Louis Pierre Althusser (French: [altysɛʁ]; 16 October 1918 –
22 October 1990) was a French
Marxist
Marxist philosopher. He was born in
Algeria
Algeria and studied at the
École Normale Supérieure
École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where
he eventually became Professor of Philosophy.
Althusser was a longtime member—although sometimes a strong
critic—of the French
Communist
.jpg/540px-Editorial_cartoon_(by_Fred_Ellis,_for_the_Daily_Worker,_March_6_1930).jpg)
Communist Party. His arguments and theses were
set against the threats that he saw attacking the theoretical
foundations of Marxism. These included both the influence of
empiricism on
Marxist
Marxist theory, and humanist and reformist socialist
orientations which manifested as divisions in the European communist
parties, as well as the problem of the "cult of personality" and of
ideology.
Althusser is commonly referred to as a structural Marxist, although
his relationship to other schools of French structuralism is not a
simple affiliation and he was critical of many aspects of
structuralism.
Althusser's life was marked by periods of intense mental illness. In
1980, he killed his wife, the sociologist Hélène Rytmann, by
strangling her. He was declared unfit to stand trial due to insanity
and was committed to a psychiatric hospital for three years. He did
little further academic work, dying in 1990.
Contents
1 Early life: 1918–1948
2 Academic life and
Communist
Communist Party affiliation: 1948–1959
3 Major works,
For Marx and Reading Capital: 1960–1968
4 May 1968,
Eurocommunism
Eurocommunism debates, and auto-critique: 1968–1978
5 Hélène's murder and late years: 1978–1990
6 Personal life
6.1 Romantic life
6.2 Mental condition
7 Thought
7.1 Epistemological break
7.2 Levels and practices
7.3 Contradiction and overdetermination
7.4
Ideological
Ideological state apparatuses
8 Reception and influence
9 Legacy
10 Selected bibliography
10.1 French books
10.2 English collections
10.3 Selected articles in translation
11 Notes
12 References
12.1 Footnotes
12.2 Bibliography
13 Further reading
14 External links
Early life: 1918–1948[edit]
Althusser was born in
French Algeria
.svg/250px-Flag_of_France_(1794-1815).svg.png)
French Algeria in the town of Birmendreïs, near
Algiers, to a pied-noir petit-bourgeois family from Alsace, France.
His father, Charles-Joseph Althusser, was a lieutenant officer in the
French army and a bank clerk, while his mother, Lucienne Marthe
Berger, a devout Roman Catholic, worked as a school teacher.[1]
According to his own memoirs, his Algerian childhood was prosperous;
historian
Martin Jay
Martin Jay stated that Althusser, along with Albert Camus
and Jacques Derrida, was "a product of the French colonial culture in
Northern Africa."[2] In 1930, his family moved to the French city of
Marseille
Marseille as his father was to be the director of the Compagnie
algérienne de banque (Algerian Banking Company) branch in the
city.[3] There, Althusser spent the rest of his childhood, excelling
in his studies at the Lycée Saint-Charles (fr) and joining a
scout group.[1] A second displacement occurred in 1936 when Althusser
settled in
Lyon
Lyon as a student at the Lycée du Parc. Later he was
accepted by the highly regarded higher-education establishment (grande
école)
École Normale Supérieure
École Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Paris.[4] While in Lycée
du Parc, Althusser was influenced by Catholic professors,[b] joined
the Catholic youth movement Jeunesse Étudiante Chrétienne,[5] and
wanted to be a Trappist.[6] His interest in Catholicism coexisted with
his communist ideology,[5] and some critics argued that his early
Catholic introduction affected the way he interpreted Marx.[7]
The Lycée du Parc, where Althusser studied for two years and was
influenced by Catholic professors
After a two-year period of preparation (Khâgne) under
Jean Guitton
Jean Guitton at
the Lycée du Parc, Althusser was admitted into the ENS in July
1939.[8] His attendance, however, was deferred by many years, because
he was drafted to the French Army in September of that year for the
run-up to
World War II
World War II and, like most French soldiers following the
Fall of France, was captured by the Germans. Seized in
Vannes
Vannes in June
1940, he was held in a prisoner-of-war camp in Schleswig-Holstein, in
Northern Germany, during all the five remaining years of the war.[9]
In the camp, he was at first drafted to hard labour but was ultimately
reassigned to work in the infirmary after falling ill.
This second occupation allowed him to read philosophy and
literature.[10] In his memoirs, Althusser described the experiences of
solidarity, political action, and community in the camp as the moment
he first understand the idea of communism.[5] Althusser recalled: "It
was in prison camp that I first heard
Marxism
Marxism discussed by a Parisian
lawyer in transit—and that I actually met a communist".[11] In
addition, however, his experience in the camp also had an impact on
his lifelong bouts of mental instability, which was reflected in
constant depression that lasted until the end of life.[1]
Nevertheless, psychoanalyst
Élisabeth Roudinesco
Élisabeth Roudinesco has argued that the
absurd war experience was essential for Althusser's philosophical
thought.[11]
Althusser resumed his studies at the ENS in 1945 to prepare himself
for the agrégation, an exam to teach philosophy in secondary
schools.[5] In 1946, Althusser met sociologist Hélène Rytmann,[c] a
Jewish former resistance member, with whom he would began a lifelong
relationship.[16] That same year, he started a close friendly
relationship with Jacques Martin, a G. W. F.
Hegel
Hegel and Herman Hesse
translator, who later committed suicide and to whom Althusser
dedicated his first book.[4] Martin was influential on Althusser's
interest on reading the bibliography of Jean Cavaillès, Georges
Canguilhem and Hegel.[17] At the same time, Althusser remained a
Catholic but become more associated with left-wing groups; he joined
the "worker priests" movement,[18] and embraced a synthesis of
Christian
Christian and
Marxist
Marxist thought.[5] This combination may have led him to
adopt
German Idealism
German Idealism and Hegelian thought,[5] as did Martin's
influence and a renewed interest on
Hegel
Hegel in the 1930s and 1940s in
France.[19] In consonance, Althusser's master thesis to obtain his
diplôme d'études supèrieures was "On Content in the Thought of
G.W.F. Hegel" ("Du contenu dans la pensée de G. W. F. Hegel",
1947).[20] Based on The Phenomenology of Spirit, and under Gaston
Bachelard's supervision, Althusser disserted on how Karl Marx's
philosophy refused to withdraw from the Hegelian master–slave
dialectic.[21] According to the researcher Gregory Elliott, Althusser
was a Hegelian at that time but it would only be for a short
period.[22]
Academic life and
Communist
Communist Party affiliation: 1948–1959[edit]
The main entrance to the
École Normale Supérieure
École Normale Supérieure on Rue d'Ulm,
where Althusser established himself as well-known intellectual
In 1948, he was approved to teach in secondary schools but instead was
made a tutor at the ENS to help students prepare for their own
agrégation.[20] His performance on the exam—he was the best ranked
on the writing part and the second placed on the oral
module—guaranteed this change on his occupation.[5] He was
responsible for offering special courses and tutorials on particular
topics and on particular figures from the history of philosophy.[5] In
1954, he became secrétaire de l'école litteraire (secretary of the
literary school), assuming responsibilities for management and
direction of the school.[5] Althusser was deeply influential at the
ENS because of the lectures and conferences he organized with
participation of leading French philosophers such as Gilles Deleuze
and Jacques Lacan.[23] He also impacted a generation of French
philosophers and French philosophy in general[5]—among his students,
there were Derrida, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, and Michel
Serres.[24] In total, Althusser spent thirty-five years in the ENS,
working there until November 1980.[25]
Parallel to his academic life, Althusser joined the French Communist
Party (Parti communiste français, PCF) in October 1948. In the early
post-war years, the PCF was one of the most influential political
forces and many French intellectuals joined. Althusser himself
declared, "Communism was in the air in 1945, after the German defeat,
the victory at Stalingrad, and the hopes and lessons of the
Resistance."[26] Althusser was primarily active on the "Peace
Movement" section and kept for a few years his Catholic beliefs.[26]
For example, in 1949 he published in the L'Évangile captif (The
captive gospel), the tenth book of the Jeunesse de l'Église (the
youth wing of Church), an article on the historic situation of
Catholicism in response to the question: "Is the good news preached to
the men today?".[18] On it, he wrote about the relationship between
the Catholic Church and the labour movement, advocating at the same
time for social emancipation and the Church "religious
reconquest".[21] However, there was a mutual hostility between these
two organizations—in the early 1950s, the Vatican prohibited
Catholics from membership in the worker priests and left-wing
movements and it certainly affected Althusser's life since he firmly
believed in this combination.[26]
Initially afraid of joining the party because of ENS's opposition to
communists, Althusser did so when he was made a tutor— when
membership became more unlikely to affect his employment —and he
even created at ENA the Cercle Politzer, a
Marxist
Marxist study group.
