Louis Althusser

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role played by the psychoanalytical model of intervention in Althusser’s reflections on the function of the philosophical practice initiated by Marx. In doing so, we will see how Althusser conceptualized Freud’s discovery of the unconscious and Marx’s critique of ideology and used these theoretical revolutions as a paradigm to understand the modalities of philosophical intervention on ideology. While the centrality of consciousness, subjectivity and knowledge will appear subordinated in both psychoanalytical and (...) ideological processes, the primacy of structural, non-subjective and practical experience as a precondition for any critical and emancipatory theory will be highlighted. (shrink)

A 25 años de su muerte, los escritos de Louis Althusser continúan siendo tan polémicos y controvertidos como lo fueron en el momento de su publicación. La siguiente investigación se propone analizar uno de los temas que más controversias y críticas suscitó en la década de los sesenta, momento por demás polémico dentro de su producción intelectual: la relación entre la ciencia e ideología. ¿Se trata de una llana oposición?, ¿son la ciencia y la ideología dos estructuras claramente diferenciadas?, ¿es (...) acaso la ciencia la salida de la ideología?, ¿es la ciencia la verdad y la ideología el error? A través de un estudio pormenorizado de los textos publicados en la década señalada, este trabajo buscará dar cuenta del pensamiento de Althusser en relación con esta temática en el marco de sus valiosos aportes al pensamiento marxista. -/- . (shrink)

The work of Gaston Bachelard is known for two crucial concepts, that of the epistemological rupture and that of phenomenotechnique. A crucial question is, however, how these two concepts relate to one another. Are they in fact essentially connected or must they be seen as two separate elements of Bachelard’s thinking? This paper aims to analyse the relation between these two Bachelardian moments and the significance of the concept of phenomenotechnique for today. This will be done by examining how the (...) concepts of Bachelard have been used from the 1960s on. From this historical perspective, one gets the impression that these two concepts are relatively independent from each other. The Althusserian school has exclusively focused on the concept of ‘epistemological break’, while scholars from Science & Technology Studies, such as Bruno Latour, seem to have only taken up the concept of phenomenotechnique. It in fact leads to two different models of how to think about science, namely the model of purification and the model of proliferation. The former starts from the idea that sciences are rational to the extent that they are purified and free from obstacles. Scientific objectivity, within this later model, is not achieved by eradicating all intermediaries, obstacles and distortions, but rather exactly by introducing as many relevant technical mediators as possible. Finally, such a strong distinction will be criticized and the argument will be made that both in Bachelard’s and Latour's thought both concepts are combined. This leads to a janus-headed view on science, where both the element of purification and the element of proliferation are combined. (shrink)

What and how should individuals resist in political situations? While this question, or versions of it, recurs regularly within Western political philosophy, answers to it have often relied on dyads founded upon dogmatically held ideals. In particular, there is a strain of idealist political philosophy, inaugurated by Plato and finding contemporary expression in the work of Alain Badiou, that employs dyads (such as the distinction between truth and doxa or the privilege of thought over sense) that tend to reduce the (...) complexities of practices of resistance to concepts of commitment. Although these dyads have been challenged by, amongst others, poststructuralist theorists, this has often been at the cost of losing their structuralist heritage. This thesis develops an ontology proper to structuralism that engenders non-idealist and non-dogmatic, yet ethical, practices of resistance against commitment orientated accounts of resistance and the return of classical ontological dyads. The thesis begins with an examination of the extent to which a dogmatic use of idealism grounds the work of a prominent contemporary theorist, Alain Badiou. In developing his neo-Maoist metapolitics, Badiou follows both Platonic ontology and the Marxist tradition of dialectics by claiming that political practice can only be carried out in truth by paying fidelity to an event that ruptures the presented order of things. Chapter one opens with an exploration of Badiou's mathematic meta-ontology to draw out its three foundational dyads (truth/doxa; sense/intelligibility; is/is not). It is argued that although Badiou makes important criticisms of the preponderant trends of political philosophy, he is unable to support his own account of politics due to his dogmatic reliance on idealist principles. Chapter two begins by developing two accounts: first, of the relations between Badiou's work and that of his former teacher Louis Althusser and, secondly, the relations between Althusser's thought and that of Gilles Deleuze, in particular his reading of David Hume. Discussion centres around the importance of the role that time plays within the works of all three authors, particularly in regard to the idea of the void. The chapter concludes with the argument that Hume's temporal idea of human nature is the key to a symptomatic reading of Althusser that accounts for the persistence of ideas in the latter's social theory. In chapter three, Deleuze's reading of Hume's idea of relations is developed to take into account Bergson's theory of time. Read in contrast to Quentin Meillassoux's speculative realism, the chapter argues that Deleuze's account of temporal relations informs Althusser's social theory to create the ontological grounds for non-dogmatic and non-idealist practices of resistance. These practices are developed in chapter four with an unlikely turn to John Stuart Mill's idea of genius, the metaphysical property of the individual that signifies the discovery of new truth. The chapter begins with an argument that there is an under-developed account of ethics in Deleuze's work. Distinguishing the idea of genius from both Mill's moral philosophy, as well as from utilitarian thought more generally, the idea of genius is sutured onto Deleuze's ontological account of individuation. Read alongside Althusser's social theory, which accounts for the non-idealist conceptualisation of situations, this suture creates an ethically oriented structuralist ontology. The thesis concludes with the argument that the idea of genius is the ethical imperative that motivates practices of resistance. When individuals are understood as embodied within situations, practices of resistance are conceptualised not against other components of a situation, but contra them, taking them into account in order to amplify, multiply and transform the individual's potential within a situation. (shrink)

