* Better memory (truly!)
* Experience
* Fewer distractions

————-
Better memory
————-

Doctors thought that you couldn’t grow new brain cells, so as old cells died you became more stupid. They now know that the more adult continuing education, the more new brain cells you get. You can even delay Alzheimer’s disease by keeping your brain active.

But old people keep forgetting things! That’s true, because what you remember best are startling, new, shocking things. To an old person it’s a case of “been there, done that”. Nothing is new or shocking.

However, you often have to learn boring things, and there you have an advantage. Seniors trounced the kids in a test of memorizing meaningless words. My book about exams will show you how to make your adult continuing education more exciting, which cuts kid’s advantage over your memory.

———-
Experience
———-

You learn from the known to the unknown. So it’s logical that the more experience you have, the more you can think “yes… that’s right… it’s just like…” I am 65 years old now and I can say that my adult continuing education keeps getting easier because there are always relevant things in my experience.

————
Distractions
————

You may have distractions at work still, but let’s face it, are they really as obsessive as your teenage interests? You aren’t going to have to choose between going out on a date and doing some study. You might have to choose between having a nap and study, but my book about exams shows a way round that problem. I’m using it right now!

—–
Exams
—–

Just as your three advantages apply to study, they apply to exams. Were you sick with nerves in your school exams? Your life-career depended on your performance. Now it would be nice to pass, but your experience tells you that you will survive failure, and land on your feet again…so less nerves.

Unless children have wealthy or helpful parents they can’t afford resources that you can afford. For instance, they can afford my free report on writing essays, but not my eBook about passing exams. If you live in a country with timed local phone calls, kids may not be able to do much research on the internet because it costs too much.

There are ways to become a lightning calculator and ways to develop a super memory, and you can afford them all. If you want to learn a language you can probably even afford to get a “superlearning” course that teaches you the language in only fifteen hours.

——————————
Why Adult Continuing Education
——————————

All right, you have advantages, but why should you bother with adult continuing education?
* Prevents brain deterioration
* Retraining for a new job
* Self employment

I’ve already covered the effect of study on the brain. You get new brain cells.

In modern times you can only expect to keep one job for a short time. You are going to need to retrain for your next job.

Self-employment. You can’t be sacked if you are self-employed, but you can go broke. It is best to develop your home business part-time until it is earning you twice as much as your job. Then if you are retrenched from your job you won’t care.

Then you won’t need to worry about adult continuing education any more will you? Oops… you will need to keep learning even more when you have your own business. For instance, you are going to have to learn book-keeping unless you can afford an accountant to do the work. If you have to employ people, you will need to learn the laws that apply.

———————
How should you learn?
———————

I prefer to use a correspondence coursefor my adult continuing education, but the big advantage of attending classes is that you can get your questions answered instantly.

My book about exams shows you how to find answers on the internet. You will probably find lots of eBooks about what you want to learn. But will I ever see what I buy on the internet? …you may ask.

Think about it. How much more does it cost an eBook vendor to supply 100 eBooks than it costs for one? That’s right… nothing! If it costs me nothing to supply an eBook, why should I try to rob you? I keep buying new eBooks myself and have never failed to get what I paid for. You can definitely get an adult continuing education online.

We are human because we are not animal, nor machine. But such thinking has been rendered progressively less tenable by the advent of evolutionary and neo-evolutionary theories which postulate a continuum in nature between animals and Man.

Our uniqueness is partly quantitative and partly qualitative. Many animals are capable of cognitively manipulating symbols and using tools. Few are as adept at it as we are. These are easily quantifiable differences – two of many.

Qualitative differences are a lot more difficult to substantiate. In the absence of privileged access to the animal mind, we cannot and don’t know if animals feel guilt, for instance. Do animals love? Do they have a concept of sin? What about object permanence, meaning, reasoning, self-awareness, critical thinking? Individuality? Emotions? Empathy? Is artificial intelligence (AI) an oxymoron? A machine that passes the Turing Test may well be described as “human”. But is it really? And if it is not – why isn’t it?

