Benennungskrisen

Abstract This paper examines the question raised by Louis Althusser concerning what it means for ideology to interpellate concrete individuals as concrete subjects. Under what conditions does ideological identification succeed or fail? I answer this question by analyzing three scenarios of interpellation: Erich Auerbach investigates the scene of successful police identification and arrest in connection with a revolt in the late Roman Empire; Karl Marx describes the adoption of Roman names, phrases, and costumes by French revolutionaries as the necessary conditions for bringing about bourgeois society; and finally, analyses of today’s political networks reveal an extensive crisis of interpellation manifested in controversies surrounding the naming and classification of political actors without official status.