Violeta Lopez Molina

This paper examines the intersection of Louis Althusser’s theory of ideology and Frantz Fanon’s account of the race-marked colonial person to explore how interpellation functions –and fails– in a racialized world. Althusser’s notion of interpellation describes how individuals are transformed into subjects under the ruling ideology through material practices. Yet while Althusser treats this process as universally reproduced under a given economic system and of “absolute guarantee” (Althusser 1971, 34), Fanon reveals its limits: colonized subjects are not “always-already” interpellated as subjects. Drawing on Fanon’s phenomenological descriptions, I argue that under white supremacist ideology, the black person is not constituted as a universal subject but as a race-marked person whose status as a human being is shaped by the colonizer’s imposed imaginary. The default category of subject in the colonial order is the white subject, while the colonized person is treated as a “nonbeing” (Fanon 1986, 10). Reading Fanon alongside Althusser exposes a structural asymmetry: ideology both constitutes subjecthood for some and denies it for others, producing what I term non-interpellation. Fanon’s philosophy thus challenges Althusser’s assumption of a shared field of subjectivation by showing that, in the colonial context, interpellation’s “obviousness” (Althusser 1971, 1) relies on racial exclusion. Ultimately, I contend that confronting the colonial and racial limits of ideology requires rethinking the category of the subject —not as a fixed, reproducible universal, but as a historically contingent product of a material world divided between those who are interpellated as subjects and those who are denied subjecthood.

In Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Hegel reconceptualizes the will, challenging the traditional philosophical view of the will that treats it as a causal power separate from reason. This traditional view, exemplified by philosophers such as Hobbes, frames freedom as negative: the absence of external constraints and the ability to translate intentions into action successfully. Hegel critiques this as overly abstract and asocial, failing to capture the dynamic, self-reflective nature of human agency. He develops a structure of the will made of three “moments”: the indeterminate I, the determinate I, and the self-determinate I. The first moment represents pure, abstract freedom, empty of content yet foundational for self-reflection. The second moment situates the will in particular determinations, embedding agency in the social and material world. The third moment synthesizes universality and particularity, achieving freedom as self-determined action informed by rational principles and relational context. Hegelian freedom is thus experiential: each exercise of the will discloses aspects of the self, enabling practical self-realization. Contrasting with the traditional model, Hegel demonstrates that true freedom is the capacity to act in alignment with one’s reflective understanding of oneself and one’s socio-historical circumstances. I argue that differences between these two theories of freedom have significant implications for how we relate to ourselves and others.