Kneel, and You Will Believe: Why What We Do Changes How We Think
Interpellation, Althusser, and Cognitive Dissonance
I’m defending my PhD in less than two weeks! So rather than a brand new bit of writing, here’s a small piece of the PhD, slightly edited for style and so on.
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Marxist political theorist Louis Althusser’s work has proposed one of the most influential accounts of ideology and how it is maintained. Nevertheless, lefty theorists are often a bit sheepish about turning to Althusser’s work to explain why people believe things that contribute to their own oppression, for at least two reasons:
Althusser’s work is famously one of the most “structural” accounts of ideology. It involves institutions and structures outside the human mind, with only a minimal account of the psychological processes involved. This can read as a little… severe, “inhuman” and/or quite simply incomplete as an account of why people think the way they do.
In what may or may not have been a complete mental breakdown, Althusser definitely killed his wife. This, subsequently, has made theorising using his works in one’s own writings a little uncomfortable.
There is no good response to the second point, I think, except to acknowledge it and also acknowledge that Althusser’s books are not only still very influential but also often very useful.
But also, here’s an (admittedly rather defensive-of-Althusser) article with an account of his wife’s life and her work in sociology, the French resistance, and more.
As for the first point, in what follows I am going to suggest that there is a way of enriching Althusser’s account of what he calls “interpellation,” so as to explain how people end up believing harmful ideologies due to their actions. We can do this by adding just a little psychology, drawn from cognitive dissonance theory. In other words, cognitive dissonance theory can bridge a gap in theories like Althusser’s without in any way diminishing the importance of institutions and structures; dissonance theory in fact demonstrates why institutions and structures, by influencing our daily behaviour, have the power to alter the way subjects think.
In his famous work, the catchily-titled “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” Althusser relies on psychoanalysis to explain how ideological structures (like the Church or the State) influence the beliefs of subjects. To do this, Althusser builds on the work of the glib, handsome psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, particularly Lacan’s description of “the mirror stage.” In the mirror stage, a term first used to describe an actual developmental stage in childhood, and later a lifelong aspect of subjectivity, subjects come to understand and conceptualise themselves based on the images they receive of themselves from the outside world, even though these representations are often false.
A child, in this somewhat-real-somewhat-metaphorical image, first sees itself as a coherent whole in the mirror, even though a child especially, and a subject of any age, it is not fully coherent or automatically “whole.” Similarly, a subject of ideology (that’s any and indeed all of us, guys!) responds to the image of themself provided by the external ideological apparatus, understanding themselves according to these outside forces. In this sense, ideology is an account of false, or at least compelled and incomplete, self-recognition, and represents what the subject is subject to.1 Just as a child first sees itself in the mirror and comes to understand itself (somewhat falsely!) as a fully individuated self who will be seen by others in the same way, we “see ourselves” in ideology, and come to know ourselves, albeit somewhat inaccurately, through its lens. This self-recognition is not wholly false, of course; we are the subjects of capital, faithful wives, hardworking subjects etc. But it is also limiting, deforming even, to define ourselves this way. Althusser specifically notes that the subject might feel personally called and seen in some way by God, the state, or simply others around them. As he puts it, “ideology ‘obtains from [the subject] the recognition that they really do occupy the place it designates for them as theirs in the world, a fixed residence:’ It really is me, I am here, a worker, a boss or a soldier!” This is why Althusser suggests that ideology is a representation of the “imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.”
Famously, Althusser describes ideologies as “hailing” the subject, using the example of someone being hailed on the street. In a footnote, he reminds the reader that this could well happen when a policeman hails a subject:
There are individuals walking along...the hail rings out: ‘Hey, you there!’ One individual (nine times out of ten it is the right one) turns round 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 any succession. The existence of ideology and the hailing or interpellation of individuals as subjects are one and the same thing.
Okay, we turn around, in effect enacting the fact that we are a subject of the state, and perhaps also confirming that we always were, all along. Yet to the degree that Althusser does detail the psychology of the subject here, using psychoanalysis and ideas from Lacan, there are nevertheless important questions left unanswered. Even if the subject is provided with a possible source of self-understanding by an ideological apparatus, what exactly causes them to accept this “image” of the world and with it an ideological belief? What does the moment of interpellation (to use Althusser’s own jargony phrase) mean for the individual’s subjective experience, and what are the steps it involves? What is the force that brings the subject to this new set of beliefs? After all, we do sometimes reject labels and beliefs that are suggested to us; what prevents subjects from doing this more frequently?
