Ideology as an Intricate Interpellation

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It was Antoine Destutt de Tracy, French thinker who coined the term ‘Ideology’ for the first time. He was inspired by the philosophies of John Locke and Étienne Bonnot de Condillac while he was imprisoned between 1793 to 1794. Tracy conceptualized ideology as the science of idea from a liberal philosophical framework. It was quite an attempt to give scientific rigour to various systems of philosophy and phenomenology.

Later, Karl Marx used the concept of ideology in his work on philosophical systems of German origin. He interpreted ideology as a system of reinforcement working in tandem with the state apparatus. It was radically different from the liberalistic framework of John Locke, Condilla and others, although Marx leveraged the empirical and economic nature of idea aggregation present in ideologies.

Luis Francois Althusser, a French Marxist, has analyzed ideologies as interpellations. According to him, ideologies are social structures on which people believe through historical reasons. Interpellation is such a strong metaphor that explains the dynamics of how dominant systems of thought reach out to the masses through multitude of symbols and structures to absorb them under the aegis of ideologies.

Ideology is now having broader ramifications. It is used to represent the systems of thought related to politics, economy…