Literature is full of stories of monsters – Frankenstein, the Golem  – and androids or anthropoids. Their behaviour is more “humane” than the humans around them. This, perhaps, is what really sets humans apart: their behavioural unpredictability. It is yielded by the interaction between Mankind’s underlying immutable genetically-determined nature – and Man’s kaleidoscopically changing environments.

The Constructivists even claim that Human Nature is a mere cultural artefact. Sociobiologists, on the other hand, are determinists. They believe that human nature – being the inevitable and inexorable outcome of our bestial ancestry – cannot be the subject of moral judgment.

An improved Turing Test would look for baffling and erratic patterns of misbehaviour to identify humans. Pico della Mirandola wrote in “Oration on the Dignity of Man” that Man was born without a form and can mould and transform – actually, create – himself at will. Existence precedes essence, said the Existentialists centuries later.

The one defining human characteristic may be our awareness of our mortality. The automatically triggered, “fight or flight”, battle for survival is common to all living things (and to appropriately programmed machines). Not so the catalytic effects of imminent death. These are uniquely human. The appreciation of the fleeting translates into aesthetics, the uniqueness of our ephemeral life breeds morality, and the scarcity of time gives rise to ambition and creativity.

In an infinite life, everything materializes at one time or another, so the concept of choice is spurious. The realization of our finiteness forces us to choose among alternatives. This act of selection is predicated upon the existence of “free will”. Animals and machines are thought to be devoid of choice, slaves to their genetic or human programming.

Yet, all these answers to the question: “What does it mean to be human” – are lacking.

The set of attributes we designate as human is subject to profound alteration. Drugs, neuroscience, introspection, and experience all cause irreversible changes in these traits and characteristics. The accumulation of these changes can lead, in principle, to the emergence of new properties, or to the abolition of old ones.

Animals and machines are not supposed to possess free will or exercise it. What, then, about fusions of machines and humans (bionics)? At which point does a human turn into a machine? And why should we assume that free will ceases to exist at that – rather arbitrary – point?

Introspection – the ability to construct self-referential and recursive models of the world – is supposed to be a uniquely human quality. What about introspective machines? Surely, say the critics, such machines are PROGRAMMED to introspect, as opposed to humans. To qualify as introspection, it must be WILLED, they continue. Yet, if introspection is willed – WHO wills it? Self-willed introspection leads to infinite regression and formal logical paradoxes.

Moreover, the notion – if not the formal concept – of “human” rests on many hidden assumptions and conventions.

Political correctness notwithstanding – why presume that men and women (or different races) are identically human? Aristotle thought they were not. A lot separates males from females – genetically (both genotype and phenotype) and environmentally (culturally). What is common to these two sub-species that makes them both “human”?

Can we conceive of a human without body (i.e., a Platonian Form, or soul)? Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas think not. A soul has no existence separate from the body. A machine-supported energy field with mental states similar to ours today – would it be considered human? What about someone in a state of coma – is he or she (or it) fully human?

Is a new born baby human – or, at least, fully human – and, if so, in which sense? What about a future human race – whose features would be unrecognizable to us? Machine-based intelligence – would it be thought of as human? If yes, when would it be considered human?

In all these deliberations, we may be confusing “human” with “person”. The former is a private case of the latter. Locke’s person is a moral agent, a being responsible for its actions. It is constituted by the continuity of its mental states accessible to introspection.

Locke’s is a functional definition. It readily accommodates non-human persons (machines, energy matrices) if the functional conditions are satisfied. Thus, an android which meets the prescribed requirements is more human than a brain dead person.

Descartes’ objection that one cannot specify conditions of singularity and identity over time for disembodied souls is right only if we assume that such “souls” possess no energy. A bodiless intelligent energy matrix which maintains its form and identity over time is conceivable. Certain AI and genetic software programs already do it.

Strawson is Cartesian and Kantian in his definition of a “person” as a “primitive”. Both the corporeal predicates and those pertaining to mental states apply equally, simultaneously, and inseparably to all the individuals of that type of entity. Human beings are one such entity. Some, like Wiggins, limit the list of possible persons to animals – but this is far from rigorously necessary and is unduly restrictive.