Although supposedly a firmly material explanation for ideology, Althusser’s theory actually touches on the core of how subjects recognise themselves internally, psychologically, and the formation of selfhood. And this psychological aspect of interpellation is drawn in a sketchy, if not incomplete, manner. As writer/theorist Terry Eagleton writes, “Althusser’s theory of ideology would appear to lurch from the economic to the psychological with a minimum of mediation.” Similarly, theorist Mladen Dolar points out that there’s a gap, really, in this explanation:
To elucidate the transition between the external materiality of state apparatuses (institutions, practices, rituals, etc.) and the interiority of ideological subjectivity, Althusser borrows a famous suggestion from Pascal, namely his scandalous piece of advice that the best way to become a believer is to follow the religious rituals (although they appear completely senseless to a nonbeliever), after which the creed will follow by itself with an inescapable necessity. So where does the creed come from?
Other theorists like David Leopold have asked related questions about this theoretical gap. All these questions about Althusser’s account in many ways boil down to:
why do subjects respond to and even embrace ideology when they could just reject it?
also, why does it matter that the subject turns around and responds to the “policeman,” or kneels to pray?
I’d like to suggest that we can’t answer either question without a little psychology, and we can answer both with a bit of dissonance theory. I know that, at least in my own niche field, this might be taboo, because although Althusser relies on psychoanalysis as part of his own explanation for ideology, he’d likely oppose an “overly” psychological account of interpellation due to his aforementioned structuralist commitments.
Nevertheless: dissonance theory provides an account of one way people are interpellated by ideologies, which is that discomfort is generated when people are forced to engage in acts in the world that conflict with some of their experiences or beliefs. This discomfort, in turn, influences people to shift their beliefs in order to align with their experiences, and especially what they see as their chosen actions.2
As I have previous described, cognitive dissonance is not just part of a common insult on Twitter, but actually a very specific measurable phenomenon: the discomfort that occurs in some cases when subjects notice a contradiction between two or more of their own beliefs or actions. This discomfort often, though not always, leads to creative rationalisations or very selective readings of evidence in order to reconcile this contradiction as swiftly as possible, even in very artificial and harmful ways.
To better understand what this looks like, we can look at one common type of dissonance study, the effort-justification study, where people engage in an activity (action) even when they think it is humiliating or tedious (belief) and then adjust their beliefs to reduce this dissonance by concluding that the reward for the activity is extremely valuable. A common method for such studies is to ask research participants to make an argument for something they do not believe. The researchers ask participants (usually university students, as so often in cognitive psychology) to write an essay making the case for something “counterattitudinal”: something they disagree with, like an increase in tuition fees. After students complete the essay, the researchers tell the students that it will be used to convince others, perhaps the administration itself. At this point, study participants generally begin to agree (at least more than before) with the essay they wrote, despite their previous disagreement; in surveys following the essay-writing task, they score proposals to increase tuition fees far more favourably than do control groups who did not face the task of writing something that contradicts their beliefs. This is pretty wild, given that university students have few reasons to want higher tuition and that these folks absolutely didn not want higher tuition before writing their essays to get credit for some psychology class. What it shows is when subjects realise, even unconsciously, that their actions contradict their beliefs, they often change their beliefs to avoid discomfort. This shift occurs as a way of reducing the uncomfortable dissonance that they feel—at least unconsciously—between their previous views and their new action (writing the essay). Notably, the students cannot undo having written the essay, and so it is easier to alter their own views—though this generally happens entirely unconsciously. Here beliefs follow actions, not the other way around.
This theory extends beyond the lab to explain the patterns observed in fraternity inductions and cult inductions: there are numerous instances where subjects think something like: I freely chose to do this activity (action), BUT it was humiliating (conflicting belief) HOWEVER that is okay because the reward for the activity is very good and worth it (changed belief). Another variant occurs in the induced-compliance paradigm studies, where subjects face a contradiction between the action I told the person an activity was interesting and the belief this activity is boring and resolve the dissonance between these two by straightforwardly changing their beliefs to believe this activity is actually pretty interesting. Our minds change; but we don’t realise it. We can even come to like things we originally found terrible.
