thereby form the thesis’ view on the performative aspects of subjectivity, actualised through competence.
While accounts of subjectivity have a long history in culture studies, philosophy and sociology, the use of this particular concept seems to be of more recent date in studies of work and organisation (Mansfield 2000, See e.g.Rossi 1983)15. Naturally this does not prevent scholars of organisation from having a notion of the human, or deal with the question of who am “I”. My intent here is to establish the theoretical framework that will allow me later to scrutinise and question (some of) the conceptualisations and dealings with this question in studies of work and organisation.
Althusser’s argument: Subjectivity is interpellation
The French philosopher and writer Louis Althusser has a special way of approaching the problem of the subject that has long been left more or less
15A search in the Copenhagen Business School Library database on “subjectivit*” gave 169 entries, the earliest from 1980, whereas a search on “identit*” gave 4.364 entries starting from 1967 (the database begins 1965). Similarly a search in the CBS online journal database,
searching titles, abstract and full text gave 5.578 versus 30.264 entries respectively. Of course, a search like this does not say anything about the content or the context in which these words appear. However, it does suggest that identity is a more widely used concept within economics and the social sciences than subjectivity.
unexplored in studies of organisation. By using the concept of interpellation Althusser in his 1969 text Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (printed in Althusser 1971) develops his theory of how an individual becomes a subject.
Althusser describes the process of subject making, using the example of a person being hailed when walking down the street, and in the act of turning around becomes a subject:
There are individuals walking along. Somewhere (usually behind them) the hail rings out: “Hey, you there!” One individual (nine times out of ten it is the right one) turns around, believing/suspecting/knowing that it is for him, i.e. recognizing that “it really is he” who is meant by the hailing. But in reality these things happen without succession. The existence of ideology and the hailing or interpellation of individuals as subjects are one and the same thing (Althusser 1971:174f).
Around this fairly simple example Althusser develops his central idea that ideology interpellates individuals as subjects. Ideology in this sense is a certain kind of practice with both social and material dimensions. There is no practice except by and in an ideology and there is no ideology except by the subjects and for the subjects, he says (Althusser 1971:170). Thus, ideology is a representational system of patterns reflected in the material conditions of life and the conditions of production in every society; be it customs, behaviour, ceremonies, rituals or ways of thinking. To Althusser, ideology has no outside; individuals are always-already subjects (Althusser 1971:176). In a similar vein Foucault suggests that there is no outside of discourse (e.g. see Foucault, Blanchot 1987). Importantly, though, for Foucault discourse is not to be equated with language, but entails as also Althusser suggests material practices16. To Althusser ideology is reproduced through the Ideological State Apparatuses17, that is, through practices and institutions like the
16 See Karen Barad (2003:818ff) for a lucid presentation of how Foucault’s thoughts on discourse can be utilised to promote a posthumanist account of material-discursive practices.
17 Note that Althusser’s Ideological State Apparatuses, which he abbreviates ISA, are narrower than Foucault’s use of the word apparatus (dispositif), by which he means the way in which knowledge and power are sometimes brought together , sometimes differentiated. “What I am trying to pick out with this term is, firstly, a thoroughly heterogeneous ensemble consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositions – in short, the said as much as the unsaid. Such are the elements of the apparatus. The apparatus itself is the system of relations that can be established between these elements. Secondly, what I am trying to identify in this apparatus is precisely the nature of the connection that can exist between these
heterogeneous elements.” (Foucault 1980:194). Note also how Foucault, in the interview Discourse of History, where he comments on the Order of Things at the same time as he pays
church, the family, and in particular the educational system (schools, universities and the like). It is due to the workings of these apparatuses, and the way they are deeply rooted in us, that we are always-already subjected, like an unborn child becomes a subject way before it is born, through the rituals and expectations of a
“birth” (Althusser 1971:176). Were we to extend this functioning of ideology unto the workplace, we might say that the employee is produced or manufactured (Jacques 1996) by the material and discursive practices (i.e. policies, agreements and contracts, procedures of recruiting, hiring, appraising, firing, etc.). For Althusser a basic condition of being human is to live in and through ideology.
Ideology is immediate, which is why we never question it (Holm 2005:56).
The Master subject
To Althusser the ruling ideologies in every society act like a Big Subject or Master Subject, by which all the smaller subjects are modelled or mirrored. Conclusively, as a result of the hailing process individuals or collectives are becoming subjects when granted a steady position in the structural relation of ideology. Through interpellation the (good) individual becomes a subject to law, to God, to economy or whatever the Big subject ideology of interpellation might be (Andersen 2003a).
