66 In the next section, I discuss approaches that attempt to surpass this
‘eitherorconsciousness’ dilemma and move towards a theory of cognitive dispositional and rationalizing practices.
2.3 Beyond Consciousness: The French Turn
“But there is something in our worldview, something about the lens we look through that keeps us from building something new that’s better for all of us.”
-
Ryan Harvey
29
In the 1970s, around the same time as the initial flourishing of the Birmingham School, a number of French social theorists developed influential
theoretical approaches to the study of culture and capitalist society. Of particular note are the works of Louis Althusser and Pierre Bourdieu. Like the classic
Frankfurt and Birmingham Schools, Althusser and Bourdieu were concerned with how capitalist social arrangements reproduced themselves, and constructed
nuanced understandings of ideology and socialization. The concept of hegemonic ideology as discussed by the Frankfurt school conceived of ideology as something
that is disseminated and legitimated from above by dominant social institutions and groups to obscure an otherwise objective class reality. Therefore, individuals
are assumed to consciously consent to the dominant order, no matter how stratified or unjust, because they cannot conceive of alternatives to the capitalist system,
andor because they believe that upward class mobility, despite nearly insurmountable structural constraints, is within grasp given enough hard work and
effort; i.e., they are the victims of false consciousness. However, Althusser 1971 invites us to think of capitalist ideology as the sum of material structures and
practices, which works at a fundamentally unconscious level, growing naturally from our everyday mundane practices. For example, when paying rent, buying
food, or depositing a check, all of which further cement and reproduce the capitalist order, we are not consciously or falsely consenting to capitalism, but
rather are behaving in a habitualized, ritualized, and largely unconscious manner. As Althusser 1971, p. 158 explains:
29
Lyrics from Tea Party, by Ryan Harvey.
67 To take a highly ‘concrete’ example, we all have friends who, when
they knock on our door and we ask, through the door, the question ‘Who’s there?, answer since ‘it’s obvious’ ‘It’s me’. And we
recognize that ‘it is him’, or ‘her’. We open the door, and ‘it’s true, it really was she who was there’. To take another example, when we
recognize somebody
of our
previous acquaintance
re
-
connaissance
in the street, we show him that we have recognized him and have recognized that he has recognized us by saying to him
‘Hello, my friend’, and shaking his hand a material ritual practice of ideological recognition in everyday life
– in France, at least; elsewhere, there are other rituals.
Althusser 1971 notes that this kind of unconscious habituation, or ‘interpellation’
as he terms it, is the result of an individual’s exposure to ‘ideological state
apparatuses’, like the family, the media, and the education system that expose individuals to the discourses and practices of those systems, and as a result we are
always immersed in ideology. An individual is said to be ‘ideologically interpellated’ when his or her social identitysubjectivity reflects the discourses
and practices of the ideological state apparatuses i.e., social institutions that he or she has interacted with, andor been largely exposed to. As Auogustinos, et al.,
2006, p. 297 argue, “Althusser suggests that our lived relations are largely unconscious and affective in nature. In this way ideology becomes a spontaneous,
unconscious, and affective way of responding to our lived relations, a way of being which has a strong affinity with the recent work of automaticity in social
cognition”. While this theory of ideological interpellation can be read as deterministic since it entails that ideology is inescapable and pervasive, Althusser
1971 also argues that there are multiple breaks, contradictions, and points of contestation between different ideological state apparatuses that leave room for
critical distance, agency, and resistance. For example, individuals who refuse to join repressive state forces because they come from religious and pacifist
backgrounds, or conscientious objectors who refuse to take up arms, or feminist and anti-racist activists signify that, as
Van Dijk 2011, p. 380 notes, “ideologies as we define them, may be used not only to dominate or to oppress others, but also
in order to resist and struggle against such domination ”. Dominant ideological
68 interpellation is, therefore, never fully totalized and always contested by the
complexities and variances of multiple social systems and sub-systems that expose individuals to any number of different, and in some cases, conflicting ideologies.