Althusser also introduced colleagues and students to the party and
worked closely with the communist cell of the ENS. However, his
professionalism made him avoid
Marxism
Marxism and Communism in his classes;
instead, he helped students depending on the demands of their
agrégation.[5] In the early 1950s, Althusser distanced himself from
his youthful political and philosophical ideals[23] and from Hegel,
whose teachings he considered a "bourgeois" philosophy.[21] Starting
from 1948, he studied history of philosophy and gave lectures on it;
the first was about
Plato
Plato in 1949.[27] In 1949–1950, he gave a
lecture about René Descartes,[d] and wrote a thesis titled "Politics
and
Philosophy
Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century" and a small study on
Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "Second Discourse". He presented the thesis to
Jean Hyppolite
Jean Hyppolite and
Vladimir Jankélévitch in 1950 but it was
rejected.[24] These studies were nonetheless valuable because
Althusser later used them to write his book about Montesquieu's
philosophy and an essay on Rousseau's The Social Contract.[29] Indeed,
his first and the only book-length study published during his lifetime
was Montesquieu, la politique et l'histoire ("Montesquieu: Politics
and History") in 1959.[30] He also lectured on Rousseau from 1950 to
1955,[31] and changed a little his focus to philosophy of history,
also studying Voltaire, Condorcet, and Helvétius, which resulted in a
1955–1956 lecture on "Les problèmes de la philosophie de
l'histoire".[32] This course along with others on
Machiavelli
Machiavelli (1962),
17th and 18th political philosophy (1965–1966), Locke (1971), and
Hobbes
.jpg/440px-Thomas_Hobbes_(portrait).jpg)
Hobbes (1971–1972) were later edited and released as a book by
François Matheron in 2006.[33] From 1953 to 1960, Althusser basically
did not publish on
Marxist
Marxist themes, which in turn gave him time to
focus on his teaching activities and establish himself as a reputable
philosopher and researcher.[34]
Major works,
For Marx and Reading Capital: 1960–1968[edit]
Althusser resumed his Marxist-related publications in 1960 as he
translated, edited, and published a collection directed by Hyppolite
about Ludwig Feuerbach's works.[23] The objective of this endeavour
was to identify Feuerbach's influence on Marx early writings,
contrasting it with the absence of his thought on Marx's mature
works.[5] This work spurred him to write "On the Young Marx:
Theoretical Questions" ("Sur le jeune Marx – Questions de
théorie", 1961).[5] Published in the journal La Pensée, it was the
first in a series of articles about Marx that were later grouped on
his most famous book For Marx.[18] He inflamed the French debate on
Marx and
Marxist
Marxist philosophy, and gained a considerable number of
supporters.[5] Inspired by this recognition, he started to publish
more articles on
Marxist
Marxist thought. For example, in 1964, Althusser
published an article titled "Freud and Lacan" in the journal La
Nouvelle Critique, which greatly impacted the Freudo-Marxism
thought.[18] At the same time, he invited Lacan to a lecture on Baruch
Spinoza
Spinoza and the fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis.[18] The impact
of the articles led Althusser to change his teaching style at the
ENS,[5] and he started to minister a series of seminars on the
following topics: "On the Young Marx" (1961–1962), "The Origins of
Structuralism" (1962–1963; it versed on Foucault's
History
History of
Madness, which Althusser highly appreciated[35]), "Lacan and
Psychoanalysis" (1963–1964), and
Reading Capital
.jpg)
Reading Capital (1964–1965).[18]
These seminars aimed for a "return to Marx" and were attended by a new
generation of students.[e][24]
For Marx (a collection of works published between 1961 and 1965) and
Reading Capital
Reading Capital (in collaboration with some of his students), both
published in 1965, brought international fame to Althusser.[36]
Despite being widely criticized,[37] these books made Althusser a
sensation in French intellectual circles[38] and one of the leading
theoreticians of the PCF.[23] He supported a structuralist view of
Marx's work, influenced by Cavaillès and Canguilhem,[39] affirming
that Marx left the "cornerstones" of a new science, incomparable to
all non-
Marxist
Marxist thought, of which, from 1960–1966, he espoused the
fundamental principles.[26] Critiques were done to Stalin's cult of
personality and Althusser defended what he called "theoretical
anti-humanism", as an alternative to
Stalinism
Stalinism and the Marxist
humanism—both popular at the time.[40] At mid-decade, his popularity
grew to the point that it was virtually impossible to have an
intellectual debate about political or ideological theoretical
questions without mentioning his name.[41] Althusser's ideas were
influential enough to arouse the creation of a young militants group
to dispute the power within the PCF.[5] Nevertheless, the official
position of the party was still Stalinist Marxism, which was
criticized both from
Maoist
Maoist and humanist groups. Althusser was
initially careful not to identify with
Maoism
Maoism but progressively agreed
with its critique of Stalinism.[42] At the end of 1966, Althusser even
published an unsigned article titled "On the Cultural Revolution", in
which he considered the beginning of the Chinese Cultural Revolution
as "a historical fact without precedent" and of "enormous theoretical
interest".[43] Althusser mainly praised the non-bureaucratic,
non-party, mass organizations in which, in his opinion, the "Marxist
principles regarding the nature of the ideological' were fully
applied.[44]
Key events in the theoretical struggle took place in 1966. In January,
there was a conference of communist philosophers in Choisy-le-Roi;[45]
Althusser was absent but Roger Garaudy, the official philosopher of
the party, read an indictment that opposed the "theoretical
anti-humanism".[37] The controversy was the pinnacle of a long
conflict between the supporters of Althusser and Garaudy. In March, in
Argenteuil, the thesis of Garaudy and Althusser were formally
confronted by the PCF Central Committee, chaired by Louis Aragon.[37]
The Party decided to keep Garaudy's position as the official one,[39]
and even Lucien Sève (fr)—who was a student of Althusser at
the beginning of his teaching at the ENS—supported it, becoming the
closest philosopher to the PCF leadership.[37] General secretary of
the party,
Waldeck Rochet
Waldeck Rochet said that "Communism without humanism would
not be Communism".[46] Even if he was not publicly censured nor
expelled from the PCF, as were 600 Maiost students, the support of
Garaudy resulted in a further reduction of Althusser's influence in
the party.[39]
Still in 1966, Althusser published in the
Cahiers pour l'Analyse the
article "On the 'Social Contract'" ("Sur le 'Contrat Social'"), a
course about Rousseau he had given at the ENS, and "Cremonini, Painter
of the Abstract" ("Cremonini, peintre de l'abstrait") about Italian
painter Leonardo Cremonini.[47] In the following year, he wrote a long
article titled "The Historical Task of
Marxist
Marxist Philosophy" ("La tâche
historique de la philosophie marxiste") that was submitted to the
Soviet journal Voprossi Filosofii; it was not accepted but was
published a year later in a Hungarian journal.[47] In 1967–1968,
Althusser and his students organized an ENS course titled "Philosophy
Course for Scientists" ("Cours de philosophie pour scientifiques")
that would be interrupted by May 1968 events. Some of the material of
the course was reused in his 1974 book
Philosophy
Philosophy and the Spontaneous
Philosophy
Philosophy of the Scientists (Philosophie et philosophie spontanée
des savants).[47] Another Althusser's significant work[48] from this
period was "Lenin and Philosophy", a lecture first presented in
February 1968 at the French Society of Philosophy (fr).[47]
May 1968,
Eurocommunism
Eurocommunism debates, and auto-critique: 1968–1978[edit]
During the events of May 1968, Althusser was hospitalized because of a
depressive breakdown and was absent in the Latin Quarter. Many of his
students participated in the events, and
Régis Debray
Régis Debray in particular
became an international celebrity revolutionary.[49] Althusser's
initial silence[49] was met with criticism by the protesters, who
wrote on walls: "Of what use is Althusser?" ("A quoi sert
Althusser?").[50] Later, Althusser was ambivalent about it; on the one
hand, he was not supportive of the movement[23] and he criticized the
movement as an "ideological revolt of the mass",[51] adopting the PCF
official argument that an "infantile disorder" of anarchistic
utopianism that had infiltrated the student movement.[52] On the other
hand, he called it "the most significant event in Western history
since the Resistance and the victory over Nazism" and wanted to
reconcile the students and the PCF.[53] Nevertheless, the Maoist
journal La Cause du peuple called him a revisionist,[51] and he was
condemned by former students, mainly by Jacques Rancière.[23] After
it, Althusser went through a phase of "self-criticism" that resulted
in the book
Essays in Self-criticism
.jpg)
Essays in Self-criticism (Éléments d'autocritique, 1974)
in which he revisited some of his old positions, including his support
of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.[54]
While Althusser was criticized in
France
France by his former students, such
as
Jacques Rancière
Jacques Rancière (right), his influence in Latin America grew, as
exemplified by Marta Harnecker.
In 1969, Althusser started an unfinished work[f] that was only
released in 1995 as Sur la reproduction ("On the Reproduction").
However, from these early manuscripts, he developed "
Ideology
Ideology and
Ideological
Ideological State Apparatuses", which was published in the journal La
Pensée in 1970,[57] and became very influential on ideology
discussions.[58] In the same year, Althusser wrote "
Marxism
Marxism and Class
Struggle" ("Marxisme et lutte de classe") that would be the foreword
to the book The Basic Concepts of Historical Materialism of his former
student, the Chilean
Marxist
Marxist sociologist Marta Harnecker.[59] By this
time, Althusser was very popular in Latin America: some leftist
activists and intellectuals saw him almost as a new Marx, although his
work has been the subject of heated debates and sharp criticism.[51]
As an example of this popularity, some of his works were first
translated to Spanish than into English, and others were released in
book format first in Spanish and then in French.[g] At the turn from
the 1960s to the 1970s, Althusser major works were translated into
English—For Marx, in 1969, and
Reading Capital
Reading Capital in
1970—disseminating his ideas among the English-speaking
Marxists.[63]
In the early 1970s, the PCF was, as most of European Communist
parties, in a period of internal conflicts on strategic orientation
that occurred against the backdrop of the emergence of Eurocommunism.
