‘Hey, you there! Marketing!’ On ideology and (mis)interpellation of the marketing educator as subject

ABSTRACT

Mainstream marketing management is a disciplinary field essentially unruffled by ideological reflection. In this paper, we approach the subjectifying power of marketing ideology through Louis Althusser’s work on interpellation, the process by which ideology calls its willing subjects into ideological belief and practice. Through our autoethnographic accounts, we develop a counterposition to the epistemic ideology of normative mainstream marketing management by accounting for misinterpellation to its ideology. Where interpellation outlines how a hegemonic marketing management ideology compels individuals to perform within the ideological apparatus as good educators and researcher subjects, the notion of misinterpellation opens avenues for conceiving resistance within the breaks in ideology to which all subjects are hailed.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical marketing
• Althusser
• ideology
• interpellation
• misinterpellation
• autoethnography

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The concealment of ideology in the education system is challenged across the political spectrum. For example, where Althusser sees a natural coverup of the essentially reigning bourgeois capitalist ideology in education, Ayn Rand (1999) calls it the ‘comprachicos of the mind’ where progressive left pedagogy mutilates students to intellectual mediocrity and seeing capitalism as the root cause of their (individual) misery.

2. Recent examples retaliation by the ISA include, amongst others, the purging of critical management studies and political economy at the University of Leicester and the Danish Parliament expecting universities to (more forceful) self-regulate what is seen as ‘politics disguised as science’.

Additional information

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article

Notes on contributors

Nicole Gross

Nicole Gross is a lecturer in marketing and entrepreneurship at the National College of Ireland. Besides exploring the nature and boundaries of ideology in marketing, she spends her time researching market making, shaping and innovation, especially in the context of complex markets.

Mikko Laamanen

Mikko Laamanen currently contemplates his interpellation to marketing at the Lifestyle Research Center of the emlyon business school where he explores the real and imaginary dimensions of consumer lifestyle politics.