Papers > History > American Dream or Nightmare A comarison between Althusser and Barbara Ehrenreichs Nickled and Dimed
|
Featured Papers from Direct Essays
|
|
|
|
|
|
This is a preview of a paper to view the full text you need to signup and login.
|
American Dream or Nightmare A comarison between Althusser and Barbara Ehrenreichs Nickled and Dimed
|
|
|
The American Dream…or Nightmare? ... The “American Dream” advocates social mobility and makes financial success the purpose of people’s existence. ... Challenging this all pervasive myth, Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed, calls America a “dictatorship” with low-wage workers who “dwell in a place that is neither free nor in any way democratic”(Ehrenreich, 173). ... As she sets up temporary residence in three cities, she learns the differences, or lack of differences between the poor and the rich. ... Similarly, Althusser asks the same question, and his answer lies within his theory of ideology and the way it secures the reproduction of the relations of production. More specifically, two Ideological State Apparatuses identified by Althusser are particularly important in explaining why America’s culture of poverty compels the working class to subject themselves to hard labor and suffering. ...
According to Althusser in his “Ideology and the Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation,)” ideology is a set of ideas or beliefs that reproduces the system of domination and exploitation that exists in a given society. ... Althusser explains that Education is introduced by the Schools, and no longer the Church, as it was in the pre-capitalist historical period (Althusser, 151). Schools take children from every social class at their most vulnerable years and train them with “a certain amount of ‘know-how’ wrapped in the ruling ideology”(Althusser, 155). ... Ironically, this predetermined designation is completely contradictory to the American Dream where mobility and possibility are key principles, independent from education. ... However, high-wage workers have the benefit of a high level of education, which provides the ability to have an analytical eye and filter out distorted images, and perhaps question the validity of the American Dream, something the uneducated do not. ... For the maids, Ted is the embodiment of the American Dream. ...
Another aspect of Althusser’s theory of ideology is that we can not live without it nor escape its influence. ... Althusser has a notion of the
“Attitude that should be observed by every agent in the division of labor, according to the job he is ‘destined’ for: rules of morality, civic and professional conscience, which actually means rules of respect for the socio-technical division of labor and ultimately the rules of the order established by class domination”(Althusser, 132).
|
|
|
To link to this page, copy the following code to your site:
|
|
Paper Information
|
|
|
Title: American Dream or Nightmare A comarison between Althusser and Barbara Ehrenreichs Nickled and Dimed
Words: 1902
Rating: None
Pages: 7.6
submitted by: shahn819
If you think this paper shouldn't be here then
|
|
|
|
|
Signup & Login
|
|
|
If you don't currently have a login then Signup here
|
|
|
|
|
Pre-Written Papers
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Custom Papers
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
