Louis Althusser and Thomas Hardy: how Victorian ideologies work in under the Greenwood tree
Abstract: In his early novel, Under the Greenwood Tree, Thomas Hardy attempts to show the readers how the inhabitants of a small village are repressed by the ideologies the dominant class or capitalism defines for them. The aim of these suppressive...
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Abstract: In his early novel, Under the Greenwood Tree, Thomas Hardy attempts to show the readers how the inhabitants of a small village are repressed by the ideologies the dominant class or capitalism defines for them. The aim of these suppressive programs is to oppress the individuals by making them good and subordinate subjects. Althusser calls these ideologies created by the dominant class, Ideological State Apparatuses; however, in this novel one observes how some of the subjects try to revolt against these cruel rules by defining their own ideologies. One can also recognize that how the blatant break of these ideological programs by the revolutionary subject makes the subject look weird and eventually how he/she is alienated and marginalized by the society. On the other hand, the good subjects are made to believe that following these ideologies is usual and breaking of them is synonymous with interfering with the discipline and order of nature. Brought up in the Victorian age, Hardy un
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The study of ideology in The Handmaids' Tale based on Althusser's view
Abstract: Ideology has always been the most vital apparatus for each government and dominant groups of society to keep their superior position so that every inferior subject could remain obedient and live like a programmed machine that is required to...
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Abstract: Ideology has always been the most vital apparatus for each government and dominant groups of society to keep their superior position so that every inferior subject could remain obedient and live like a programmed machine that is required to operate according to some fixed and rigid codes. Sometimes these codes are so apparent and tangible in the society that breaking them would result in sheer oppression such as impressment, exile and even execution. However in modern era the controlling and domination are not applied through force and physical attempts yet it does not mean it ceased to exist. The traditional ways of oppression are not extinct; yet they remain in new forms, tools and weapons which in Althusser's terminology they are called RSA. Nevertheless there is another difference in modern time; it has been attempted to control the minds of people through other less vivid weapons. These weapons could poison the minds of subjects and control and train them in a way that dominan
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