361 90 61. ‘Avosjadde tn USA, UK and Feunce: onosaationa) General, Pob 380, New York, NY 00013. IMME (intar cational Main Medio Rayanred Comes), 179 Ax 6c ta Dhuys, 93170 Bagnolet, France. Tel:{1) 380.36.90. Gypin by Barbara Sioiohandt, Berlan. - Prinsed by SOAK. Hannover. Printed in West Germany: — Co- ver doiigo by Sigsid vo Boumgartco uod Hans Fortich/lao Sogn. —— Jl. ‘Thi. 1983 German ISBN 3-$8619-084.6 Engilsh ISBN: 0-88477-015-X CIP.Kurutitlaufnohipe dee Eoatachon Blblioiok Rothinking ideology/ brag. voo Sakari Himninen o. Leenp Paldia Mit Beitr. woo [nivio Boscayes — — Borlin: Asgiiment-Verlne 1983 (oteroanroaale Soxiahimns-Olikucnion: 3) (Dw Argument: Acgumont-Sooduiband.; AS 84) ISBN 5-3961084-6 NE: bUdomiaun, Satori [Herg.), Bonnsoi, Irvin (Micverf) 1. GT; Dus Argumam/Arpumanr-SondsebandTable of Contents Wolfgang Fritz Haug: Preface... Sakarl Hanninen and Leena Paldén: Editorial Note Discourses on the Ideological Temporal, Spatial, Ideological Wolfgang Fritz Haug: Ideological Powers and the Antagonistic Reclamation of Community: Towards a Better Understanding of » Ideological Class Struggle... Klaus Holzkamp: Base/Superstructure — Above/Below: Spatial ee and the Theory of Ideology. re Dénes Némedi: Comments on the Theory of Ideology... Frieder Otto Wolf: Some Pitfalls of the Theory of Ideology Michel Pécheux: Ideology: Fortress or Paradoxical Space. Herbert Bosch: Summary of Discussions......,.. Differences, Topics, Ideologies Ernesto Laclau: Transformations of Advanced Industrial Societies and the Theory of the Subject José-Maria Ripalda: Topics as Ideology Critique..... Jean-Pierre Cotten: Is it Possible to Hold a »Theoretical« Discourse on »Ideology«?..... Thomas Metscher: Ideology, Culture, Philosophy. Leena Paldan: Summary of Discussions...... 26 31 35 39, 4s 47 50 54 ARQUMENTSONDERDAND AS 64 ©3) any room for the return of the repressed, in short, an organization of the entire societal process of reproduction without any kind of contradictions at all. And it is quite unattractive because human life in such a world would forever be the mere execution of what has been planned in ad- vance, without suffering, it is true, but also without real joy. In fact, such a world, in which the Aiatus between the individual thinking and objective knowledge of reality, between individual wishes and the objective needs of society, has been eliminated once and forever (which makes it necessary for us as individuals to go beyond what we really know in thought and speech and to rebel against what is socially necessary in our wishes as well as in our needs) is quite inconceivable afer the matcrialist discoveries of Marx and Freud. And, in conclusion, this takes me to the necessary practice of materialist philosophy which may never be entirely supplanted by scientific know- ledge: precisely by avoiding the trap of constructing and offering new »philosophies« in the sense implied in the notion of »Weltanschauung« it must find its way to its true vocation. Not by gaining additional know- ledge but by, as it were, rotating around this hiatus, making us simultane- ously aware of it and helping us make a creative use of it, it will, first, be able lo carry class struggle from below (o the very roots of theory, and then, in a future stage of history, be a useful guideline towards the focu- sing of our practice away from our delusions to the real contradictions we are faced with. Notes 1 See also Wolf, F.O., 1982: Uimwege. Hannover, SOAK. Michel Pécheux Ideology: Fortress or Paradoxical Space* (1) 1 should like to intervene in this discussion in two capacities: at the same time as »theoretician« (or rather as a theoretical amateur!) who has been working on the relations between language, discourse and ideologies (starting from the works of Althusser) since 1966, anid as an ex-member of the PCF, whose member I was until 1980. * The present asticle is a summary of two contributions submitied (o the confe- rence: 1) »Zu rebellieren und zu denken wagen«, 2) »ldeology: Fortress or pa- tadoxical Space« (ihe sccond article is going (o be published in German in Das Argument). ARGUMENT-SONDERBAND AS 84 ©32 Michel Pécheux 7 (2) It is impossible to enter calmly into a discussion about the question of ideology without realizing the full extent of the stagnation of Marxism, and without realizing the extent of the catastrophic evolution taken by the »existing socialism«. The Polish coup is only the most recent symptom of this all. (3) I shall try to retrace some points that refer to the path I have been following since 1970 (Althusser's article on the Ideological State Appara- tuses), to evaluate it and to indicate the relation of it to our own actuality. (4) The text on the Ideological State Apparatuses (1.S.A.) was mainly intended to give a blow to the political and ideological narcissism of the organizations of the labour movement — the communist organizations in front — which had installed themselves like sleep-walkers within the psy- chological humanism of »conscience«, of »becoming conscious«, and of pedagogical progress. The problematics of subjection and of interpella- tion, by raising the questions of the effect of the