The truth is probably in a synthesis:

A person is any type of fundamental and irreducible entity whose typical physical individuals (i.e., members) are capable of continuously experiencing a range of states of consciousness and permanently having a list of psychological attributes.

This definition allows for non-animal persons and recognizes the personhood of a brain damaged human (”capable of experiencing”). It also incorporates Locke’s view of humans as possessing an ontological status similar to “clubs” or “nations” – their personal identity consists of a variety of interconnected psychological continuities.

Where should your study are be situated. This will depend on the layout and size of your home, but there are some ideal places and some very unsuitable places. Without a dedicated study area you would need to study on kitchen tables, sofas, beds, armchairs, dining tables, in rooms that are used frequently for other domestic activities. These are highly unsuitable, as they have no professional or academic or personal development features, and are full of distractions and barriers to effective studying.  An ideal location would be in a small room that is specifically for study, in the style of a home office. Some students might have lofts, garages, or basements, that could be converted. Less ideal, but still suitable, would be an area in a bedroom, equipped for study, and not used for any other purpose. This would remove you from most day and evening time domestic activity (and even if you are single, living alone, it will keep you away from the television and refrigerator). If you do have to use a kitchen or living room, then you will need to alter your studying schedule so that you are studying when others are not present in these areas. Don’t try to study in the same room as others, or where there is domestic activity visible or audible. It won’t work.

If at all possible, buy a traditional desk. It doesn’t have to be large, or expensive (a low cost, second-hand, used, desk will be perfectly suitable). This will immediately give a professional, workplace, feel to your study area, and give you drawers and surface space to place your pc, laptop, papers, printer, pens, study books, on. Next, make sure you obtain a suitable chair. An office-style, swivel chair would be best, but a fixed chair will suffice. No matter what style, make sure that it is comfortable to use for long periods. Again, a used chair will be just as good as a new one, if selected carefully. For most courses of study a PC or Laptop will be essential. A mid to low range one will be suitable for most courses. Ideally an office suite such as MS Office should be used, but lower cost, simpler packages are fine too (and Microsoft itself offers a MS Office in Student-Teacher version, at one third of the cost of the commercial price). With your PC or Laptop, comfort is much more important than power. The essentials are a keyboard that is comfortable to type on for long periods, and a screen that is comfortable on the eyes for long periods of work.  A printer is essential (a basic, low cost one will do) even if you email your documents to your tutor. It is good practice to print off your assignments (outlines, drafts, finished versions) and read them to proof-read them and see them as your tutor will (most tutors will print off your work and then read and assess it). Lighting is important. A well-lit room is vital, and a desk-top lamp can add focus to the working area.

Having supplies and peripherals nearby is helpful. A set of drawers in the desk, or a cupboard, or wall shelves, specifically for books, paper, pens, pencils, cartridges, etc, will help you to be organised, keep your study area tidy, and to have essential supplies available when you need them.

Choose a layout that suits you, but organise your equipment and furniture so that when you sit down to study you are not distracted by activity in a doorway, window, or other part of the room.

For most people, keep it tidy would be good advice. However, some people  can’t work in a tidy fashion, but are very comfortable working in what others see as chaos. If that is your natural style, that’s fine, but even then, try to be as organised, as neat and tidy, as you can be this will help to keep you on track with your timetable of studies.

Your personal study area should be used whenever you have planned, scheduled, study activity that requires you to read and reflect on what you are reading, carry out research on the internet, correspond by email, telephone, or letter with your tutor, or write responses to exercises, tests, or assignments.  Don’t use it for anything else. It isn’t the place to eat a snack, watch television, planning your next holiday, painting your nails, or chatting to other family members. If you want to do any of these, leave your study area and do them somewhere else!

