Althusser’s Neo-Marxist Ideology in To Kill a Mockingbird: The Manufacture of Consent in Maycomb

Abstract

Utilizing Louis Althusser’s Neo-Marxist theory of ideology the research explores how the social institutions of Maycomb make and reproduce consent and enforce racial and class inequalities in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Racism and social inequality in the novel are perpetuated with the help of institutionalized practices that determine how people think and act. The study addresses the place of Ideological State Apparatuses like school, family, church, and legal system in the context of structural critique of ideology. It draws on an interpretative and qualitative approach, close textual readings and Althusserian categories of interpellation, reproduction of ideology and interplay between Ideological and Repressive State Apparatuses with the help of Foucauldian concepts of discipline and normalization. The research follows through on the ongoing applicability of ideological analysis in the realm of works regarding race, power, and societal order by confirming the usefulness of the same in analyzing narratives about those.