In this context, Althusserian structuralist
Marxism
Marxism was one of the
more or less defined strategic lines.[64] Althusser participated in
various public events of the PCF, most notably the public debate
"Communists, Intellectuals and Culture" ("Les communistes, les
intellectuels et la culture") in 1973.[65] He and his supporters
contested the party's leadership over its decision to abandon the
notion of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" during its
twenty-second congress in 1976.[66] The PCF considered that in
European condition it was possible to have a peaceful transition to
socialism,[67] which Althusser saw as "a new opportunistic version of
Marxist
Marxist Humanism".[68] In a lecture given to the Union of Communist
Students in the same year, he criticized above all the form in which
this decision was taken. According to Althusser—echoing his notion
of "French misery" exposed on For Marx—the party demonstrated a
contempt for the materialist theory when it suppressed a "scientific
concept".[69] This struggle ultimately resulted in the debacle of the
fraction "Union of the Left" and an open letter written by Althusser
and five other intellectuals in which they asked for "a real political
discussion in the PCF".[70] That same year Althusser also published a
series of articles in the newspaper
Le Monde
Le Monde under the title of "What
Must Change in the Party".[71] Published between 25 and 28 April, they
were expanded and reprinted in May 1978 by
François Maspero as the
book Ce qui ne peut plus durer dans le parti communiste.[72] Between
1977 and 1978, Althusser mainly elaborated texts criticizing
Eurocommunism
Eurocommunism and the PCF. "Marx in his Limits" ("Marx dans ses
limits"), an abandoned manuscript wrote in 1978, argued that there was
no
Marxist
Marxist theory of the state and it was only published in 1994 in
the Écrits philosophiques et politiques I.[73] The Italian Communist
newspaper
Il manifesto
Il manifesto allowed Althusser to develop new ideas on a
conference held in Venice about "Power and Opposition in
Post-Revolutionary Societies" in 1977.[74] His speeches resulted into
the articles "The Crisis of Marxism" ("La crisi del marxismo") and
"
Marxism
Marxism as a 'finite' theory" in which he stressed "something vital
and alive can be liberated by this crisis": the perception of Marxism
as a theory that originally only reflected Marx's time and then needed
to be completed by a state theory.[75] The former was published as
"
Marxism
Marxism Today" ("Marxismo oggi") in the 1978 Italian Enciclopedia
Europea.[76] The latter text was included in a book published in
Italy, Discutere lo Stato, and he criticized the notion of "government
party" and defended the notion of a revolutionary party "out of
state".[77]
During the 1970s, Althusser's institutional roles at the ENS increased
but he still edited and published his and other works in the series
Théorie, with François Maspero.[5] Among the essays published, there
was "Response to John Lewis", a 1973 reply of an English Communist's
defense of
Marxist
Marxist Humanism.[78] Two years later, he concluded his
Doctorat d'État (State doctorate) in the
University of Picardie Jules
Verne and acquired the right to direct research on the basis of his
previously published work.[79] Some time after this recognition,
Althusser married Hélène Rytmann.[5] In 1976, he compilled several
of his essays written between 1964 and 1975 to publish Positions.[80]
These years would be a period in which his work was very
intermittent;[81] he gave a conference titled "The Transformation of
Philosophy" ("La transformation de la philosophie") in two Spanish
cities, first
Granada
Granada and then in Madrid, in March 1976.[82] The same
year he gave a lecture in Catalonia titled "Quelques questions de la
crise de la théorie marxiste et du mouvement communiste
international" ("Some Questions on the Crisis of
Marxist
Marxist Theory and
the International
Communist
Communist Movement") in which Althusser outlined
empiricism as the main enemy of class struggle.[83] He also started a
rereading of
Machiavelli
Machiavelli that would influence his later work;[84] he
worked between 1975–1976 on "Machiavel et nous" ("
Machiavelli
Machiavelli and
Us"), a draft, only published posthumously, based on a 1972
lecture,[85] and also wrote for the National Foundation of Political
Science a piece titled "Machiavelli's Solitude" ("Solitude de
Machiavel", 1977).[86] In Spring 1976, requested by
Léon Chertok to
write for the International Symposium on the Unconscious at Tbilisi,
he drafted a presentation titled "The Discovery of Dr. Freud" ("La
découverte du docteur Freud").[87] After sending it to Chertok and
some friends, he was unsettled by the requested criticism he received
by Jacques Nassif and Roudinesco, and then, by December, he wrote a
new essay, "On Marx and Freud".[88] He could not attend the event in
1979 and asked Chertok to replace the texts, but Chertok published the
first without his consent.[89] This would become a public "affair" in
1984 when Althusser finally noticed it by the time Chertok republished
it in a book titled Dialogue franco-soviétique, sur la
psychanalyse.[90]
Hélène's murder and late years: 1978–1990[edit]
After the PCF and the left were defeated in the French legislative
elections of 1978, Atlhusser's bouts of depression became more severe
and frequent.[5] For example, in March 1980, Althusser interrupted the
dissolution session of the École Freudienne de Paris, and, "in the
name of the analysts," called Lacan "beautiful and pitiful
harlequin."[86] Later, he went through a hiatal hernia-removal surgery
as he had difficulties breathing while eating.[91] According to
Althusser himself, the operation deteriorated his physical and mental
state; in particular, he developed a persecution complex and suicidal
thoughts. He would recall later:
I wanted not only to destroy myself physically but to wipe out all
trace of my time on earth: in particular, to destroy every last one of
my books and all my notes, and burn the École Normale, and also, "if
possible," suppress Hélène herself while I still could.[91]
After the surgery, in May, he was hospitalized for most of the summer
in a Parisian clinic. His condition did not improve, but in early
October he was sent home.[86] Upon returning, he wanted to get away
from ENS and even proposed to buy Roudinesco's house.[91] He and
Hélène were also convinced about the "human decline", and so he
tried to talk to the
Pope John Paul II
Pope John Paul II through his former professor
Jean Guitton.[92] Most of the time, however, he and his wife spent
locked on their ENS apartment.[92] In the fall of 1980, Althusser's
psychiatrist René Diatkine (fr), who by now was also treating
Althusser's wife Hélène,[93] recommended that Althusser be
hospitalized, but the couple refused.[94]
“
Before me: Hélène lying on her back, also wearing a dressing
gown. ... Kneeling beside her, leaning over her body, I am
engaged in massaging her neck. ... I press my two thumbs into the
hollow of flesh that borders the top of the sternum, and, applying
force, I slowly reach, one thumb toward the right, one thumb toward
the left at an angle, the firmer area below the ears. ...
Hélène's face is immobile and serene, her open eyes are fixed on the
ceiling. And suddenly I am struck with terror: her eyes are
interminably fixed, and above all here is the tip of her tongue lying,
unusually and peacefully, between her teeth and her lips. I had
certainly seen corpses before, but I had never seen the face of a
strangled woman in my life. And yet I know that this is a strangled
woman. What is happening? I stand up and scream: I've strangled
Hélène!
”
— Althusser, L'avenir dure longtemps[95]
On 16 November 1980, Althusser strangled Hélène in their ENS room.
He himself reported the murder to the doctor in residence who
contacted psychiatric institutions.[96] Even before the police
arrival, the doctor and the director of ENS decided to hospitalize him
in the Sainte-Anne hospital and a psychiatric examination was
conducted on him.[97] Due to his mental state, Althusser was deemed to
not understand the charges or the process to which he was to be
submitted, so he remained at the hospital.[5] The psychiatric
assessment concluded he should not be criminally charged, based on
article 64 of the French Penal Code, which stated that "there is
neither crime nor delict where the suspect was in a state of dementia
at the time of the action".[5] The report said Althusser killed
Hélène in the course of an acute crisis of melancholy, without even
realizing it, and that the "wife-murder by manual strangulation was
committed without any additional violence, in the course of [an]
iatrogenic hallucinatory episode complicated by melancholic
depression."[98] As a result, he lost his civil rights, entrusted to a
representative of the law, and he was forbidden to sign any
documents.[99] In February 1981, the court ruled Althusser as having
been mentally irresponsible when he committed the murder, therefore he
could not be prosecuted and was not charged.[100] Nonetheless, a
warrant of confinement was subsequently issued by the
Paris
Paris police
prefecture;[101] the Ministry of National Education mandated his
retirement from the ENS;[102] and the ENS requested his family and
friends to clear out his apartment.[101] In June, he was transferred
to the L'Eau-Vive clinc at Soisy-sur-Seine.[103]
The murder of Hélène attracted much media attention, and there were
several requests to treat Althusser as an ordinary criminal.[104] The
newspaper Minute, journalist Dominique Jamet (fr) and Minister of
Justice
Alain Peyrefitte
Alain Peyrefitte were among those who accused Althusser of
having "privileges" because of the fact he was Communist. From this
point of view, Roudinesco wrote, Althusser was three times a criminal.
First, the philosopher had legitimated the current of thought judged
responsible for the Gulag; second, he praised the Chinese Cultural
Revolution as an alternative to both capitalism and Stalinism; and
finally because he had, it was said, corrupted the elite of French
youth by introducing the cult of a criminal ideology into the heart of
one of the best French institutions.[98]
Philosopher
Philosopher Pierre-André
Taguieff went further on claiming Althusser taught his students to
perceive crimes positively, as akin to a revolution.[105] Five years
after the murder, a critic by Le Monde's Claude Sarraute would have a
great impact on Althusser.[96] She compared his case to the situation
of Issei Sagawa, who killed and cannibalized a woman in France, but
whose psychiatric diagnosis absolved him. Sarraute criticized the fact
that, when prestigious names are involved, a lot is written about them
but that little is written about the victim.[14] Althusser's friends
persuaded him to speak in his defense, and the philosopher wrote an
autobiography in 1985.[96] He showed the result, L'avenir dure
longtemps,[h] to some of his friends and considered to publish it, but
he never sent it to a publisher and locked it in his desk drawer,[110]
and the book was only published posthumously in 1992.[111]
Despite the critics, some of his friends, such as Guitton and Debray,
defended Althusser, saying the murder was an act of love—as
Althusser argued too.[112] Hélène had bouts of melancholy and
self-medicated because of this.[113] Guitton said, "I sincerely think
that he killed his wife out of love of her. It was a crime of mystical
love".[6] Debray compared it to an altruistic suicide: "He suffocated
her under a pillow to save her from the anguish that was suffocating
him. A beautiful proof of love .. . that one can save one's skin while
sacrificing oneself for the other, only to take upon oneself all the
pain of living".[6] In his autobiography, wrote to be the public
explanation he could not provide in court,[114] Althusser stated that
"she matter-of-factly asked me to kill her myself, and this word,
unthinkable and intolerable in its horror, caused my whole body to
tremble for a long time. It still makes me tremble.... We were living
shut up in the cloister of our hell, both of us."[92]
“
I killed a woman who was everything to me during a crisis of mental
confusion, she who loved me to the point of wanting only to die
because she could not continue living. And no doubt in my confusion
and unconsciousness I 'did her this service,' which she did not try to
prevent, but from which she died.