If you have family or friends who live with you or work close to your study area, talk with them and agree that when you enter your personal study area they will not disturb you. Make this a permanent, non-negotiable, rule, broken only in cases of emergency.  You can help by scheduling your study times when other people are less likely to disturb you, and by building in time to spend with family and friends when you are not studying.  If you like to listen to music, or the radio, when studying, that’s ok, but make sure that it is not in reality distracting you. Television is not a good idea, because of the distraction caused by the moving images. If your study area is, by necessity, near a busy area where people are active, try to schedule your study time when that local activity is at its quietest, less busy times.  Keep your mobile phone switched off, unless you have to be available to colleagues from work. If you do have to be contactable at home by work colleagues, try to make contact first, to stop calls coming in when you are studying.

For some students it is not possible to have a dedicated personal study area in the home, or at least not a permanent one.  External locations are available which, although not capable of being personalized, could be regular locations in which, with regular use, you can feel familiar and comfortable. For example, Internet Cafes, where there is most of the equipment and furniture that you need. You can supplement these by taking carefully selected study aids such as coursework books. Internet Cafes usually do charge an hourly fee, which is usually a reasonable price, but most will give discounted prices for regular users.  Libraries, where there is usually plenty of desk space, a very quiet and studious atmosphere, and, of course, reference and subject textbooks which, if not permanently available, can be ordered and loaned for short period. Today, many libraries also have pc and internet facilities. Libraries are virtually free to use, apart from a low internet usage fee.  Your Workplace, where you may be able to use lunch breaks, and-or time before or after work, to fit in some study time. It may also be possible to arrange to use a meeting room or unoccupied office, at least on a short-term basis. Some of our students who find it impossible to study at home, and who work in organizations that operate on a 5 day week, make arrangements to go into the workplace on weekends and study there.

Establishing a Personal Study Area is one of the most beneficial actions that you can take when starting to study for a professional development qualification. A properly equipped, well organized, study area becomes a recognized space that you enter into when you are scheduled to carry out some study time. It becomes a place where you are comfortable and familiar with the layout and facilities, and where you feel confident that you can work without interruption, without distractions, and most importantly, study effectively. Even if you are not able to establish such a space in your own home, you should make every effort to recreate as many of the features described above, in another location. Once established it is easy to maintain, and grows in usefulness as you grow more comfortable in it.

Some of the pressure to get more education is coming from a job market that demands up-to-date skills, especially in technology. The workers with the best and most current skills are in the most demand and earn higher salaries. A college degree often opens the door for a better job or promotion. The United States Bureau of Census estimates that a college degree is worth about $1.2 million over the course of a person’s career.

Colleges have adapted to the growing market of returning adult students by changing the way they offer their courses. Many big-name universities now offer their most popular degree programs, such as the Masters of Business Administration, in classes that meet evenings and weekends. Others are providing a combination of weekend, evening and online courses to accommodate the schedules of busy professionals.

One of the biggest trends of all is the emergence of the online university. Tens of thousands of adults are now earning “online” college degrees. They can log into a chat room and discuss assignments with other students and their professionals. They can study online whenever it’s convenient. Many of these online schools do not follow formal semester schedules and thus can allow students to take classes whenever they want to start.

Adult students, sometimes called “re-entry students,” can qualify for traditional government financial aid if they are enrolled at least half-time. This usually means that they must be taking two full-credit courses at once. Their schools must have the proper accreditations to participate in Title IV programs in order for them to be eligible for aid.

If a re-entry student is taking enough credits to qualify at a Title IV school, he or she then goes through the traditional financial aid process. The first step is to fill out a FAFSA, an abbreviation that means Free Application for Federal Student Aid. You can download a FAFSA and instructions at http://studentaid.ed.gov/PORTALSWebApp/students/english/fafsa.jsp. Students need to fill this out to qualify for programs.

If a student demonstrates financial need, he or she may qualify for government grants, which do not have to be paid back. The Perkins Loan program, also for low-income students, provides loans at very low interest rates that are paid back over a period of ten years beginning nine months after graduation.

College students who are enrolled at least half-time and who can maintain a C average may apply for government loans, also at low interest rates and long payback periods. Sometimes you will owe the money directly to the government. In other cases, a student will have a loan from a private lender who acts as a middleman.

