"interpolate"

[Jonathan Lighter]

> As ideology is eternal, I must now suppress the temporal form in which I
have presented the functioning of ideology, and say: ideology has
always-already interpellated individuals as subjects, which amounts to
making it clear that individuals are always-already interpellated by
ideology as subjects, which necessarily leads us to one last
proposition: individuals are always-already subjects.

QED.

Ben's suggestion seems likely.  "Interpellate" has fewer syllables that
"address peremptorily," which proves that in pomo circles, obscurity
always-already trumps prolixity.

Many might be interested to know just why Althusser assigned this radically
new meaning to "interpellate" in the first place. But I'm not one of them.

At any rate, the new sense is not  in OED.

JL
---

On Sat, Sep 3, 2011 at 10:57 AM, Ben Zimmer
<bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "interpolate"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 11:20 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> >
> > At 9/2/2011 07:24 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >>...
> >>The bright side, however, was the discovery of a brand-new meaning for
> >>"interpolate":
> >>
> >>2003 Michael Corris & Robert Hobbs, in Gill Perry, ed. _Difference and
> >>Excess in Contemporary Art: The Visibility of Women's Practice_ (Malden,
> >>Mass.: Blackwell, 2004) 118: The copy for the back cover...interpolates a
> >>readership wishing to view the world in stark contrasts and bold
> headlines:
> >>  Expect the savage. The sensual. The shocking. The sad. The powerful.
> The
> >>shameful. ...You may rave about MANDINGO or you may hate it, but you
> won't
> >>be able to lay it down, because it is a terrible and wonderful novel!
> >>
> >>Just what that meaning may be, I leave to others.
> >
> > Error for the postmodernist "interrogate"?  That is, the back cover
> > copy makes the readership rethink its black and white view of the world.
>
> Another possibility: error for postmodernist "interpellate",
> originating in the work of Althusser:
>
> ---
> http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1970/ideology.htm
> I shall then suggest that ideology ‘acts’ or ‘functions’ in such a way
> that it ‘recruits’ subjects among the individuals (it recruits them
> all), or ‘transforms’ the individuals into subjects (it transforms
> them all) by that very precise operation which I have called
> _interpellation_ or hailing, and which can be imagined along the lines
> of the most commonplace everyday police (or other) hailing: ‘Hey, you
> there!' [...]
> Thus ideology hails or interpellates individuals as subjects. As
> ideology is eternal, I must now suppress the temporal form in which I
> have presented the functioning of ideology, and say: ideology has
> always-already interpellated individuals as subjects, which amounts to
> making it clear that individuals are always-already interpellated by
> ideology as subjects, which necessarily leads us to one last
> proposition: individuals are always-already subjects.
> ---
>
> See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpellation_%28philosophy%29
>
> --bgz
>
> --
> Ben Zimmer
> http://benzimmer.com/
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org