”
— Althusser, L'avenir dure longtemps[115]
The crime seriously tarnished Althusser's reputation.[116] As
Roudinesco wrote, since 1980, he lived his life as a "specter, a dead
man walking".[101] Althusser forcibly lived in various public and
private clinics until 1983, when he became a voluntary patient.[23] He
was able to start an untitled manuscript during this time, in 1982; it
was later published as "The Underground Current of the Materialism of
the Encounter" ("Le courant souterrain du matérialisme de la
rencontre").[72] From 1984 to 1986, he stayed at an apartment in the
north of Paris,[23] where he remained confined most of his time, but
he also received visits from some friends, such as philosopher and
theologian Stanislas Breton, who had also been a prisoner in the
German stalags;[102] from Guitton, who converted him into "mystic
monk" in Roudinesco's words;[6] and from Mexican philosopher Fernanda
Navarro during six months, starting from the winter of 1984.[117]
Althusser and Navarro exchanged letters until February 1987, and he
also wrote a preface in July 1986 for the resulting book, Filosofía y
marxismo,[117] a collection of her interviews with Althusser that was
released in Mexico in 1988.[102] These interviews and correspondence
were collected and published in
France
France in 1994 as Sur la
philosophie.[108] In this period he formulated his "materialism of the
encounter" or "aleatory materialism", talking to Breton and Navarro
about it,[118] that first appeared in Écrits philosophiques et
politiques I (1994) and later in the 2006 Verso book
Philosophy
Philosophy of the
Encounter.[119] In 1987, after Althusser underwent an emergency
operation because of the obstruction of the esophagus, he developed a
new clinical picture of depression. First brought to the
Soisy-sur-Seine
Soisy-sur-Seine clinic, he was transferred to the psychiatric
institution MGEN in La Verrière. There, following a pneumonia
contracted during the summer, he died of a heart attack on 22 October
1990.[102]
Personal life[edit]
Romantic life[edit]
Althusser was such a homely person that biographer William S. Lewis
affirmed, "Althusser had known only home, school, and P.O.W. camp" by
the time he met his future wife.[5] In contrast, when he first met
Hélène in 1946, she was a former member of the French resistance and
a
Communist
Communist activist. After fighting along with
Jean Beaufret in the
group "Service Périclès", she joined the PCF. [120] However, she was
expelled from the party accused of being a double agent for
Gestapo,[121] for "Trotskyist deviation" and "crimes", which probably
referred to the execution of former Nazi collaborators.[120] Although
high-ranking party officials instructed him to sever relations with
Hélène,[122] Althusser tried to restore her reputation in the PCF
for a long time by making inquiries into her wartime activities.
Although he did not succeeded to reinsert her into the party, his
relationship with Hélène nonetheless deepened during this period.[5]
Their relationship "was traumatic from the outset, so Althusser
claims", wrote Elliott;[123] among the reasons, was his almost total
inexperience with women and by the fact she was eight years older than
him.[5]
“
I had never embraced a woman, and above all I had never been embraced
by a woman (at age thirty!). Desire mounted in me, we made love on the
bed, it was new, exciting, exalting, and violent. When she (Hélène)
had left, an abysm of anguish opened up in me, never again to close.
”
— Althusser, L'avenir dure longtemps[124]
His feelings toward her were contradictory from the very beginning; it
is suggested that the strong emotional impact she caused in him led
him to deep depression.[123] Roudinesco wrote that, for Althusser,
Hélène represented the opposite of himself: she had been in the
Resistance while he was remote from the anti-Nazi combat; she was a
Jew who carried the stamp of the Holocaust, whereas he, despite his
conversion to Marxism, never escaped the formative effect of
Catholicism; she suffered from the
Stalinism
Stalinism at the very moment when
he was joining the party; and, in opposition to his petit-bourgeois
background, her childhood was not prosperous — at the age of 13 she
became a sexual abuse victim by a family doctor who, in addition,
instructed her to give her terminally ill parents a dose of
morphine.[120] According to Roudinesco, she embodied for Althusser his
"displaced conscience", "pitiless superego", "damned part", "black
animality".[120]
Althusser considered that Hélène gave him "a world of solidarity and
struggle, a world of reasoned action, ... a world of
courage".[123] According to him, they performed an indispensable
maternal and paternal function for one another: "She loved me as a
mother loves a child... and at the same time like a good father in
that she introduced me ... to the real world, that vast arena I
had never been able to enter. ... Through her desire for me she
also initiated me ... into my role as a man, into my masculinity.
She loved me as a woman loves a man!"[123] Roudinesco argued that
Hélène represented for him "the sublimated figure of his own hated
mother to whom he remained attached all his life". In his
autobiography, he wrote: "If I was dazzled by Hélène's love and the
miraculous privilege of knowing her and having her in my life, I tried
to give that back to her in my own way, intensely and, if I may put it
this way, as a religious offering, as I had done for my mother."[125]
Although Althusser was really in love with Hélène,[5] he also had
affairs with other women. Roudinesco commented that "unlike Hélène,
the other women loved by
Louis Althusser
Louis Althusser were generally of great
physical beauty and sometimes exceptionally sensitive to intellectual
dialogue".[125] She gives as an example of the latter case a woman
named Claire Z., with whom he had a long relationship until he was
forty-two.[126] They broke up when he met Franca Madonia, a
philosopher, translator, and playwright from a well-off Italian
bourgeois family from Romagna.[127] Madonia was married to Mino, whose
sister Giovanna was married to the
Communist
Communist painter Leonardo
Cremonini. Every summer the two families gathered in a residence in
the village of Bertinoro, and, according to Roudinesco, "It was in
this magical setting ... that
Louis Althusser
Louis Althusser fell in love with
Franca, discovering through her everything he had missed in his own
childhood and that he lacked in Paris: a real family, an art of
living, a new manner of thinking, speaking, desiring".[128] She
influenced him to appreciate modern theater (Luigi Pirandello, Bertolt
Brecht, Samuel Beckett), and, Roudinesco wrote, also on his detachment
of
Stalinism
Stalinism and "his finest texts (
For Marx especially) but also his
most important concepts".[129] In her company in Italy in 1961, as
Elliott affirmed, was also when he "truly discovered"
Machiavelli.[130] Between 1961 and 1965, they exchanged letters and
telephone calls, and they also went on trips together, in which they
talk about the current events, politics, and theory, as well made
confidences on the happinesses and unhappinesses of daily life.[131]
However, Madonia had an explosive reaction when Althusser tried to
make her Hélène's friend, and seek to bring Mino into their
meetings.[131] They nevertheless continued to exchange letters until
1973; these were published in 1998 into an 800-page book Lettres à
Franca.[132]
Mental condition[edit]
Althusser suffered from schizophrenia[123] and bipolar disorder, and
because of it he had frequent bouts of depression that started in 1938
and became regular after his five-year stay in German captivity.[133]
From the 1950s onward, he was under constant medical supervision,
often undergoing, in Lewis' words, "the most aggressive treatments
post-war French psychiatry had to offer", which included
electroconvulsive therapy, narco-analysis, and psychoanalysis.[134]
Althusser did not limit himself to prescribed medications and
practiced self-medication.[135] The disease affected his academic
productivity: for example, in 1962, the philosopher began to write a
book about
Machiavelli
Machiavelli during a depressive exacerbation but was
interrupted by a three-months stay in a clinic.[96] The main
psychoanalist he attended was the anti-Lacanian René Diatkine,
starting from 1964, after he had a dream about killing his own
sister.[136] The sessions became more frequent in January 1965, and
the real work of exploring the unconscious was launched in June.[136]
Soon Althusser recognized the positive side of non-Lacanian
psychoanalysis; although sometimes tried to ridicule Diatkine giving
him lessons in Lacanianism, by July 1966, he considered the treatment
was producing "spectacular results".[137] In 1976, Althusser estimated
that, from the past 30 years, he spent 15 in hospitals and psychiatric
clinics.[138]
Althusser analysed the prerequisites of his illness with the help of
psychoanalysis and found them in complex relationships with his family
(he devouted to this topic half of the autobiography).[139] Althusser
believed that he did not have a genuine "I", which was caused by the
absence of real maternal love and the fact that his father was
emotionally reserved and virtually absent for his son.[140] Althusser
deduced the family situation from the events before his birth, as told
to him by his aunt: Lucienne Berger, his mother, was to marry his
father's brother, Louis Althusser, who died in the
World War I
World War I near
Verdun, while Charles, his father, was engaged with Lucienne's sister,
Juliette.[141] Both families followed the old custom of the levirate,
which obliged an older, still unmarried, brother to wed the widow of a
deceased younger brother. Lucienne then married Charles, and the son
was named after the deceased Louis. In Althusser's memoirs, this
marriage was "madness", not so much because of the tradition itself,
but because of the excessive submission, as Charles was not forced to
marry Lucienne since his younger brother had not yet married her.[142]
As a result, Althusser concluded, his mother did not love him, but
loved the long dead Louis.[143] The philosopher described his mother
as a "castrating mother" (a term from psychoanalysis), who, under the
influence of her phobias, established a strict regime of social and
sexual "hygiene" for Althusser and his sister Georgette. His "feeling
of fathomless solitude" could only be mitigated by communicating with
his mother's parents who lived in Morvan.[144] His relationship with
his mother and the desire to deserve her love, in his memoirs, largely
determined his adult life and career, including his admission to the
ENS and his desire to become a "well-known intellectual".[145]
According to his autobiography, ENS was for Althusser a kind of
refugee of intellectual "purity" from the big "dirty" world that his
mother was so afraid of.[146]
The facts of his autobiography have been critically evaluated by
researchers. According to its own editors, L'avenir dure longtemps is
"an inextricable tangle of 'facts' and 'phantasies'".[147] His
friend[148] and biographer Yann Moulier-Boutang (fr), after a
careful analysis of the early period of Althusser's life, concluded
that the autobiography was "a re-writing of a life through the prism
of its wreckage".[149] Moulier-Boutang believed that it was Hélène
who played a key role in creating a "fatalistic" account of the
history of the Althusser family, largely shaping his vision in a 1964
letter. According to Elliott, the autobiography produces primarily an
impression of "destructiveness and self-destructiveness".[149]
Althusser, most likely, postdated the beginning of his depression to a
later period (post-war), having not mentioned earlier manifestations
of the disease in school and in the concentration camp.[150] According
to Moulier-Boutang, Althusser had a close psychological connection
with Georgette from an early age, and although he did not often
mention it in his autobiography, her "nervous illness" may have
tracked his own.[151] His sister also had depression, and despite the
fact that they lived separately from each other for almost the entire
adult life, their depression often coincided in time.[152] Also,
Althusser focused on describing family circumstances, not considering,
for example, the influence of ENS on his personality.[153]
Moulier-Boutang connected the depression not only with events in his
personal life, but also with political disappointments.[152]
Thought[edit]
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e
Althusser's earlier works include the influential volume Reading
Capital (1965), which collects the work of Althusser and his students
in an intensive philosophical rereading of Karl Marx's Capital. The
book reflects on the philosophical status of
Marxist
Marxist theory as
"critique of political economy", and on its object. The original
English translation of this work includes only the essays of Althusser
and Étienne Balibar,[154] while the original French edition contains
additional contributions from Jacques Rancière, Pierre Macherey, and
Roger Establet. A full translation was published in 2016.
