Setting the Stage

Abstract

Let us begin this chapter with Pier Paolo Pasolini’s perhaps truly most subversive film, The Gospel According to St. Matthew. Specifically, how are we to place it within the Althusserian context, and furthermore, which are the philosophical instances in the work of Althusser that will permit one to read the film? An Althusserian-inspired film theory mostly operates by employing Althusser’s concept of interpellation of individuals into ideological subjects in order to understand the position, status, and function of the spectator. Jean-Jacques Lecercle, an Althusserian French philosopher, proposed a linguistic interpretation of the concept of interpellation, which allowed him “not only to assert that ideology is language, but to define this mysterious ideology declined in the singular: it is the power that circulates across the whole length of the chain of interpellation, the illocutionary force conveyed by utterances, which does not only characterise some particular speech act, but also has a material effect in producing subjects.” The chain of interpellation, according to Lecercle, runs as following: institution → ritual → practice → speech act → subject, which allowed him to come to this conclusion: “the subject is, therefore, not only interpellated by ideology—which is the core of Althusser’s theory—but subjectified by the language that speaks it.”