unconscious and of lan- guage within the ideological processes, hit the most sensitive point of the evidences of the self-mastered subject of militant practice. (5) In my own way (see Les Vérités de La Palice, 1975), | have attemp- ted to draw some conclusions regarding the conception of the dominating ideology within class struggle seen as a process of simultaneous reproduc- tion and transformation of ideological formations. I have taken an inter- est in the efforts to construct the link between this conception and that which Foucault has named »discursive formation«, as well as in some descriptions of linguistic-discursive phenomena of interpellation and sub- jection. For German readers, | refer to the texts published by Alternative (especially no. 118, 1978), and to the early »reception« of the Althusserian problematic in Positionen since 1976. (6) Identification (in the Freudian sense) as a fundamental process of the constitution of the subject in his everyday practical evidences has ap- peared to me as the primary matter of a politico-ideological practice of »des-identification«, authorized by the existence of Marxism-Leninism as a scientific theory which escapes (de jure, if not de facto) the identificatory evidences of the subject and its effecis within political practice. This prao- Uce is, therefore, in a relation of external rupture to that of »primary mal- tera, (7) The text »Zu rebellieren und zu denken wagen« (»To dare to rebel and to think«) (1978) ties to part with this theoricist illusion. It tries to conceive resistance, revolt and revolutionary tendency within ideology as internal ruptures to the processes of subjection and of interpellation. Its principle idea js that the dominating ideology is never dominating without contradiction that there never will exist any ideological ritual without slips and that these multiple slips are in fact the space for the constitution of dominated ideologies. These are neither a simple reflection of the domina- ARGUMENY-SONDERDAND AS 84 © 7Fortress or Paradoxical Space 33 ting ideology on the part of the dominated classes, nor an independent germ sui generis, Therefore, the dominated ideologies appear to be caught within the pa- radox of an ambiguity which never stops displacing them by de-regionali- zation: a des-identifying tendency of the masses towards the »non-state«. (8) In the above way, the political question of the famous »functiona- lism« of the I.S.A. article appears to have been deported towards the ter» ritory of psychoanalysis: the text of the 1.S.A. — although it had already alluded to the fact of the dream in the Freudian sense — had neglected this network of phenomena, which Freud had noticed in the lapsus, the parapraxis (slips), the joke (»Witz«) and the dream as an ahistorical effect of the unconscious. — Retrospectively, I should say that the main short- coming of the text on the I.S.A. has been in maintaining a conception of subjection as functional subjection of an I-Subject already identified. (9) The theoretical elaborations which I have just recalled can be under- gtood as attempts (successful or not is another matter!) to comprehend something of the specific fact of ideology, as well as an attempt to »recti- fy« the notion of proletarian ideology within Marxism-Leninism with the hope of getting rid of the plague of Sialinism. The recent development of »existing socialism« has convinced me that it is an urgent matter to stop telling old stories about it, and to pass on to- wards other questions, historical as well as theoretical in nature, concer- ning the global fact of this » Existing socialism«, and the way it is inscribed within the history of capitalist development. (10) The text »Jdeology: fortress or paradoxical space?« (1981) tries to approach things in a different way. In the perspective of historical and cri- tical reflection it no longer has the aim of operating a mere theoretical »rectification«. In this text, I try to reflect upon this evidence: the anti-capitalist revolu- tions of the twentieth century have not occurred in the capitalist center, but at its periphery. This historical fact seems to be related to a structural separation within the development of capitalism between two ways classi- cally described as the »American way« and the »Prussian way«. This structural separation corresponds to a difference in the forms of ideologi- cal subjection (i.c. in the practical relations to body, language and thought), which can roughly be outlined. Concerning the first way: the juridical and political forms of individual freedom and autonomy, the pedagogical practice of self-government and self-controlled debates, a multiplicity of religious forms without ntual uni- fication, repression of drives via the invisible moral interiorization and al- so a conception of Enlightenment as a spontaneous practice of the indivi- dual: the everyday experience of life-, speech- and thought-facis as con- struction of procedures, as rules for interpreting the events. ARGUMENT-SONDERBAND AS $4 ©34 Michel Pécheux Concerning the second way: a constant dependence upon administra- tion and bureaucracies, the respect for orders, hierarchies