Several of Althusser's theoretical positions have remained influential
in
Marxist
Marxist philosophy. The introduction to his collection For Marx
proposes a great "epistemological break" between Marx's early writings
(1840–45) and his later, properly
Marxist
Marxist texts,[155] borrowing a
term from the philosopher of science Gaston Bachelard.[156] His essay
"
Marxism
Marxism and Humanism" is a strong statement of anti-humanism in
Marxist
Marxist theory, condemning ideas like "human potential" and
"species-being", which are often put forth by Marxists, as outgrowths
of a bourgeois ideology of "humanity".[157] His essay "Contradiction
and Overdetermination" borrows the concept of overdetermination from
psychoanalysis, in order to replace the idea of "contradiction" with a
more complex model of multiple causality in political situations[158]
(an idea closely related to Antonio Gramsci's concept of cultural
hegemony.)[159]
Althusser is also widely known as a theorist of ideology. His
best-known essay, "
Ideology
Ideology and
Ideological
Ideological State Apparatuses: Notes
Toward an Investigation",[160] establishes the concept of ideology.
Althusser's theory of ideology draws on Marx and Gramsci, but also on
Freud's and Lacan's psychological concepts of the unconscious and
mirror-phase respectively, and describes the structures and systems
that enable the concept of self. For Althusser, these structures are
both agents of repression and inevitable: it is impossible to escape
ideology and avoid being subjected to it. On the other hand, the
collection of essays from which "
Ideology
Ideology and
Ideological
Ideological State
Apparatuses" is drawn[161] contains other essays which confirm that
Althusser's concept of ideology is broadly consistent with the classic
Marxist
Marxist theory of class struggle.
Althusser's thought evolved during his lifetime. It has been the
subject of argument and debate, especially within
Marxism
Marxism and
specifically concerning his theory of knowledge (epistemology).
Epistemological break[edit]
Althusser argues that Marx's thought has been fundamentally
misunderstood and underestimated. He fiercely condemns various
interpretations of Marx's works—historicism,[162] idealism, and
economism—on grounds that they fail to realize that with the
"science of history", historical materialism, Marx has constructed a
revolutionary view of social change. Althusser believes these errors
result from the notion that Marx's entire body of work can be
understood as a coherent whole. Rather, Marx's thought contains a
radical "epistemological break". Although the works of the young Marx
are bound by the categories of German philosophy and classical
political economy, The German
Ideology
Ideology (written in 1845) makes a
sudden and unprecedented departure.[163] This "break" represents a
shift in Marx's work to a fundamentally different "problematic", i.e.,
a different set of central propositions and questions posed, a
different theoretical framework.[164] Althusser believes that Marx
himself did not fully comprehend the significance of his own work, and
was able to express it only obliquely and tentatively. The shift can
be revealed only by a careful and sensitive "symptomatic
reading".[165] Thus, Althusser's project is to help readers fully
grasp the originality and power of Marx's extraordinary theory, giving
as much attention to what is not said as to the explicit. Althusser
holds that Marx has discovered a "continent of knowledge", History,
analogous to the contributions of
Thales
Thales to mathematics, Galileo to
physics,[166] or, better, Freud's psychoanalysis,[167] in that the
structure of his theory is unlike anything posited by his
predecessors.
Althusser believes that Marx's work is fundamentally incompatible with
its antecedents because it is built on a groundbreaking epistemology
(theory of knowledge) that rejects the distinction between subject and
object. In opposition to empiricism, Althusser claims that Marx's
philosophy, dialectical materialism, counters the theory of knowledge
as vision with a theory of knowledge as production.[168] On the
empiricist view, a knowing subject encounters a real object and
uncovers its essence by means of abstraction.[169] On the assumption
that thought has a direct engagement with reality, or an unmediated
vision of a "real" object, the empiricist believes that the truth of
knowledge lies in the correspondence of a subject's thought to an
object that is external to thought itself.[170] By contrast, Althusser
claims to find latent in Marx's work a view of knowledge as
"theoretical practice". For Althusser, theoretical practice takes
place entirely within the realm of thought, working upon theoretical
objects and never coming into direct contact with the real object that
it aims to know.[171] Knowledge is not discovered, but rather produced
by way of three "Generalities": (I) the "raw material" of
pre-scientific ideas, abstractions and facts; (II) a conceptual
framework (or "problematic") brought to bear upon these; and (III) the
finished product of a transformed theoretical entity, concrete
knowledge.[172] In this view, the validity of knowledge does not lie
in its correspondence to something external to itself; because Marx's
historical materialism is a science, it contains its own internal
methods of proof.[173] It is therefore not governed by interests of
society, class, ideology, or politics, and is distinct from the
superstructure.
In addition to its unique epistemology, Marx's theory is built on
concepts—such as forces and relations of production—that have no
counterpart in classical political economy.[174] Even when existing
terms are adopted—for example, the theory of surplus value, which
combines David Ricardo's concepts of rent, profit, and
interest—their meaning and relation to other concepts in the theory
is significantly different.[175] However, more fundamental to Marx's
"break" is a rejection of the idea held by the classical economists
that the needs of individuals can be treated as a fact or "given"
independent of any economic organization. For the classical
economists, individual needs can serve as a premise for a theory
explaining the character of a mode of production and as an independent
starting point for a theory about society.[176] Where classical
political economy explains economic systems as a response to
individual needs, Marx's analysis accounts for a wider range of social
phenomena in terms of the parts they play in a structured whole.
Consequently, Marx's Capital has greater explanatory power than does
political economy because it provides both a model of the economy and
a description of the structure and development of a whole society. In
Althusser's view, Marx does not simply argue that human needs are
largely created by their social environment and thus vary with time
and place; rather, he abandons the very idea that there can be a
theory about what people are like that is prior to any theory about
how they come to be that way.[177]
Although Althusser insists that there was an epistemological
break,[178] he later states that its occurrence around 1845 is not
clearly defined, as traces of humanism, historicism, and Hegelianism
are found in Capital.[179] He states that only Marx's Critique of the
Gotha Programme and some marginal notes on a book by
Adolph Wagner
Adolph Wagner are
fully free from humanist ideology.[180] In line with this, Althusser
replaces his earlier definition of Marx's philosophy as the "theory of
theoretical practice" with a new belief in "politics in the field of
history"[181] and "class struggle in theory".[182] Althusser considers
the epistemological break to be a process instead of a clearly defined
event — the product of incessant struggle against ideology. Thus,
the distinction between ideology and science or philosophy is not
assured once and for all by the epistemological break.[183]
Levels and practices[edit]
Because of Marx's belief that the individual is a product of society,
Althusser holds that it is pointless to try to build a social theory
on a prior conception of the individual. The subject of observation is
not individual human elements, but rather "structure". As he sees it,
Marx does not explain society by appealing to the properties of
individual persons—their beliefs, desires, preferences, and
judgements. Rather, Marx defines society as a set of fixed
"levels"[184] and "practices".[185] He uses this analysis to defend
Marx's historical materialism against the charge that it crudely
posits a base (economic level) and superstructure (culture/politics)
"rising upon it" and then attempts to explain all aspects of the
superstructure by appealing to features of the (economic) base (the
well known architectural metaphor). For Althusser, it is a mistake to
attribute this economic determinist view to Marx. In much the same way
that Althusser criticizes the idea of a social theory founded on an
historical conception of human needs, so he critiques the idea that
economic practice can be used in isolation to explain other aspects of
society.[186] Althusser believes that both the base and the
superstructure are interdependent, although he keeps to the classic
Marxist
Marxist materialist understanding of the determination of the base "in
the last instance" (albeit with some extension and revision). The
advantage of levels and practices over individuals as a starting point
is that although each practice is only a part of a complex whole of
society, a practice is a whole in itself in that it consists of a
number of different kinds of parts.
Economic
Economic practice, for example,
contains raw materials, tools, individual persons, etc., all united in
a process of production.[187]
Althusser conceives of society as an interconnected collection of
these wholes: economic practice, ideological practice, and
politico-legal practice. Although each practice has a degree of
relative autonomy, together they make up one complex, structured whole
(social formation).[188] In his view, all levels and practices are
dependent on each other. For example, among the relations of
production of capitalist societies are the buying and selling of
labour power by capitalists and workers. These relations are part of
economic practice, but can only exist within the context of a legal
system which establishes individual agents as buyers and sellers;
furthermore, the arrangement must be maintained by political and
ideological means.[189] From this it can be seen that aspects of
economic practice depend on the superstructure and vice versa.[190]
For him this was the moment of reproduction and constituted the
important role of the superstructure.
Contradiction and overdetermination[edit]
An analysis understood in terms of interdependent levels and practices
helps us to conceive of how society is organized, but also permits us
to comprehend social change and thus provides a theory of history.
