All my work finds its definition here, in this linking of the 'question of the constitution of meaning to that of the constitution of the subject, a linking which is not marginal (for example the special case of the ideological 'rituals' of reading and writing), but located inside the 'central thesis' itself, in the figure of interpellation.

I say in the figure of interpellation in order to designate the fact that, as Althusser suggests, 'interpellation' is an 'illustration', an example adapted to a particular mode of exposition, '"concrete" enough to be recognized, but abstract enough to be thinkable and thought, giving rise to a knowledge'. ¹⁴ This figure, associated both with religion and with the police ('You, for whom I have shed this drop of my blood'/'Hey, you there!'), has the advantage first of all that, through this double meaning of the word 'interpellation', it makes palpable the superstructural link -- determined by the economic infrastructure -between the repressive state apparatus (the legal-political apparatus which assigns-verifies-checks 'identities') and the ideological state apparatuses, i.e. the link between the 'subject in law' (he who enters into contractual relations with other subjects in law, his equals) and the ideological subject (he who says of himself: 'It's me!'). It has the second advantage that it presents this link in such a way that the theatre of consciousness (I see, I think, I speak, I see you, I speak to you, etc.) is observed from behind the scenes, from the place where one can grasp the fact that the subject is spoken of, the subject is spoken to, before the subject can say: 'I speak'.

The last, but not the least, advantage of this 'little theoretical theatre' of interpellation, conceived as an illustrated critique of the theatre of consciousness, is that it designates, by the discrepancy in the formulation 'individual'/'subject', the paradox by which the subject is called into existence: indeed, the formulation carefully avoids presupposing the existence of the subject on whom the operation of interpellation is performed -- it does not say: 'The subject is interpellated by Ideology.'

This cuts short any attempt simply to invert the metaphor linking the subject with the various 'legal entities' [personnes morales] which might seem at first sight to be subjects made up of a collectivity of subjects, and of which one could say, inverting the relationship, that it is this collectivity, as a pre-existing entity, that imposes its ideological stamp on each subject in the form of a 'socialization' of the individual in 'social relations' conceived of as intersubjective relations. In fact, what the thesis 'Ideology interpellates individuals as subjects' designates is indeed that 'non-subject' is interpellated-constituted as sub ect by Ideology. Now, the paradox is precisely that interpellation has, as it were, a retroactive effect, with the result that every individual is 'always-already a subject'.

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