چکیده:
The present paper is to explore the process through which a group of villagers are
hailed by an ISA called lottery. They do believe in the power of unknown forces
to bring fertility and crops to them only in case of dedicating a human being as
sacrifice. Althusser believes that ISAs are the means by which individuals are
changed into subjects, subjects to the ruling ideology. Conducting the lottery for
choosing a scapegoat is considered to be a cultural ISA by means of which the
status quo of dominance is maintained. ISA works primarily by ideology and
secondarily by force. The lottery and its mechanics are concrete actions and
practices. Such concrete aspects refer to the notion of the materiality of ideology.
ISAs tend to manifest themselves in practices and rituals which are ideologically
loaded. The process of ideological recognition which shows our relationship to
reality is called ‘interpellation’ in the terminology of Althusser. Consequently,
subjectivization to the ruling and controlling ideology leads to the restriction of
agency. That is why the villagers follow this tradition blindly though there are
some traces of resistance among the ‘young folks’.
خلاصه ماشینی:
"Unconscious Submission to ISA and Lack of Agency: An Althusserain Reading of Shirley Jackson’s "The Lottery" Saman Zoleikhaei English Literature, MA, Shahid Beheshti University Abstract The present paper is to explore the process through which a group of villagers are hailed by an ISA called lottery.
Keywords : tradition, scapegoat, ideology, ISA, materiality, interpellation, Shirley Jackson "The Lottery" solely could save Shirley Jackson’s eminence and status in the world of literature though she was a prolific writer.
This way of thinking and leading life is rooted in the unconscious of the villages since the reference to the black box shows that it "had been put into use even before Old Man Warner, the oldest man in town, was born" (Jackson, 1991, p.
What brings all the villagers in Jackson’s story to participate in the lottery is the mechanics of ideology, which has been shown in the story as the material practices of drawing a paper and stoning the chosen scapegoat.
These civic activities, being defined by the ideology of the ruling class in order to control the mass and maintain the material condition, hails the villagers as the lottery does.
Shirley Jackson turned a ritual into an ISA in order to not only control the ‘always already’ poor villagers but also maintain the status quo through the unconscious reproduction of the ruling ideology.
By giving the children a marginal status in the skeleton of "The Lottery," Shirley Jackson critiques the ruling ideology of the early decades of the twentieth century."