All this suggests a mechanism for ideology whereby subjects and their beliefs are not only swayed by simply absorbing speech, writing and culture, but via the dissonance people experience between their actions and their beliefs. In daily life we are all effectively compelled to undertake actions that may appear to be free choices, like going to work, engaging in highly gendered relationships, or fulfilling roles prescribed within the nuclear family structure. We may experience some of these actions as oppressive, even if only unconsciously. To reduce dissonance between the possible cognition “this is unfair/bad/harmful/oppressive” and the fact that we continue to engage in these actions, we are likely to alter our beliefs in many cases, and come to find justifications for the systems in which we are enmeshed. It may, for example, be easiest for a person who goes to work every day but believes their work may be unethical to come to believe that their work is in the natural order of things, or a virtue, or that it has good effects too, or that it is just inescapable and nothing can be done about it. (I’ve seen the last one a lot among my peers who went to elite schools and then got caught up in, say, oil derivatives as a career). It is easier, that is, than it would be for the person in question to quit their job and find another, and it allows them to rationalise actions in their past as well. This phenomenon is a plausible explanation for how people adopt beliefs they previously did not hold, and which may be otherwise irrational or even harmful; it suggests one mechanism, then, for the development of what many left-wing theorists term “false consciousness.”
This all helps explain the importance of the policeman, our response to him, the kneeling, the belief in God. In fact, it suggests the response and the kneeling are what makes us see ourselves, and God, the way we do. In many cases, we “at first” engage in the actions that force us to conform to ideology simply because we have to, either to survive under capitalism or to fit in in an unforgiving social world. We are in one sense simply pushed along by what Marx called the “dull compulsion of labour.” (Or the dull compulsion of whatever form of oppression). And indeed, some theorists have argued that this “dull compulsion” is enough by itself to explain why people do things like go to work—they just have to, it’s not that they’re enthusiastic or in any way duped. Perhaps this is often the case with going to work; however, this might not explain things like poor people voting for Trump, women becoming (real, not influencer) tradwives, or anyone furiously buying NFTs in hopes of becoming a kajillionaire. We all often have to do things that are part of our own oppression, yes, but many of us come to embrace ideas that harm us and go beyond what we have to do. Many people pour time and effort into systems that oppress them, and defend their actions in this regard vehemently, too.
My suggestion here is that this “dull compulsion” is not (or not always) a substitute for an account of ideology, as some theorists have argued. Rather, it is a part of a good account of how ideology does its work on us: the actions we are compelled to take materially are one step in the process by which ideology works on the mind. To return to the child in the mirror, lots of this is baked in early on. Subjects engage in many actions and rituals starting from childhood, where they cannot choose because they are compelled to do things by adults (to return to Pascal’s example, most Catholics kneel from the time they are very young). Even in adulthood, when dissonance occurs, it may often be easiest to manage this discomfort by rationalising the discomfort away and embracing the ideological values or ideas. After all, it is arguably far more difficult to escape the need to work, or leave the family form.
Dissonance theory therefore provides a concrete explanation for the relationship between ideology and daily experience and actions as described by Althusser. At risk of repeating an earlier point, Althusser notes that “we are indebted to Pascal’s defensive ‘dialectic’ for the wonderful formula which will enable us to invert the order of the notional schema of ideology. Pascal says more or less: ‘Kneel down, move your lips in prayer, and you will believe.’ He thus scandalously inverts the order of things...”
When considered in terms of cognitive dissonance theory in general, and the induced compliance framework of dissonance in particular, it becomes clearer why kneeling causes us to believe, why a subject’s actions might motivate or even compel them to accept an otherwise harmful ideology. In cognitive dissonance theory, as in the description of interpellation, subjects are often drawn to change their views to match actions they have already taken (even those taken due to duress or social norms) in order to escape dissonance discomfort, which can be excruciating. Dissonance theory suggests that subjects engage in actions in line with oppressive viewpoints, then feel uncomfortable dissonance about this gap between their actions and the nature of their views, and then resolve this painful dissonance by changing their views (as so often happens in cognitive dissonance studies!) to match their actions. Oppressive ideologies likely prove popular because they provide a convenient template for these often-unconscious rationalisations. Dissonance discomfort is thus the mechanism by which subjects are (at least in some cases) interpellated by their very own actions.
The always-doubled meaning of the subjects is ever at play here: subjects are those with agency, in the sense of apparent choice, but they are also those who must obey others, as with the subjects of monarchies.
More on this special importance of agency some other time.