Althusser explains the reproduction of the relations of production by
reference to aspects of ideological and political practice;
conversely, the emergence of new production relations can be explained
by the failure of these mechanisms. Marx's theory seems to posit a
system in which an imbalance in two parts could lead to compensatory
adjustments at other levels, or sometimes to a major reorganization of
the whole. To develop this idea, Althusser relies on the concepts of
contradiction and non-contradiction, which he claims are illuminated
by their relation to a complex structured whole. Practices are
contradictory when they "grate" on one another and non-contradictory
when they support one another. Althusser elaborates on these concepts
by reference to Lenin's analysis of the Russian Revolution of
1917.[191]
Lenin posited that despite widespread discontent throughout Europe in
the early 20th century, Russia was the country in which revolution
occurred because it contained all the contradictions possible within a
single state at the time.[192] In his words, it was the "weakest link
in a chain of imperialist states".[193] He explained the revolution in
relation to two groups of circumstances: firstly, the existence within
Russia of large-scale exploitation in cities, mining districts, etc.,
a disparity between urban industrialization and medieval conditions in
the countryside, and a lack of unity amongst the ruling class;
secondly, a foreign policy which played into the hands of
revolutionaries, such as the elites who had been exiled by the Tsar
and had become sophisticated socialists.[194]
For Althusser, this example reinforces his claim that Marx's
explanation of social change is more complex than the result of a
single contradiction between the forces and the relations of
production.[195] The differences between events in Russia and Western
Europe highlight that a contradiction between forces and relations of
production may be necessary, but not sufficient, to bring about
revolution.[196] The circumstances that produced revolution in Russia,
mentioned above, were heterogeneous, and cannot be seen to be aspects
of one large contradiction.[197] Each was a contradiction within a
particular social totality. From this, Althusser concludes that Marx's
concept of contradiction is inseparable from the concept of a complex
structured social whole. To emphasize that changes in social
structures relate to numerous contradictions, Althusser describes
these changes as "overdetermined", using a term taken from Sigmund
Freud.[198] This interpretation allows us to account for the way in
which many different circumstances may play a part in the course of
events, and how these circumstances may combine to produce unexpected
social changes or "ruptures".[197]
However, Althusser does not mean to say that the events that determine
social changes all have the same causal status. While a part of a
complex whole, economic practice is a "structure in dominance": it
plays a major part in determining the relations between other spheres,
and has more effect on them than they have on it. The most prominent
aspect of society (the religious aspect in feudal formations and the
economic aspect in capitalist formations) is called the "dominant
instance", and is in turn determined "in the last instance" by the
economy. For Althusser, the economic practice of a society determines
which other formation of that society dominates the society as a
whole.
Althusser's arguably more complex and materialist (than other
Marxisms) understanding of contradiction in terms of the dialectic
attempts to rid
Marxism
Marxism of the influence and vestiges of Hegelian
(idealist) dialectics, and is a component part of his general
anti-humanist position.
Ideological
Ideological state apparatuses[edit]
Main article:
Ideology
Ideology and
Ideological
Ideological State Apparatuses
Because Althusser held that a person's desires, choices, intentions,
preferences, judgements, and so forth are the products of social
practices, he believed it necessary to conceive of how society makes
the individual in its own image. Within capitalist societies, the
human individual is generally regarded as a subject—a
self-conscious, "responsible" agent whose actions can be explained by
his or her beliefs and thoughts. For Althusser, a person's capacity to
perceive himself or herself in this way is not innate or given.
Rather, it is acquired within the structure of established social
practices, which impose on individuals the role (forme) of a
subject.[199] Social practices both determine the characteristics of
the individual and give him or her an idea of the range of properties
that he or she can have, and of the limits of each individual.
Althusser argues that many of our roles and activities are given to us
by social practice: for example, the production of steelworkers is a
part of economic practice, while the production of lawyers is part of
politico-legal practice. However, other characteristics of
individuals, such as their beliefs about the good life or their
metaphysical reflections on the nature of the self, do not easily fit
into these categories.
In Althusser's view, our values, desires, and preferences are
inculcated in us by ideological practice, the sphere which has the
defining property of constituting individuals as subjects.[200]
Ideological
Ideological practice consists of an assortment of institutions called
"ideological state apparatuses" (ISAs), which include the family, the
media, religious organizations, and most importantly in capitalist
societies, the education system, as well as the received ideas that
they propagate.[201] No single ISA produces in us the belief that we
are self-conscious agents. Instead, we derive this belief in the
course of learning what it is to be a daughter, a schoolchild, black,
a steelworker, a councillor, and so forth.
Despite its many institutional forms, the function and structure of
ideology is unchanging and present throughout history;[202] as
Althusser states, "ideology has no history".[203] All ideologies
constitute a subject, even though he or she may differ according to
each particular ideology. Memorably, Althusser illustrates this with
the concept of "hailing" or "interpellation". He compares ideology to
a policeman shouting "Hey you there!" toward a person walking on the
street. Upon hearing this call, the person responds by turning around
and in doing so, is transformed into a subject.[204] The person is
conscious of being a subject and aware of the other person. Thus, for
Althusser, being aware of other people is a form of ideology. Within
that, Althusser sees subjectivity as a type of ideology. The person
being hailed recognizes himself or herself as the subject of the hail,
and knows to respond.[205] Althusser calls this recognition a
"mis-recognition" (méconnaissance),[206] because it works
retroactively: a material individual is always already an ideological
subject, even before he or she is born.[207] The "transformation" of
an individual into a subject has always already happened; Althusser
here acknowledges a debt to Spinoza's theory of immanence.[207] To
highlight this, Althusser offers the example of
Christian
Christian religious
ideology, embodied in the Voice of God, instructing a person on what
his place in the world is and what he must do to be reconciled with
Christ.[208] From this, Althusser draws the point that in order for
that person to identify as a Christian, he must first already be a
subject; that is, by responding to God's call and following His rules,
he affirms himself as a free agent, the author of the acts for which
he assumes responsibility.[209] We cannot recognize ourselves outside
ideology, and in fact, our very actions reach out to this overarching
structure. Althusser's theory draws heavily from
Jacques Lacan
Jacques Lacan and his
concept of the Mirror Stage[210]—we acquire our identities by seeing
ourselves mirrored in ideologies.[211]
Reception and influence[edit]
Although Althusser's theories were born of an attempt to defend
Communist
Communist orthodoxy,[clarification needed] the eclecticism of his
influences—drawing equally from contemporary structuralism,
philosophy of science, and psychoanalysis as from thinkers in the
Marxist
Marxist tradition—reflected a move away from the intellectual
isolation of the Stalin era. Furthermore, his thought was symptomatic
of Marxism's growing academic respectability and of a push towards
emphasizing Marx's legacy as a philosopher rather than only as an
economist or sociologist.
Tony Judt
Tony Judt saw this as a criticism of
Althusser's work, saying he removed
Marxism
Marxism "altogether from the realm
of history, politics and experience, and thereby ... render[ed] it
invulnerable to any criticism of the empirical sort."[212]
Althusser has had broad influence in the areas of
Marxist
Marxist philosophy
and post-structuralism: interpellation has been popularized and
adapted by the feminist philosopher and critic Judith Butler, and
elaborated further by Göran Therborn; the concept of ideological
state apparatuses has been of interest to Slovenian philosopher Slavoj
Žižek; the attempt to view history as a process without a subject
garnered sympathy from Jacques Derrida; historical materialism was
defended as a coherent doctrine from the standpoint of analytic
philosophy by G. A. Cohen;[213] the interest in structure and agency
sparked by Althusser was to play a role in Anthony Giddens's theory of
structuration; Althusser was vehemently[need quotation to verify]
attacked by British historian
E. P. Thompson
.JPG/440px-E_P_Thompson_at_1980_protest_rally_(cropped).JPG)
E. P. Thompson in his book The Poverty
of Theory.[214][non-primary source needed]
Althusser's influence is also seen in the work of economists Richard
D. Wolff and Stephen Resnick, who have interpreted that Marx's mature
works hold a conception of class different from the normally
understood ones. For them, in Marx class refers not to a group of
people (for example, those that own the means of production versus
those that do not), but to a process involving the production,
appropriation, and distribution of surplus labour. Their emphasis on
class as a process is consistent with their reading and use of
Althusser's concept of overdetermination in terms of understanding
agents and objects as the site of multiple determinations.
Althusser's work has also been criticized from a number of angles. In
a 1971 paper for Socialist Register, Polish philosopher Leszek
Kołakowski[215] undertook a detailed critique of structural Marxism,
arguing that the concept was seriously flawed on three main points:
I will argue that the whole of Althusser's theory is made up of the
following elements: 1. common sense banalities expressed with the help
of unnecessarily complicated neologisms; 2. traditional Marxist
concepts that are vague and ambiguous in Marx himself (or in Engels)
and which remain, after Althusser's explanation, exactly as vague and
ambiguous as they were before; 3. some striking historical
inexactitudes.
Kołakowski further argued that, despite Althusser's claims of
scientific rigour, structural
Marxism
Marxism was unfalsifiable and thus
unscientific, and was best understood as a quasi-religious ideology.
In 1980, sociologist Axel van den Berg[216] described Kołakowski's
critique as "devastating", proving that "Althusser retains the
orthodox radical rhetoric by simply severing all connections with
verifiable facts".