Re-entry students should always contact their financial aid officer at the college of their choice. Their counselor can help them with their FAFAs and other forms, as well as find them a bank to loan them money through a government program.

A good knowledgeable financial aid officer will help students find private scholarship money, too. Although the majority of scholarships are for undergraduates in traditional campus programs, there are over 1800 for re-entry students over twenty-five years of age. While there are private scholarship search companies, most students should be able to do this task themselves for free on the Internet or through their financial aid office.

If you are now serving or have served in the military, you should ask your college financial aid officer about military benefits for continuing education.

Sometimes employers will pay for continuing adult education. Many employers just want an employee to pick up a certain course to enhance job performance in one area. Other employers will pay for the completion of college degrees and even advanced degrees.

Some universities try to pressure students into enrolling before the students know how much financial aid they will receive per semester. To avoid this problem, you can go online and plug in your FAFSA numbers to get a rough estimate of your financial aid package. Your financial aid officer can help you get this estimate before you sign up for tuition payments.

It is also important to understand your school’s refund policy. Some students enroll and find out that they cannot carry a half-load of college work plus their professional and family responsibilities. Then they find out their schools will not refund their tuition money either in whole or in part, and that they will have a problem getting out of their federal loans. Investigate all these areas before you sign up for any continuing education program.

This newly-found obscurity forces me to summarize his work before suggesting a few (minor) modifications to it.

(1) Society consists of practices: economic, political and ideological.

Althusser defines a practice as:

“Any process of transformation of a determinate product, affected
by a determinate human labour, using determinate means (of production)”

The economic practice (the historically specific mode of production) transforms raw materials to finished products using human labour and other means of production, all organized within defined webs of inter-relations. The political practice does the same with social relations as the raw materials. Finally, ideology is the transformation of the way that a subject relates to his real life conditions of existence.

This is a rejection of the mechanistic worldview (replete with bases and superstructures). It is a rejection of the Marxist theorization of ideology. It is a rejection of the Hegelian fascist “social totality”. It is a dynamic, revealing, modern day model.

In it, the very existence and reproduction of the social base (not merely its expression) is dependent upon the social superstructure. The superstructure is “relatively autonomous” and ideology has a central part in it – see entry about Marx and Engels and entry concerning Hegel.

The economic structure is determinant but another structure could be dominant, depending on the historical conjuncture. Determination (now called over-determination – see Note) specifies the form of economic production upon which the dominant practice depends. Put otherwise: the economic is determinant not because the practices of the social formation (political and ideological) are the social formation’s expressive epiphenomena – but because it determines WHICH of them is dominant.

(2) People relate to the conditions of existence through the practice of ideology. Contradictions are smoothed over and (real) problems are offered false (though seemingly true) solutions. Thus, ideology has a realistic dimension – and a dimension of representations (myths, concepts, ideas, images). There is (harsh, conflicting) reality – and the way that we represent it both to ourselves and to others.

(3) To achieve the above, ideology must not be seen to err or, worse, remain speechless. It, therefore, confronts and poses (to itself) only answerable questions. This way, it remains confined to a fabulous, legendary, contradiction-free domain. It ignores other questions altogether.

(4) Althusser introduced the concept of “The Problematic”:

“The objective internal reference … the system of questions
commanding the answers given”

It determines which problems, questions and answers are part of the game – and which should be blacklisted and never as much as mentioned. It is a structure of theory (ideology), a framework and the repertoire of discourses which – ultimately – yield a text or a practice. All the rest is excluded.

It, therefore, becomes clear that what is omitted is of no less importance than what is included in a text. The problematic of a text relates to its historical context (”moment”) by incorporating both: inclusions as well as omissions, presences as much as absences. The problematic of the text fosters the generation of answers to posed questions – and of defective answers to excluded questions.

