ISAs of race

There was a time when I thought Althusser was the sort of academic Marxist whose theory removed the possibility of agency, action, freedom, etc. Under the influence of E. P. Thompson's polemic aimed at French Marxism (namely, structuralist Marxism), The Poverty of Theory, and journal wars with the New Left Review, I didn't even bother to read M. Althusser. Later, during a structuralist epiphany, Althusser became required reading, especially for anyone with a sympathetic engagement with Judith Butler's writings. The essay on Ideological State Apparatuses* is one of those classic works that will endure long after Thompson's theoretically weak broadsheet becomes a mere archival footnote in the history of 2oth century British Marxism. 

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The most significant part of this essay is the section on ideology in which Althusser introduces a general theory of ideology and the concept of interpellation. These two elements of the theory of ISAs is pertinent with regard to race and racial profiling as it arises in the University. 

Thesis I: Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence. (...) However, while admitting that they do not correspond to reality, i.e., that they constitute an illusion, we admit that they do make allusion to reality and that they need only be 'interpreted' to discover the reality of the world behind their imaginary representation of the world (ideology = illusion/allusion).

Let's think with Althusser's definition. There is no "thing" called race, it is an imaginary relationship people entertain in relation to their existence. Let's loosen the typical Marxist definition of "real conditions" for a moment. What matters here is precisely the notion of imaginary. Althusser accords a reality to this imaginary in the sentence after the ellipses: ideologies "do make an allusion to reality." If we consider race to fall under this definition of ideology, then we can say that when the University engages in racial profiling, it is instituting (or participates in the institution of) an imaginary relationship between administrators, staff, faculty, and students and their real conditions of existence. What is alluded to is (and here I'll surely violate Marxism 101) another imaginary set of relations, namely race relations between racial groups. Race, race relations, and racial groups are imaginary: they form an ideational circuit, which is both the means for racial profiling and the condition of racial profiling. Thus, and this is where I deviate from Marxist orthodoxy, the first reality to which race -- as ideology -- makes an allusion is this ideational circuit. The second reality to which race makes an allusion is the institution of racialist practices, the concrete social actions that make race -- which is an idea -- more than an idea. Examples of this second reality include support groups and diversity reports that quantify racial membership.

To be sure, Althusser comes close to this argument:

Thesis II: Ideology has a material existence. (...) ideology always exists in an apparatus, and its practice, or practices. This existence is material.

If he believes in God, he goes to Church to attend Mass, kneels, prays, confesses, does penance (...)

Where I differ is this: when it comes to race as an ideology, the idea of race can exist without any material existence. It is merely fortuitous that a material existence is found for it. In other words, the idea of race is always in search of an object (in search of objectification), but does not depend on the acquisition of an object. Kneeling and praying, bowing and scraping before the altar of race does not call race into material existence. 

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The concept of interpellation is also useful for analysis of what racial profiling at the University entails.

I say: the category of the subject is constitutive of all ideology, but at the same time and immediately I add that the category of the subject is only constitutive of all ideology insofar as all ideology has the function (which defines it) of 'constituting' concrete individuals as subjects. In the interaction of this double constitution exists the functioning of all ideology, ideology being nothing but its functioning in the material forms of existence of that functioning.

This is a good description of what racial profiling does: it constitutes racial subjects. Althusser's example of the policeman who hails a person in the street is an apt account of how racial profiling functions in practice:

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 the 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!'

Assuming that the theoretical scene I have imagined takes place in the street, the hailed individual will turn around. By this mere one-hundred-and-eighty-degree physical conversion, he becomes a subject. Why? Because he has recognized that the hail was 'really' addressed to him, and that 'it was really him who was hailed' (and not someone else). 

Following this argument, when an individual is interpellated (or hailed) by an administrator to join a support group or engage in outreach or the like, this individual is turned into a racial subject. Racial profiling, as an example of interpellation, functions as ideology.

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But what if the person doesn't turn around when the police officer shouts 'Hey you there!'? What if the University employee fails to respond to acts of interpellation? Is this 'act of resistance' or exercise of so-called 'agency' really effective against the ISAs of race? The short answer is: no. The ISAs of race cannot be abolished through individual acts. 

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Louis Althusser, "Ideology and ideological state apparatus (notes towards an investigation)", Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (New York: The Monthly Review Press, 2001), 85-126