La cohérence du marxisme de Louis Althusser est ici assaillie à partir de la théorie de la connaissance engelsienne. On prétend dévoiler certains « concepts »-clés de l'althusserisme comme étant des métaphores non susceptibles de toute interprétation qui se tienne. Son adhésion foudroyante à l'objectivisme réaliste se manifeste comme fausse . Cinq problématiques althusseriennes sont examinées et critiquées successivement. Il s'agit de sa désapprobation du concept engelsien de vérité relative et objective, sa distinction entre l'objet de connaissance et l'objet réel, (...) sa conception de « l'idéologie », sa conception de « l'empirisme », et sa conception de la philosophie.The coherence of Louis Althusser's "Marxism" is here assailed from the standpoint of Engels' theory of knowledge. Key Althusserian "concepts" turn out to be mere metaphors insusceptible of any consistent construal, it is claimed, while his blustering allegiance to realist objectivism proves spurious . In succession, his disapproval of Engels' concept of relative truth, his distinction between the object of knowledge and the real object, his conception of "ideology", his conception of "empiricism", and his conception of philosophy are examined and criticized. (shrink)

The article reviews Althusser’s Philosophy of the Encounter, examining in turn the problem of the Epistemological Break and the idea of matérialisme aléatoire. It looks at Althusser’s critique of the concept of commodity fetishism and suggests a possible response. It goes on to situate the matérialisme aléatoire in the context of the history of atomism with particular reference to the work of Boltzmann. It provides a possible technique of both rejecting teleology whilst retaining the arrow of time.

In this article we will aim at questioning Althusser’s attempts to assess the relations between marxism and psychoanalysis through an analysis of the differences and similarities of their objects, i.e. ideology and unconscious. We will show how Althusser’s position varies between the affirmation of a tendencial unification of ideology and unconscious, and the affirmation of their radical distinction. Recognising that it is only by choosing this second option that their real articulation can be determined, Althusser abandons the lacanian idea of (...) a subject of the unconscious and relegates the category of the subject in the field of ideology without however confusing it with the conscious I. This will lead him to outline, although in a fragmentary and allusive way, a conception of the unconscious whose recovery could allow us in return to shed some new light on some of his best-known positions concerning ideology. (shrink)

The paper analyses relations between Marek J. Siemek’s views and Louis Althusser’s Marxism. The French philosophical tradition, especially structuralism, plays an important role in Siemek’s standpoint which overcomes the opposition between Hegelian Marxism and the so-called Structuralist Marxism.

This thesis argues that the concept of contingency plays a central role in Althusser's recasting of Marxist philosophy and in his attempt to free the Marxist conception of history from concepts such as teleology, necessity and origin. It is critically placed both against those readings that see the emergence of the problematic of contingency only in the late Althusserm and to the most recent attempts to establish a straightforward continuity in Althusser's work. Drawing on published and unplublished material and covering (...) the entirety of Althusser's philosophical itinerary, the thesis seeks both to unearth the latent presence of this problematic, and its various implications, at each stage in the development of his work. It seeks to clarify, in a systematic way, the conceptual consequences of Althusser's commitment to contingency to the received understanding of his conceptions of structural change, ideology and political action. In particular, it argues that the standpoint of contingency allows us to locate in Althusser's 'Structural Marxism' the emergence of a 'logic of irruption' and structurally under-determined development of becoming. By emphasising this logic of contingency, it then seeks to produce a more nuanced assessment of his theory of ideology through the introduction of the concept of 'overinterpellation'. It finally attempts to distinguish two moments in the emergence of a materialism of contingency, first political and then philosophical; the problematic coexistence of these two aspects helps to account for the unstable charactoer of Althusser's late philosophical project. (shrink)