(5) The task of “scientific” (e.g., Marxist) discourse, of Althusserian critical practice is to deconstruct the problematic, to read through ideology and evidence the real conditions of existence. This is a “symptomatic reading” of TWO TEXTS:

“It divulges the undivulged event in the text that it reads and, in the
same movement, relates to it a different text, present, as a necessary
absence, in the first … (Marx’s reading of Adam Smith) presupposes
the existence of two texts and the measurement of the first against
the second. But what distinguishes this new reading from the old,
is the fact that in the new one, the second text is articulated with the
lapses in the first text … (Marx measures) the problematic contained
in the paradox of an answer which does not correspond to any questions posed.”

Althusser is contrasting the manifest text with a latent text which is the result of the lapses, distortions, silences and absences in the manifest text. The latent text is the “diary of the struggle” of the unposed question to be posed and answered.

(6) Ideology is a practice with lived and material dimensions. It has costumes, rituals, behaviour patterns, ways of thinking. The State employs Ideological Apparatuses (ISAs) to reproduce ideology through practices and productions: (organized) religion, the education system, the family, (organized) politics, the media, the industries of culture.

“All ideology has the function (which defines it) of ‘constructing’
concrete individuals as subjects”

Subjects to what? The answer: to the material practices of the ideology. This (the creation of subjects) is done by the acts of “hailing” or “interpellation”. These are acts of attracting attention (hailing) , forcing the individuals to generate meaning (interpretation) and making them participate in the practice.

These theoretical tools were widely used to analyze the Advertising and the film industries.

The ideology of consumption (which is, undeniably, the most material of all practices) uses advertising to transform individuals to subjects (=to consumers). It uses advertising to interpellate them. The advertisements attract attention, force people to introduce meaning to them and, as a result, to consume. The most famous example is the use of “People like you (buy this or do that)” in ads. The reader / viewer is interpellated both as an individual (”you”) and as a member of a group (”people like…”). He occupies the empty (imaginary) space of the “you” in the ad. This is ideological “misrecognition”. First, many others misrecognize themselves as that “you” (an impossibility in the real world). Secondly, the misrecognized “you” exists only in the ad because it was created by it, it has no real world correlate.

The reader or viewer of the ad is transformed into the subject of (and subject to) the material practice of the ideology (consumption, in this case).

Althusser was a Marxist. The dominant mode of production in his days (and even more so today) was capitalism. His implied criticism of the material dimensions of ideological practices should be taken with more than a grain of salt. Interpellated by the ideology of Marxism himself, he generalized on his personal experience and described ideologies as infallible, omnipotent, ever successful. Ideologies, to him, were impeccably functioning machines which can always be relied upon to reproduce subjects with all the habits and thought patterns required by the dominant mode of production.

And this is where Althusser fails, trapped by dogmatism and more than a touch of paranoia. He neglects to treat two all-important questions (his problematic may have not allowed it):

(a) What do ideologies look for? Why do they engage in their practice? What is the ultimate goal?

(b) What happens in a pluralistic environment rich in competing ideologies?

Althusser stipulates the existence of two texts, manifest and hidden. The latter co-exists with the former, very much as a black figure defines its white background. The background is also a figure and it is only arbitrarily – the result of historical conditioning – that we bestow a preferred status upon the one. The latent text can be extracted from the manifest one by listening to the absences, the lapses and the silences in the manifest text.

But: what dictates the laws of extraction? how do we know that the latent text thus exposed is THE right one? Surely, there must exist a procedure of comparison, authentication and verification of the latent text?

A comparison of the resulting latent text to the manifest text from which it was extracted would be futile because it would be recursive. This is not even a process of iteration. It is teutological. There must exist a THIRD, “master-text”, a privileged text, historically invariant, reliable, unequivocal (indifferent to interpretation-frameworks), universally accessible, atemporal and non-spatial. This third text is COMPLETE in the sense that it includes both the manifest and the latent. Actually, it should include all the possible texts (a LIBRARY function). The historical moment will determine which of them will be manifest and which latent, according to the needs of the mode of production and the various practices. Not all these texts will be conscious and accessible to the individual but such a text would embody and dictate the rules of comparison between the manifest text and ITSELF (the Third Text) , being the COMPLETE text.