Gerald Cohen, in his essay 'Complete Bullshit', has cited the
'Althusserian school' as an example of 'bullshit' and a factor in his
co-founding the 'Non-Bullshit
Marxism
Marxism Group'.[217] He says that 'the
ideas that the Althusserians generated, for example, of the
interpellation of the subject, or of contradiction and
overdetermination, possessed a surface allure, but it often seemed
impossible to determine whether or not the theses in which those ideas
figured were true, and, at other times, those theses seemed capable of
just two interpretations: on one of them they were true but
uninteresting, and, on the other, they were interesting, but quite
obviously false'.[218]
Legacy[edit]
Since his death, the reassessment of Althusser's work and influence
has been ongoing. The first wave of retrospective critiques and
interventions ("drawing up a balance sheet") began outside of
Althusser's own country, France, because, as
Étienne Balibar
Étienne Balibar pointed
out in 1988, "there is an absolute taboo now suppressing the name of
this man and the meaning of his writings."[219] Balibar's remarks were
made at the "Althusserian Legacy" Conference organized at SUNY Stony
Brook by Michael Sprinker. The proceedings of this conference were
published in September 1992 as the Althusserian Legacy and included
contributions from Balibar, Alex Callinicos, Michele Barrett, Alain
Lipietz, Warren Montag, and Gregory Elliott, among others. It also
included an obituary and an extensive interview with Derrida.[219]
Eventually, a colloquium was organized in
France
France at the University of
Paris
Paris VIII by
Sylvain Lazarus on May 27, 1992. The general title was
Politique et philosophie dans l'oeuvre de Louis Althusser, the
proceedings of which were published in 1993.[220]
In retrospect, Althusser's continuing importance and influence can be
seen through his students.[5] A dramatic example of this points to the
editors and contributors of the 1960s journal Cahiers pour l'Analyse:
"In many ways, the 'Cahiers' can be read as the critical development
of Althusser's own intellectual itinerary when it was at its most
robust."[221] This influence continues to guide some of today's most
significant and provocative philosophical work, as many of these same
students became eminent intellectuals in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and
1990s: Alain Badiou,
Étienne Balibar
Étienne Balibar and
Jacques Rancière
Jacques Rancière in
philosophy,
Pierre Macherey in literary criticism and Nicos Poulantzas
in sociology. The prominent
Guevarist
Guevarist
Régis Debray
Régis Debray also studied under
Althusser, as did the aforementioned Derrida (with whom he at one time
shared an office at the ENS), noted philosopher Michel Foucault, and
the pre-eminent Lacanian psychoanalyst Jacques-Alain Miller.[5]
Badiou has lectured and spoken on Althusser on several occasions in
France, Brazil, and Austria since Althusser's death. Badiou has
written many studies, including "Althusser: Subjectivity without a
Subject", published in his book Metapolitics in 2005. Most recently,
Althusser's work has been given prominence again through the
interventions of
Warren Montag and his circle; see for example the
special issue of borderlands e-journal edited by David McInerney
(Althusser & Us) and "Décalages: An Althusser Studies Journal",
edited by Montag. (See "External links" below for access to both of
these journals.)
In 2011 Althusser continued to spark controversy and debate with the
publication in August of that year of Jacques Rancière's first book,
Althusser's Lesson (1974). It marked the first time this
groundbreaking work was to appear in its entirety in an English
translation. In 2014, On the Reproduction of
Capitalism
Capitalism was published,
which is an English translation of the full text of the work from
which the ISAs text was drawn.[222]
The publication of Althusser's posthumous memoir[citation needed] cast
some doubt on his own scholarly practices. For example, although he
owned thousands of books, Althusser revealed that he knew very little
about Kant, Spinoza, and Hegel. While he was familiar with Marx's
early works, he had not read Capital when he wrote his own most
important
Marxist
Marxist texts. Additionally, Althusser had "contrived to
impress his first teacher, the Catholic theologian Jean Guitton, with
a paper whose guiding principles he had simply filched from Guitton's
own corrections of a fellow student's essay," and "he concocted fake
quotations in the thesis he wrote for another major contemporary
philosopher, Gaston Bachelard."[223]
Selected bibliography[edit]
French books[edit]
Original French
English translation
Ref.
Montesquieu, la politique et l'histoire (Paris: Presses Universitaires
de France, 1959)
"Montesquieu:
Politics
Politics and History" translation appears in Politics
and History: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Marx trans. Ben Brewster (London:
New Left Books, 1972), pp. 9–109
[224]
Pour Marx (Paris: François Maspero, September 1965)
For Marx trans. Ben Brewster (London: Allen Lan, 1969)
[225]
Lire 'le Capital' (Paris: François Maspero, November 1965)
Reading Capital
Reading Capital trans. Ben Brewster (London: New Left Books, 1970)
[225]
Lénine et la philosophie (Paris: François Maspero, January 1969)
"Lenin and Philosophy" translation appears in Lenin and
Philosophy
Philosophy and
Other Essays trans. Ben Brewster (London: New Left Books, 1971),
pp. 27–68; reprinted in
Philosophy
Philosophy and the Spontaneous
Philosophy
Philosophy of the Scientists & Other Essays, pp. 167–202
[226]
Réponse à John Lewis (Paris: François Maspero, June 1973)
"Reply to John Lewis (Self-Criticism)" translation appears in Marxism
Today trans. Grahame Lock, October 1972, pp. 310–18 and
November 1972, pp. 343–9; reprinted (with revisions) in Essays
in Self-Criticism trans. Grahame Lock (London: Verso, 1976),
pp. 33–99; reprinted in Essays on
Ideology
Ideology trans. Grahame Lock
and Ben Brewster (London: Verso 1984), pp. 141–71
[227]
Éléments d'autocritique (Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1974)
"Elements of Self-Criticism" translation appears in Essays in
Self-criticism trans. Grahame Lock (London: Verso, 1976),
pp. 101–161
[228]
Philosophie et philosophie spontanée des savants (1967) (Paris:
François Maspero, September 1974)
"
Philosophy
Philosophy and the Spontaneous
Philosophy
Philosophy of the Scientists"
translation appears in Gregory Elliott ed.
Philosophy
Philosophy and the
Spontaneous
Philosophy
Philosophy of the Scientists trans.
Warren Montag (London:
Verso, 1990), pp. 69–165
[229]
Positions (1964–1975) (Paris: Éditions Sociales, March 1976)
Not translated
[229]
Ce qui ne peut plus durer dans le parti communiste (Paris: François
Maspero, May 1978)
The book itself was not translated, but the original
Le Monde
Le Monde articles
were translated as "What Must Change in the Party" by Patrick
Camiller, in New Left Review, I, no. 109, May–June 1978,
pp. 19–45
[72]
L'avenir dure longtemps (Paris: Éditions Stock/IMEC, April 1992)
"The Future Lasts A Long Time" translation appears in The Future Lasts
a Long Time and The Facts trans. Richard Veasey (London: Chatto &
Windus, 1993) "The Future Lasts Forever" translation appears The
Future Lasts Forever: A Memoir trans. Richard Veasey (New York: New
Press, 1993)
[230]
Journal de captivité:
Stalag
Stalag XA/1940–1945 (Paris: Éditions
Stock/IMEC, September 1992)
Not translated
[231]
Écrits sur la psychanalyse (Paris: Éditions Stock/IMEC, September
1993)
Partially translated as Writings on Psychoanalysis: Freud and Lacan
trans. Jeffrey Mehlman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996)
[231]
Sur la philosophie (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, April 1994)
Not translated
[231]
Écrits philosophiques et politiques II (Paris: Éditions Stock/IMEC,
October 1994)
Not translated
[231]
Écrits philosophiques et politiques II (Paris: Éditions Stock/IMEC,
October 1995)
Not translated
[231]
Sur la reproduction (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, October
1995)
On the Reproduction of
Capitalism
Capitalism trans. G. M. Goshgarian (London:
Verso, 2014)
[232]
Psychanalyse et sciences humaines (Paris: Le Livre de Poche, November
1996)
Not translated
[231]
Solitude de Machiavel et autres textes (Paris: Presses Universitaires
de France, October 1998)
"Machiavell's Solitude" was translated by Ben Brewster and appeared in
Economy and Society, vol. 17, no. 4, November 1988, pp. 468–79;
it was also reprinted in
Machiavelli
Machiavelli and Us, pp. 115–30
[233]
Politique et Histoire de Machiavel à Marx (Paris: Éditions du Seuil,
2006)
Not translated
[234]
Machiavel et nous (Paris: Ed. Tallandier, 2009)
A draft Althusser kept on his drawer, it was first published in
Écrits philosophiques et politiques. It was then published in English
as
Machiavelli
Machiavelli and Us trans. Gregory Elliott (London: Verso, 1999)
[235]
English collections[edit]
Book
Content
Ref.
The Spectre of Hegel: Early Writings ed. François Matheron; trans. G.
M. Goshgarian (London: Verso, 1997)
It translates part of Écrits philosophiques et politiques I and
covers some of Althusser's "early writings" (1946–1950)
[236]
Politics
Politics and History: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Marx trans. Ben Brewster
(London: New Left Books, 1972)
It collects three texts: 1958's "Montesquieu:
Politics
Politics and History",
pp. 9–109; 1965's "Rousseau:
The Social Contract
The Social Contract (The
Discrepencies)", pp. 111–160; and 1968's "Marx's Relation to
Hegel", pp. 161–86
[237]
The Humanist Controversy and Other Texts ed. François Matheron;
trans. G. M. Goshgarian (London: Verso, 2003)
1966's "The Theoretical Conjuncture and
Marxist
Marxist Theoretical Research",
"On Lévi-Strauss" and "Three Notes on the Theory of Discourses",
pp. 1–18, pp. 19–32 and pp. 33–84 respectively;
1967's "On Feuerbach", "The Historical Task of
Marxist
Marxist Philosophy" and
"The Humanist Controversy", pp. 85–154, pp. 155–220 and
pp. 221–305 respectively
[238]
Philosophy
Philosophy of the Encounter: Later Writings, 1978–1987 ed. François
Matheron; trans. G.M. Goshgarian (London: Verso, 2006)
Translation of texts from Écrits philosophiques et politiques 1 and
Sur la philosophie, including the latter's preface, 1979's "Marx in
his Limits", 1982's "The Underground Current of the Materialism of the
Encounter" and 1986's "Portrait of the Materialist Philosopher" and
letters to Merab Mamardashvili, Mauricio Malamud and Fernanda Navarro,
and his interviews with her
[239]
Selected articles in translation[edit]
"Our Jean-Jacques Rousseau". TELOS 44 (Summer 1980). New York: Telos
Press
Notes[edit]
^ At the time, the ENS was part of the University of
Paris
Paris according
to the decree of 10 November 1903.
