Week 3 Questions (Crossley)

1)  I'd like to look at Althusser's conceptions as they might apply today. 

We have a repressive state apparatus (single entity, public sphere) and we have ideological state apparatuses (multiple entities, private sphere).  

Repressive state apparatus function first by fear and then by ideology while ideological state apparatuses do so "inversely" (Althusser 154)

In both these instances, the assumption is that one piece, fear, is followed by the second piece, ideology.

Yet I can't see how this wholly applies to the state apparatuses of today.  Both sides are made up equally of fear and ideology.  Like they've bled into each other and become one.  nothing is leading.

My question is 1) am I reading wrong (entirely possible) or can this be the case?

                        2) How might this change Althusser's later theses of fear and ideology in state apparatuses?

                            Does it?

2) The second thing I'd like to hear more on, again from Althusser...He goes into his theory of interpolation.  It is a theory I've used through another author.  I'd like to get a layman's layout, if you will, of the theory of interpolation because I'm never quite sure I'm understanding it in the way it is meant to be understood.