Only through a comparison between a partial text and a complete text can the deficiencies of the partial text be exposed. A comparison between partial texts will yield no certain results and a comparison between the text and itself (as Althusser suggests) is absolutely meaningless.

This Third Text is the human psyche. We constantly compare texts that we read to this Third Text, a copy of which we all carry with us. We are unaware of most of the texts incorporated in this master text of ours. When faced with a manifest text which is new to us, we first “download” the “rules of comparison (engagement)”. We sift through the manifest text. We compare it to our COMPLETE master text and see which parts are missing. These constitute the latent text. The manifest text serves as a trigger which brings to our consciousness appropriate and relevant portions of the Third Text. It also generates the latent text in us.

If this sounds familiar it is because this pattern of confronting (the manifest text), comparing (with our master text) and storing the results (the latent text and the manifest text are brought to consciousness) – is used by mother nature itself. The DNA is such a “Master Text, Third Text”. It includes all the genetic-biological texts some manifest, some latent. Only stimuli in its environment (=a manifest text) can provoke it to generate its own (hitherto latent) “text”. The same would apply to computer applications.

The Third Text, therefore, has an invariant nature (it includes all possible texts) – and, yet, is changeable by interacting with manifest texts. This contradiction is only apparent. The Third Text does not change – only different parts of it are brought to our awareness as a result of the interaction with the manifest text. We can also safely say that one does not need to be an Althusserian critic or engage in “scientific” discourse to deconstruct the problematic. Every reader of text immediately and always deconstructs it. The very act of reading involves comparison with the Third Text which inevitably leads to the generation of a latent text.

And this precisely is why some interpellations fail. The subject deconstructs every message even if he is not trained in critical practice. He is interpellated or fails to be interpellated depending on what latent message was generated through the comparison with the Third Text. And because the Third Text includes ALL possible texts, the subject is given to numerous competing interpellations offered by many ideologies, mostly at odds with each other. The subject is in an environment of COMPETING INTERPELLATIONS (especially in this day and age of information glut). The failure of one interpellation – normally means the success of another (whose interpellation is based on the latent text generated in the comparison process or on a manifest text of its own, or on a latent text generated by another text).

There are competing ideologies even in the most severe of authoritarian regimes. Sometimes, IASs within the same social formation offer competing ideologies: the political Party, the Church, the Family, the Army, the Media, the Civilian Regime, the Bureaucracy. To assume that interpellations are offered to the potential subjects successively (and not in parallel) defies experience (though it does simplify the thought-system).

Clarifying the HOW, though, does not shed light on the WHY.

Advertising leads to the interpellation of the subject to effect the material practice of consumption. Put more simply: there is money involved. Other ideologies – propagated through organized religions, for instance – lead to prayer. Could this be the material practice that they are looking for? No way. Money, prayer, the very ability to interpellate – they are all representations of power over other human beings. The business concern, the church, the political party, the family, the media, the culture industries – are all looking for the same thing: influence, power, might. Absurdly, interpellation is used to secure one paramount thing: the ability to interpellate. Behind every material practice stands a psychological practice (very much as the Third Text – the psyche – stands behind every text, latent or manifest).

The media could be different: money, spiritual prowess, physical brutality, subtle messages. But everyone (even individuals in their private life) is looking to hail and interpellate others and thus manipulate them to succumb to their material practices. A short sighted view would say that the businessman interpellates in order to make money. But the important question is: what ever for? What drives ideologies to establish material practices and to interpellate people to participate in them and become subjects? The will to power. the wish to be able to interpellate. It is this cyclical nature of Althusser’s teachings (ideologies interpellate in order to be able to interpellate) and his dogmatic approach (ideologies never fail) which doomed his otherwise brilliant observations to oblivion.

Note

In Althusser’s writings the Marxist determination remains as Over-determination. This is a structured articulation of a number of contradictions and determinations (between the practices). This is very reminiscent of Freud’s Dream Theory and of the concept of Superposition in Quantum Mechanics.