Political Toolbox: “Interpellation”…We need this word!!

There are certain fancy words that are just dressed up, subtle versions of very good English words. Think of “jejeune”, which means trite or “eleemosynary” which means philanthropic. On the other hand, there are words that have not yet succeeded in entering our vocabulary that we really do not have a concept for in our usual language. Without these words, we would have no way of describing and maybe even knowing about important phenomena in the world…Language is that important!

Interpellation is just such a word. It describes a key social phenomenon for which we have no other word. So thanks to interpellation we can talk and think about this phenomenon.

What is interpellation? Interpellation originally meant an interruptive or interrogatory statement in parliament.  Louis Althusser adopted this word to mean something more commonplace.  Interpellation is how speaking to or hailing someone in a particular way helps shape the response and sense of social identity of that other person. The example that is usually given is if a police officer yells out “Hey, you!” to someone in a commanding voice, the recipient of the call will feel like a “perp”, already guilty of a crime (he interpellates you as already guilty). You might know this from experience in everyday conversations: sometimes people talk to you as if you are someone else than who you are, usually if they don’t know you very well. Sometimes even people you know will speak to you as if you were someone who you are not; in response, you feel as though you need to assume a role with that person that feels alien or different. Interpellation is a one element of the negotiated scripting of social interactions and social identities. Interpellation assumes a power difference between the initiator of the interaction, the original speaker, who is able to frame the action and help shape the other person’s sense of identity.

The use of “interpellation” I am describing was created by the French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser in the early 1970s. After use by a wave of Althusserians in British and American academia in the 1970s and 80’s, the concept has been most publicly been taken up by Judith Butler who has focused its application on gay and lesbian identity. Because of its origin on the left, Althusser’s otherwise controversial life, and the specialized nature of its subsequent applications, the versatility and usefulness of the concept has not been fully realized. You don’t need to be a leftist, a queer theorist or think Althusser was a great guy to appreciate what interpellation describes.

The closest related concept to interpellation comes from an equally specialized area of life, object relations theory in psychoanalysis. “Projective identification” is where aspects of a person are projected on another person and that other person acts in accord or is pressured to act in accord with the projected role in which they are “cast”. The difference between “projective identification” and “interpellation” is that the former assumes the drama becomes scripted by the interlocking internal needs of the specific individual actors involved. In interpellation, individual psychological histories are not specified but interpellation is thought to more generally be a function of power and language. So interpellation describes a social world where interactive social roles are constantly being cast and occupied according to broader social needs regardless of individual histories. Interpellation is highly mobile and can happen between strangers while projective identification suggests an ongoing relationship though this is not absolutely necessary.

Another area of human endeavor where an interpellation-like concept is active is in family therapy. In the analysis of dysfunctional families that family systems therapists engage in, children are usually allotted roles from the family histories of the parents or from some other strong social pressure. The children play out these roles until the family system is disrupted and changed for the better. While family systems therapists do not usually use the terminology of projective identification or interpellation, these two concepts are the most likely candidates for the general mechanisms involved in what they are dealing with.

A related concept to interpellation is the notion of “framing” in discourse analysis, a subset of linguistics, in the political sphere most closely associated with the liberal strategist and linguistics professor George Lakoff. A discourse is a related set of language with its own topic and stylistic tendencies. The framing of a discourse means how assumptions about what a certain topic means are communicated through word choice and tone. For instance, the subject matter of my earlier posts about the naming of Islamic militants was in part about the framing of the debate about how to combat them: are they “terrorists”, “violent extremists”, “anti-Western millenarians” etc. Lakoff has pointed out how the choice of words to discuss issues like abortion and the war on terror have restricted discussion in the media of liberal alternatives to what he sees as the current conservative dominance in American political life. While framing is centered on a topic of discussion, interpellation is related to the identities of speakers or actors involved in the dialogue or action. The framing of a certain debate will suggest certain interpellations of who the actors are and what they believe.

Applications in the area of psychotherapy of children and families suggest that interpellation is not just a temporary effect but can shape identity and behavior in a profound way. The degree to which an outside force can shape one’s actions and feelings is a somewhat threatening area in which there is room for many modifications and caveats. We are taught in Western societies and in particular in the Anglo-American world, that we are autonomous individuals. However, it is indisputable that rather than being simply encapsulated within our individual biological selves from birth, we are in part shaped by the social world in ways that have to do with among other things roles that have been thrust upon us by the words and actions of others. Some of what is ourselves is biologically conditioned (and it has been increasingly fashionable to emphasize the biological component over the social as it was the reverse about 30 years ago) but a significant portion of us is a negotiated product of a personal, family and social history.

Interpellation has probably not caught on as a concept in the Anglo-American world because it seems to negate our belief in our own responsibility for our actions and words, which is one of the bedrocks of English and American culture. My discussion of interpellation does not absolve the adult individual for responsibility for their responses to being cast in a role. We all have the freedom to respond and react to an interpellation or “call” in a variety of ways, ways that are not pre-determined. However, the call makes certain reactions more likely than others or sets up a binary opposition to which the respondent needs to take a position.

The power differences between caller and addressee in interpellation are clear but not absolute. Someone can take the identity offered by the call and transform it into something else that creates a different response set in the original caller. One can re-interpret the work of Gandhi and Martin Luther King as determined efforts by “addressees” to create a different dynamic with a dominant force by responding with non-violence to violent provocation. In both cases, this change in behavior interrupted the dynamic and transformed the dialogue.

The ability to put the initial spin on a dialogue or to engage in a publicly broadcast monologue is however still a great advantage for those who have physical, political and or cultural control of a situation through economic and/or political power. If you take the example of the blogosphere, most of us are commentators on the actions and words of a limited set of individuals and institutions. While those people are often representatives of larger political and economic groups, their words and actions are considerably within their own power to choose: we don’t have a referendum or plebiscite on every action of government. It is a difficult paradox to keep in mind that within a representative democracy there is parity in the voting booth but great disparity in most other situations: some people are propagandists of the one side of the paradox (the equality of voice within certain limits) while others only see the disparities in the power of that voice and discount the opportunity offered by democratic institutions (critics of representative democracy, the traditional left).

Why am I introducing interpellation at this time in this blog?

I believe that so many issues of cultural identity and political dispute have their origins in unbalanced interactions started with a set of interpellations that put into motion a destructive dynamic from which we cannot easily recover. These interpellations or “implicit statements about the identity of someone we have a relationship with” add up and make changes in the relationship and dialogue difficult to achieve. There are too many of these problematic interactions to explore at any one time.

Again this does not absolve any adult actor of responsibility for their own actions. I am not of the school that feels that all power originates outside the average individual. There are choices being made on all sides but there are also differences in power, privilege and historical advantage which may need at times to be considered as factors in the success of a given strategy.

My introduction of the concept of “violent anti-Western Islamic millenarians” is an attempt to start a new type of interpellation of problematic aspects of the Islamic world. My naming of these individuals is not flattering but it also allows for self-recognition: it is a “hey, you” with some room in it for thought. Most importantly it can help stimulate Western and Israeli dialogue with the supporters of the violent extremes in the Islamic world. We want people to be able to ask themselves “Am I a millenarian?” “Is my faith in Allah premised on destruction of my opponents/oppressors/non-Muslims?”.