Interpellation

Interpellation is Louis Althusser's term for the process by which ideology transforms individuals into subjects — not by persuasion but by recognition. When an authority calls out and the called turns, that turning-around is the moment of subject-formation: the individual has already recognized themselves as the kind of being who is called, who is accountable, who exists within the ideological frame.

The concept is often misunderstood as a theory of brainwashing. It is better understood as a theory of structural subjectivity: the "you" that responds to the call was not there before the call; it was produced by the call. This makes interpellation a mechanism of emergence at the social level: the subject is an emergent property of the ideological system, not a pre-given entity that the system subsequently influences. The hermeneutic resources through which the subject understands their own experience are themselves outputs of the interpolating structure.