From Idealism to Realism: Althusser’s Scientific Discourse in George Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara

As a prominent work of dramatic literature, George Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara tackles the issue of poverty as seen by two opposing systems of thought, characterized in Major Barbara and Andrew Undershaft. While Barbara believes that poverty may be uprooted through charity centers such as The Salvation Army to which she belongs, Undershaft argues that it is through economic cycles and productions, even in their cruelest form such as ammunition factory, that jobs are created and as a result poverty is obliterated. These two conflicting ideas suggest that Barbara and Undershaft are products of two conflicting ideological systems and it is the clash of these two systems that moves the play ahead. Such a clash is enough to make the play the target of Althusserian approach. Louis Althusser argues that the capitalist societies establish and keep going different ideologies in an attempt to preserve the economic coalition of the state. According to Althusser, these ideologies are disseminated through such institutes as family, school, culture, literature, sports, and political parties. In his well-known term, Althusser calls these institutes Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs). Ultimately, Althusser famously argues that while these ISAs infuse people with a false understanding of their existence, while a typical Marxian analysis gives them a true description of their place in capitalist societies. Althusser calls the former ideological discourse and the latter scientific discourse. To identify and discuss these two discourses in Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara, the present research will focus on three ISAs including family ISA, cultural ISA, and political ISA, and will explore which character is the voice of the scientific discourse in the conflict of the play.