The small subjects, if they want to perform as good subject, are now left with no other choice than to follow the rules and structures of the ideological state apparatuses. Althusser is clear in his critical edge by saying that subjects work “all by themselves”:
They are inserted into practices governed by the rituals of the ideological state apparatuses. They “recognize” the existing state of affairs (das Bestehende), that “it really is true that it is so and not otherwise”, and that they must be obedient to God, to their conscience, to the priest, to de Gaulle, to the Boss, to the engineer, that thou shall “love thy neighbour as yourself”, etc. Their concrete, material behaviour is simply the inscription in life of the admirable words of the prayer: “Amen – so be it”. (Althusser 1971:181)
The view that subjects are interpellated to “recognise the existing state of affairs”
has given rise to heavy critique of Althusser (Andersen 2003:52). The critique goes that Althusser should have argued for primacy to be given to the underlying tribute to Althusser, distinguishes his own work from Althusser e.g. by pointing to how
Althusser thinks the idea of epistemological break as a way of describing changes in structural transformations comes from Marx whereas he does not (Foucault 1996:19-32).
structures of society in expense of the subject’s possibility to resist. According to this position, the development of society (and most prominently the rise and dominance of modern capitalism) cannot be explained via the subjective motives of individuals but by the structural unity determining the actions of individuals (Lübcke et al. 2003). Thus, when Althusser continues that the
individual is interpellated 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 (Althusser 1971:182)
it is taken as a token of a fixed structure of the ruling ideology, by which the individual is interpellated and confronted with a so-called “free” choice. The subject can choose between reason and madness, between accepting its position in order to become a “sensible” subject, or face the exclusion from reason without the possibility of defining oneself as a meaningful subject (Andersen 2003a). But, to make the argument, which has been commonplace, that Althusser should be favouring a deterministic view on the developments in history is too simplistic.
The epistemological break between science and ideology
In Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses Althusser was first and foremost interested in developing a theory of ideology and according to Althusser there is an epistemological break between a science or philosophy and ideology in practice.
This relation is not an assured one, but consists in a constant struggle. The epistemological break takes place every time, by analysing the fundamental structures of society, we exceed the ostensible evidence of ideology. Though his ideas found fertile ground in the 1960s and 1970s university Marxism and in political circles, which capitalised (sic) on Althusser’s fame and used it to promote changes in the way society should be organised, he often met these events with silence.
When Althusser concludes “There are no subjects except by and for their subjection”, which is why they “work all by themselves” (Althusser 1971:182), it should be seen as a way to describe how ideology tend to become self-propelling.
If one is reminded of Freud and Lacan’s concepts of the unconscious and the mirror-stage, respectively, it is no coincidence. Althusser sums up his points about ideology as a mirror-structure arguing that ideology ensures: a) the interpellation of individuals as subjects, b) their subjection to the (Master) Subject, c) the mutual recognition of subjects and Subject, the subjects’ recognition of each other, and
finally the subject’s recognition of himself and d) the absolute guarantee that everything is so, and on the condition that subjects recognise what they are and behave accordingly, everything will be right: Amen – “So be it” (Althusser 1971:181).
As hinted the process of subject formation is not, according to Althusser, selfevident. The subject is an ambiguious term, says Althusser. In addition Althusser believes society and the subject to be anti-essentialistic. Society is not something given, but exists in a complex of social relations. And the development of society is not ruled by one basic principle, but by co-constitutions of individuals and groups. This is why it is even more important to note the reservations that Althusser gives in the post-script of his essay. In a very modest tone he stresses that “the few schematic theses” presented here, are “obviously abstract” and “leave several important problems unanswered” (Althusser 1971:183). The functioning of the Ideological State Apparatusses should merely be seen as a contribution to the realisation of the reproduction of the relations of production. He further argues:
The “mechanism” of ideology in general is one thing. … If there is any truth in it, this mechanism must be abstract with respect to every real ideological formation. … Whoever says class struggle of the ruling class says resistance, revolt and class struggle of the ruled class. That is why the ISAs are not the realization of ideology in general, nor even the conflict-free realization of the ideology of the ruling class (Althusser 1971:184f emphasis in original).
The dissociation from determinism could not possibly be clearer. Nevertheless, the purpose of Althusser’s essay Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses seems to be to investigate how the structure of capitalist society might reproduce itself.
Repressive state apparatuses (e.g. the police or the legal institutions) are not enough. Ideological State Apparatuses, which I have pointed to above, that reproduce values, meanings, and logic reinforce to some extent capitalist values, but it is not a deterministic relationship. Thus capitalism succeeds by creating subjects who become its instruments and bearers.
My aim in drawing attention to the concept of interpellation is not to argue for a reawakening of Marxist theory, but to show how Althusser’s notion of subjectivity as interpellation can be seen as a powerful explanatory concept to study the politicised movements of subjects and the effects of diversification, when
competence is actualised. According to Althusser ideology is essentialistic, it proclaims to present the true order of things. Hence ideology represses the relational conflicts and contrasts that science invites us to dissect (Holm 2005:61).
In sum, Althusser presents us with a task of unmasking the coherent and consistent image that ideology equips us with, in which we are turned into subjects. We shall return later to the more specific consequences this way of framing the problem of subjectivity have for the study of competence, but for now let me confine myself to say that Althusser, with his concept of interpellation, develops an important contribution to the theory of subjectivity that precedes by a good few years the in organisation studies otherwise so heavily cited idea of subjectivation mentioned first and foremost with reference to Foucault. Althusser’s contribution has wrongly been claimed overdeterministic, and may be of central concern for us today, when we want to illuminate the workings of subjectivity at work.