An Althusserian Study of A Streetcar Named Desire: An Ideological Entanglement

Abstract

In the Marxist perspective in general, and in Althusser’s ideas in particular, every individual is controlled by the society’s dominant ideology and its apparatuses called Ideological State Apparatuses and Repressive State Apparatuses. Individuals are not at all free agents of their own lives, but it is the government deciding on the nature of the normal and the abnormal. Individuals are unconsciously instilled with the ideas and ideologies of the dominant class of the society who defines their worldview and mannerism. Therefore, the ruling class, by a variety of ways, ‘hails’ its subjects and makes them behave according to its own codes. In Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), this struggle and clash of ideologies are embodied in the characters of Stanley and Blanche who are regarded as a threat to the dominant ideology. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to clarify the high points of this struggle and to indicate how the ideology of southern America is hailed by Industrialized America.

Keywords

• Louis Pierre Althusser
• ISAs
• RSAs
• South America
• American Dream