ABSTRACT
In the 1950s an intellectual battle was being waged in France between phenomenologists, and so-called 'structuralists' although in Althusser's case the label is somewhat debatable. Among the 'structuralists', only Althusser was a Marxist and member of the French Communist Party (PCF). It is difficult to find any discussion of Althusser in Cultural Studies, literary criticism or philosophy which doesn't mention structuralism or refer to him as a 'Marxist structuralist'. The impact in Cultural Studies of Althusser's Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, first published in the PCF journal La Pensee in 1970, is unprecedented. The text has generated reams of secondary literature, bearing on everything from class to feminism, race to sexuality. Mulvey's point, however, in assuming the male gaze to be the dominant subject position in cinema, is that the woman always ends up feminised, objectified, pacified. Jancovich's objection that Mulvey's theory of the male gaze does not take account of female viewing pleasure is true: that's the point.
