Ideology According To Marx And Althusser In Relation To Bartleby The Scrivener

Ideology is defined as one’s certain beliefs or ones philosophy. Many theorists have interpreted and expanded upon this definition in a myriad of ways. In his essay, The German Ideology, Karl Marx sees ideology as a camera obscure, a distortion that hides the truth, that makes us believe one thing, but is inverted. He also sees ideology as being the product of an epoch. This means that an epoch’s dominant class is the deciding factor in that period’s dominant ideology. In the essay Ideology, and Ideological State Apparatuses, Louis Althusser defines Ideology as a “representation of the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.”(2) This means that nobody believes in something purely and that all beliefs are shaded by ones experience. As concepts things do not function materially, but imaginary. Althusser also argues that ideology comes automatically to each individual as we are all pulled into some idea of selfhood from birth, and the very idea of selfhood is a product of ideology. Herman Melville’s story, Bartleby the Scrivener is exemplary of where these two

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