False Consciousness: Perspectives of Althusser and Tan

Both Louis Althusser and Kenneth Paul Tan suggest that ideology might mislead people to a state of false consciousness. The former explain that this phenomenon is unconscious, whereas the latter suggest that it is imposed on the people. Althusser’s argument is that this state of false consciousness can be termed as the imaginary. We are born and stuck in this imaginary as an ‘always already subject’ (Ferretter, 2006) of what we want and desire. This happens even before we are born so that we can be ‘appointed as a subject in and by the specific familial ideological configuration in which it is expected’ (Brewster, 2001). On the other hand, Tan would disagree with Althusser’s theory that ‘we misrepresent the world in ideology because we want

If Tan were to examine Althusser’s argument, he would not agree that ‘ideology has a material existence’ (Ferretter, 2006). For Althusser, ideology is accompanied by actions and it is evident through rituals and practices. He claims that these practices of a person would give rise to his or her beliefs, and that ideology exists in apparatuses. Hence, ‘it is because of the Ideological State Apparatuses that we hold certain beliefs’ (Ferretter, 2006). As oppose to Althusser, Tan’s critic of Singapore’s culture industry highlights his point of view that ideology is materialized through ideas rather than actions. He argues that the ‘ideological division of Singaporeans into cosmopolitans and heartlanders’ (Tan, 2008) is a disguise by the PAP government to assert control. They do so by crafting new policies in the name of its citizens. For example, censorship is a hotly debated issue in Singapore and the government has restricted contents, which they deem unsuitable, from reaching the public’s eye. This is done in the name of the heartlanders, who are traditional and conservative. As such, this reiterates Tan’s argument that the ideology of the government is manifested within an idea of exercising their power in a subtle way, in contrast to Althusser’s thesis that ideology is followed by rituals and practices. Tan’s theory is more hopeful in comparison to Althusser, who focuses his arguments on the hypothesis that ‘ideas are not the property of individual subjects but the results of the situation of those subjects, in class society, within a set of ISAs (Ferretter,