This allows room for individual agency, as subjects are thus free to negotiate, and to some indefinite extent, consciously choose between the ideologies and practices
that they have been exposed to. Interpellation, as I will argue in the following section, can therefore be coupled with insights from more contemporary theories
of social cognition, in particular schema theory, to form a more context and agent sensitive theory of socialization that can be employed for the exploration of
neoliberal social reproduction. Pierre Bourdieu developed very similar arguments to Althusser’s
interpellation theories, but was less concerned with ideology and more focused on describing and investigating the everyday habits and unconscious behaviours of
individu als that make up and reproduce society. Bourdieu’s 1977 ‘habitus’ is a
term used to describe the sum of an individua l’s acquired schemes of thoughts,
dispositions, tastes, and perceptions that guide their actions, and that result from exposure to and interaction with autonomous structured social spaces like schools,
courts, and work. In occupying various social spaces or ‘fields’, an individual mentally internalizes any number of observed and experienced discourses and
practices, which form generative schematic structures of unique cognitive and embodied dispositions that enable him or her to learn, follow, and modify the rules
of those spaces. However, while generative, those same internalized ‘structuring structures’ are also ‘durable structured structures’ that predispose subjects to
unconsciously act in accordance with the knowledge and experiences that they have been predominantly exposed to. Therefore, for Bourdieu, submission to and
reproduction of the dominant order is a matter of habitus not consent, as individuals are so unconsciously immersed in everyday social practices that they
may view them as natural, or are more likely completely unaware of them, and are thus unable to recognize how those practices may reproduce social inequalities
Burawoy, 2008. Thus the enforcement of the dominant order is not primarily reliant on overt and repressive state forces, but is rather a more subtle and mostly
dispositional cognitive process enforced through what Bourdieu 1990, p. 1-2 refers to as, symbolic violence, a gentle violence, imperceptible and invisible
even to its victims, exerted for the most part through the purely symbolic channels
69 of communication and cognition more precisely, misrecognition, recognition, or
even feeling. For example, racist or sexist attitudes are in many instances implicit. These can be stimulated and manifested in subliminal ways that negatively affect
persons from dominated social groups, but that neither the holder of these attitudes or their victims are able to perceive or recognize as racism or sexism e.g., job or
housing discrimination. In this sense, therefore, symbolic violence enforces what can be understood as socio-cognitive domination, whereby individuals
unconsciously conform to their own domination. Whi le Bourdieu’s theories in
many ways resemble the structural socialization theories of the classic Frankfurt school and Louis Althusser, they help to erase the problematic distinction between
structure and agency, and unite them as a simultaneous and reciprocal social process Gewirtz Cribb, 2009. In engaging in everyday practices, we in effect
reproduce social structures “in a system of circular relations which unite structure
and practices” Bourdieu Passeron, 1977. p. 203. Hence, habitus is simultaneously structure and agency.
30
H owever, Althusser and Bourdieu’s theories are even more pessimistic about
the prospect of social change than the Frankfurters ever were. In a nutshell, their theories seem to suggest that capitalist socialization is so ingrained into the psyche
of individuals living in capitalist societies that social change is essentially a moot point. Nonetheless, I argue that socio-cognitive domination via symbolic violence
andor ideological interpellation is a necessary component for understanding the micro subjective side of the hegemonic coin that can be used to describe and
explain different aspects of how neoliberalism comes to be supported and reproduced by majority populations. More specifically, as will be discussed in the
following two sections, the sociological concepts of interpellation, and habitus can be coupled with ideas from cognitive and social psychology to form a more
comprehensive theory of social reproduction that accounts for both conscious and unconscious emotions, thoughts, and practices, and their key roles in the
30
Bourdieu’s 2000, concept of agency is not one that tends to emphasize conscious actions, but rather one that lays stress on how the seemingly volitional strategies that agents employ in their
everyday practices stem from unconsciously primed dispositions Burawoy, 2008; Gerrans, 2005. Bourdieu seems to reserve conscious agency for the few that are privileged enough to have the
time and luxury for deep reflective thinking Bourdieu, 2000. For instance, in response to notions
of false consciousness, Bourdieu 2000, p. 172 argues, “While making things explicit can help, only a thoroughgoing process of countertraining, involving repeated exercises, can, like an
athlete’s training, durably transform habitus”.
70 enactment and maintenance of existing macro-structures. As Ridgeway 2006
argues, it is in the coupling of socio-cognitive theories with sociological theories that we can begin to better understand, explain, and explore how individuals
internalize, reproduce, modify, and alter macro-level social patterns, such as dimensions of stratification, social institutions, or widely shared cultural norms
and values.
2.4 A Schematic Reconciliation
