Severe highs and severe lows for me. I really enjoyed parts of Althusser's work here, and really despised other parts, but that may have been down to the choice of his work.

Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses was thrilling and set this collection up for a sweeping five-star. It is necessary for understanding ideology and really gives you a broad look at the extent to which ideology pervades everything. I think it works well along some of Foucault's stuff; Foucault seems to examine the medical-industrial-complex in detail (with its accompanying ideology) and I feel as if you could do the same for most of the ISAs explored here!

Then there was Reply to John Lewis which I did not enjoy on sheerly amateurish terms. I have no clue what these two grown men are arguing about but it's kind of cute actually. They sneak diss each other through academic diction, and have me really asking, "who? Who asked?" If I wanted to see marxists brawl, I would have gone on Reddit for an hour. This was EXHAUSTING.

Freud and Lacan was fun. I enjoyed the return to Freud, emphasising that none of Freud's work can be lumped into a new discipline (which I'd never even thought of--I thought psychoanalysis was solely a psychological topic). I haven't read much Freud so this was a useful way to preface my future reading!

Finally A Letter on Art in Reply to Andre Daspre was really cool. It discussed the extent to which art is ideological and I found this super interesting as a Literature student. The discussion on the pervasivity of ideology in "creation" was interesting, but I felt as if Althusser focussed a lot on the author side of things. I wanted a look at how art affects consumers as this seems more pressing at our content-saturated time in history.

Overall, I really enjoyed 'On Ideology' and Althusser's works! I love when the French philosophers start getting abstract and weird, so this was definitely my fill.

Althusser covers a wide range of topics in this work, from repressive and ideological state apparatuses (the best of the essays), to historical materialism, to Stalinism. His Marxist perspective is situated unmistakably within the structuralism of the 1960s, although his arguments about ideology and its relationship to power still hold up well today. Despite its commitment to total history, this is really helpful for understanding later work on both Marxism and the sociology of knowledge. Althusser’s work is among the best with regards to the relationship between capitalism and the State.

Severe highs and severe lows for me. I really enjoyed parts of Althusser's work here, and really despised other parts, but that may have been down to the choice of his work.

Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses was thrilling and set this collection up for a sweeping five-star. It is necessary for understanding ideology and really gives you a broad look at the extent to which ideology pervades everything. I think it works well along some of Foucault's stuff; Foucault seems to examine the medical-industrial-complex in detail (with its accompanying ideology) and I feel as if you could do the same for most of the ISAs explored here!

Then there was Reply to John Lewis which I did not enjoy on sheerly amateurish terms. I have no clue what these two grown men are arguing about but it's kind of cute actually. They sneak diss each other through academic diction, and have me really asking, "who? Who asked?" If I wanted to see marxists brawl, I would have gone on Reddit for an hour. This was EXHAUSTING.

Freud and Lacan was fun. I enjoyed the return to Freud, emphasising that none of Freud's work can be lumped into a new discipline (which I'd never even thought of--I thought psychoanalysis was solely a psychological topic). I haven't read much Freud so this was a useful way to preface my future reading!

Finally A Letter on Art in Reply to Andre Daspre was really cool. It discussed the extent to which art is ideological and I found this super interesting as a Literature student. The discussion on the pervasivity of ideology in "creation" was interesting, but I felt as if Althusser focussed a lot on the author side of things. I wanted a look at how art affects consumers as this seems more pressing at our content-saturated time in history.

Overall, I really enjoyed 'On Ideology' and Althusser's works! I love when the French philosophers start getting abstract and weird, so this was definitely my fill.

Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses is a wonderfully written and highly insightful essay. That is to say nothing new. But definitely a recommendation for that essay (though not necessarily the entire book).

The other essays here are hit-and-miss. Reply to John Lewis is basically good but nothing new. I'm not familiar enough with Lacan (yet) to assess Althusser's essay that plays with Psychoanalytics. There's also a brief letter at the end which discourses on art/knowledge/science. It's pretty good but brief.

So it's clear that the opening essay (Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses) carries all the heft here, and with good reason. I've enjoyed making connections here and there - Benjamin was a good base of knowledge to approach this from.

"I knew the work of Descartes and Malebranche well, Spinoza a little, Aristotle not at all; Plato and Pascal quite well, Kant not at all, Hegel a little"- Louis Althusser

Surprisingly comprehensible and even illuminating sometimes