In Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (1972) Althusser writes: “Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence…. All ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects.” Ideology is spread through two kinds of “apparatuses”. Let us look at the components below:

As Althusser remarks:

“ … all ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects … 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!”