and frontiers functioning as visible instances of repression, the habit of obedience and drill, the religious interpellation as ritual comportment (indoctrination, censorship and confession), the link to secret scenarios and complots, the inculcation of grammar as a kind of common sense metaphysics, and of thetorics as expression of Truth. The Second World War can be considered as a fight to death between these two capitalist ways: Nazism appears as the most modem form of strategic development within the »Prussian way«. The defeat of Hitler's regime as a triumph of the »American way« had durable ideological and political consequences. First, the tendential invisibility of capitalist exploitation and of its prac- tical identification with »Prussian forms«, at least within the periphery. Second, the plausibility (in spite of all ritual evocations of the decisive contribution of the Soviet army to the destruction of Nazism) of an analogy between the »existing socialism« and the forms of the »Prussian waya, In effect, this incrustation of local reversals within the capitalist: peri- phery, as revolutions of the »Prussian space«, has led to fortress-type states. They protect themselves against outside menaces ad inside contra- dictions with the same military logic, used in the name of emergency- From this point of view, the Stalinist ideology is of a deviation, but a constitutive durable form of state populism. The preeminent role of the Party, the ontological and metaphysical conception of the social classes, the fixed delegations of responsibility, the psycho-pedagogical conception of humanism (development of personali- ly, etc.) and the hatred for the unconscious: these are the persistent cha- racteristics of this fortress-type state of the »existing socialism«. The most important point is that the »American way« of capitalism, in which we are caught, cannor be destroyed as a fortress, because its logic is not a logic of stable objects with fixed frontiers. The »American way« will remain intact as Jong as the progressive and revolutionary movements continue to escape phobically towards fortress-type forms of politico- ideological nepreseatations. (11) I should only like to add that the fundamental relation bewween state and everyday life refers to the question of ideology as a space of a plurality of reproductions and resistances being traversed by those »ideo- logical struggles of movement« at work within the new populisms of our times. In such a perspective, the question of the effecis of language and of the unconscious in everyday practice of the dominated idcologics will be very important. In our book La Langue Introuvable (1981), Francoise Gadet and I have tried to give an idea of this. ARGUMENT:SONDERBAND AS 8 ©35 Marxists or non-Marxists, we especially as Europeans are all inevitably confronted by questions which echo the interrogations of Nietesche, of Freud, of Wittgenstein, of Foucault ... just to mention a few of those who (as Althusser has tried for his part) have confronted the somnabulisms of our modern times. Literature Althusser, L., 1976: Idgologie ct Apparcils Idcologiques d’ Etat, in La Pensée, no 170, 1970. Republished in Positions, Paris. English translation: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, in: idem, Lenin and Philosophy and other Essays, London 1971 Concin, B. ct al., 1981: Matérialités Discursives. Lille Gadet, F., and M. Pécheux, 1981: La Langue Lououvable, Paris Pécheux, M., 1975; Les Vérités de la Palice, Paris. English translation: Stating the Obvious. Language, semantics and ideology, London 1982 Herbert Bosch Summary of Discussions Klaus Holzkamp criticized the basic concepts of the PIT theory: »hori- zontal« vs. »vertical socialization« (»socialization from above« vs, »from below«) are, to Klaus Holzkamp, pure spatial metaphors without any analytical content. In the best of cases they could function as pure descrip- tive terms, which however would have the disadvantage of stabilizing un- political attitudes’ defining themselves as »us down here« vs. »them up above«, and thus rejecting each form of responsibility, centralization and direction. He proposed that Marxist theory should be cleansed of such pu- rely spatial metaphors, i.e. »base/superstructure«, »below/above« becau- se otherwise their analytical content must be defended against their des- criptive sense, as many fruitless discussions on the concept of »reflection« have proved. Sakari Hiinninen extended this criticism. He argued that even the con- cept of ideology does not have scientific content, but refers to a variety of different objects of knowledge. Therefore »ideology« should be substitu- ted by a variety of more precise concepts. There was consent with Emnesto Laclau’s remarks about the basic status of metaphors in human thinking and that there cannot be any theoretical or political discourse without metaphors. Therefore the question is not whether we use metaphors or not, but how they work within a given theo- retical or political discourse. However, there was no consent about the usefulness of the concrete function of these metaphors in the PIT theory. ARGUMENT-SONDERBAND AS &4 ©