“What is represented in ideology is [...] not the system of the real relations which govern the existence of individuals, but the imaginary relation of those individuals to the real relations in which they live. If this is the case, the question of the ‘cause’ of the imaginary distortion of the real relations in ideology disappears and must be replaced by a different question: why is the representation given to individuals of their (individual) relation to the social relations which govern their conditions of existence and their collective and individual life necessarily an imaginary relation? And what is the nature of this imaginariness?”

Louis Althusser