^ Among them, the philosophers
Jean Guitton
Jean Guitton (1901–1999) and Jean
Lacroix (fr) (1900–1986) and the historian Joseph
Hours (fr) (1896–1963).[5]
^ She was also known as Hélène Legotien and Hélène
Legotien-Rytmann because "Legotien" had been her cover name in the
Resistance and she continued to use it.[12] There is some divergence
on how to spell her last name; some sources spell it as "Rytman",[13]
while others use "Rytmann".[14] In Althusser's compilation of his
letters to his wife, Lettres à Hélène, he always addressed her as
"Rytmann", although the book's own preface by Bernard-Henri Lévy
calls her "Rytman".[15]
^ He also lectured about Descartes' thought relation to Nicolas
Malebranche, as can be found in an inventory of his archives by the
Institute for Contemporary Publishing Archives
Institute for Contemporary Publishing Archives (L'Institut mémoires
de l'édition contemporaine, IMEC).[28]
^ This include
Étienne Balibar
Étienne Balibar (1942–),
Alain Badiou
Alain Badiou (1937–),
Pierre Macherey (1938–),
Dominique Lecourt
Dominique Lecourt (1944–), Régis Debray
(1940–),
Jacques Rancière
Jacques Rancière (1940–), and Jacques-Alain Miller
(1944–).[24]
^ Balibar referred to it as "L'Etat, le Droit, la Superstructure"
("The State, the Law, the Superstructure"),[51] while Elliott cited it
as "De la superstructure (Droit-État-Idéologie)" ("On the
Superstructure (Law-State-Ideology").[55] The IMEC archives report the
existence of "De la superstructure", latter called "Qu'est-ce que la
philosophie marxiste-léniniste?" ("What is the Marxist-Lenist
philosophy?") and reworked as "La reproduction des rapports de
production" ("The reproduction of relations of production"), but that
ultimately returned to its first title.[56]
^ For example, "Théorie, pratique théorique et formation théorique.
Idéologie et lutte idéologique" was published in Casa de las
Americas (Havana), no. 34, 1966, pp. 5–31, but was only translated
into English in 1990.[60] The same article was first published in
book-form as La filosofía como arma de la revolución in 1968.[61]
Some of his articles on the debate over humanism were also only
published in Spanish as Polemica sobre Marxismo y Humanismo that same
year.[62]
^ Taken from a phrase by Charles de Gaulle, its literal translation is
"the future lasts a long time".[106] Several biographers and sources
refer to it as The Future Lasts A Long Time.[107] This was the title
of the British version published by Chatto & Windus.[108] The US
version by The New York Press, however, adopts the title The Future
Lasts Forever.[109]
References[edit]
Footnotes[edit]
^ a b c Stolze 2013, p. 7; Lewis 2014.
^ Jay 1984, p. 391, note 18.
^ Balibar 2005b, p. 266; Stolze 2013, p. 7.
^ a b Stolze 2013, p. 7.
^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab Lewis
2014.
^ a b c d Roudinesco 2008, p. 110.
^ Jay 1984, p. 391.
^ Balibar 2005b, p. 266; Roudinesco 2008, p. 106.
^ Balibar 2005b, p. 266; Stolze 2013, p. 7; Lewis 2014.
^ Ferretter 2006, pp. 2–3.
^ a b Roudinesco 2008, p. 106.
^ Roudinesco 2008, p. 168.
^ Balibar 2005b; Elliott 2006; Lewis 2014.
^ a b Roudinesco 2008; European Graduate School.
^ Althusser 2011.
^ Balibar 2005b, p. 271; Roudinesco 2008, p. 116.
^ Roudinesco 2008, p. 105; Stolze 2013, p. 7.
^ a b c d e f Balibar 2005b, p. 267.
^ Biard 1995, p. 139.
^ a b Ferretter 2006, p. 3; Lewis 2014.
^ a b c Biard 1995, p. 140.
^ Elliott 2006, p. 335.
^ a b c d e f g h Stolze 2013, p. 8.
^ a b c d Schrift 2006, p. 86.
^ Jackson 1996, p. 136; Schrift 2006, p. 86.
^ a b c d Ferretter 2006, p. 3.
^ IMEC 1997, p. 82.
^ IMEC 1997, p. 84.
^ Jay 1984, p. 393.
^ Jay 1984, p. 393; Stolze 2013, p. 8; Lewis 2014.
^ IMEC 1997, p. 86.
^ IMEC 1997, p. 94; Althusser 2006, p. "Sommaire".
^ IMEC 1997, p. 85; Althusser 2006, p. "Sommaire".
^ Kelly 1982, p. 119.
^ Roudinesco 2008, pp. 105–106.
^ Balibar 2005b, pp. 267–268.
^ a b c d Balibar 2005b, p. 268.
^ Levine 1999, p. 23.
^ a b c Schrift 2006, p. 87.
^ Balibar 2005b, p. 267; Lewis 2014.
^ Cotten 1979, p. 150.
^ Jay 1984, p. 394.
^ Elliott 2006, p. 174.
^ Elliott 2006, p. 176.
^ Kelly 1982, p. 142.
^ Ferretter 2006, p. 69.
^ a b c d Balibar 2005b, p. 269.
^ Stolze 2013, pp. 8–9.
^ a b Jay 1984, p. 395.
^ Majumdar 1995, p. 22.
^ a b c d Balibar 2005b, p. 270.
^ Jay 1984, pp. 395–396.
^ Jay 1984, pp. 395–396, note 44.
^ Jay 1984, p. 397; Balibar 2005a, p. XII; Stolze 2013,
p. 8.
^ Elliott 2006, p. 204, 395.
^ IMEC 1997, p. 44–46.
^ IMEC 1997, p. 44; Balibar 2005b, p. 270; Elliott 2006,
p. 204.
^ Elliott 2006, pp. 203; 310, note 16.
^ Balibar 2005a, p. XII; Balibar 2005b, p. 270; Ellner 2014,
p. 17.
^ Elliott 2006, p. 391.
^ Anderson 1989, p. 84.
^ Elliott 2006, p. 395.
^ Levine 1981, p. 243.
^ Benton 1984, p. 152.
^ Balibar 2005b, p. 271.
^ Benton 1984, p. 153; Stolze 2013, p. 8.
^ Benton 1984, p. 153.
^ Jay 1984, p. 420.
^ Balibar 2005b, pp. 271–272.
^ Jay 1984, pp. 420–421; Balibar 2005b, p. 273.
^ Balibar 2005b, p. 273; Stolze 2013, p. 8.
^ a b c Elliott 2006, p. 401.
^ Elliott 2006, pp. 366, 401; Diefenbach et al. 2013,
p. 193.
^ Callinicos 1982, p. 5.
^ Diefenbach et al. 2013, pp. 193–194.
^ Lazarus 1993, p. 179; Balibar 2005b, p. 272; Elliott 2006,
p. 366; Lewis 2016, p. 39.
^ Lazarus 1993, p. 179; Balibar 2005b, p. 272.
^ Jay 1984, p. 397; Balibar 2005b, pp. 270–271.
^ Balibar 2005b, p. 271; Schrift 2006, pp. 86–87; Lewis
2014.
^ Balibar 2005a, p. XII; Elliott 2006, p. 398.
^ Balibar 2005b, p. 272.
^ Corpet 1994, p. 10; Lewis 2014.
^ Balibar 2005b, p. 272; Elliott 2006, p. 398.
^ Lewis 2016, p. 29.
^ Elliott 2001, p. xi; Diefenbach et al. 2013, p. 61.
^ a b c Balibar 2005b, p. 273.
^ Balibar 2005b, p. 273; Corpet 2005, p. 79.
^ Corpet 2005, p. 80.
^ Balibar 2005b, p. 273; Corpet 2005, pp. 80–81.
^ Balibar 2005b, p. 273; Corpet 2005, p. 81.
^ a b c Roudinesco 2008, p. 113.
^ a b c Roudinesco 2008, p. 114.
^ Kirshner 2003, p. 219; Roudinesco 2008, p. 121.
^ Kirshner 2003, p. 235.
^ Roudinesco 2008, p. 1992.
^ a b c d European Graduate School.
^ Poisson 1998, p. 107; Balibar 2005b, p. 273.
^ a b Roudinesco 2008, p. 103.
^ Poisson 1998, p. 107.
^ Poisson 1998, p. 107; European Graduate School.
^ a b c Roudinesco 2008, p. 108.
^ a b c d Balibar 2005b, p. 274.
^ Balibar 2005b, pp. 273–274; Roudinesco 2008, p. 108.
^ Roudinesco 2008, pp. 101–102.
^ Roudinesco 2008, p. 169.
^ Poisson 1998, p. 108.
^ Elliott 2006; Roudinesco 2008; European Graduate School.
^ a b Elliott 2006, p. 318.
^ Poisson 1998, p. 124; Elliott 2006, p. 318.
^ Balibar 2005b, p. 274; Roudinesco 2008, p. 110.
^ Roudinesco 2008, p. 100; European Graduate School.
^ Roudinesco 2008, pp. 109–110.
^ Roudinesco 2008, p. 114, 171.
^ Elliott 2006, p. 325; Lewis 2014.
^ Roudinesco 2008, p. 109.
^ Schrift 2006, pp. 87–88.
^ a b Althusser 1988, p. 11–13.
^ Balibar 2005b, p. 274; Elliott 2006, p. 318.
^ Elliott 2006, p. 318; Lewis 2014.
^ a b c d Roudinesco 2008, p. 116.
^ Althusser 1992, p. 109; Elliott 2006, p. 329.
^ Elliott 2006, pp. 39–40, note 112.
^ a b c d e Elliott 2006, p. 328.
^ Roudinesco 2008, pp. 116–117.
^ a b Roudinesco 2008, p. 117.
^ Roudinesco 2008, p. 172.
^ Roudinesco 2008, pp. 118, 172.
^ Roudinesco 2008, p. 118.
^ Roudinesco 2008, pp. 118–119.
^ Elliott 2001, p. xiv.
^ a b Roudinesco 2008, p. 119.
^ Elliott 2006; Roudinesco 2008, p. 117.
^ Ferretter 2006, p. 4; Stolze 2013, p. 7; Lewis 2014.
^ Schrift 2006, p. 87; Lewis 2014.
^ Roudinesco 2008, p. 171, note 39.
^ a b Roudinesco 2008, p. 120.
^ Roudinesco 2008, pp. 120–121.
^ Ferretter 2006, p. 4.
^ Jackson 1996, p. 135; Elliott 2006, pp. 325–326.
^ Jackson 1996, p. 135; Elliott 2006, p. 326.
^ Elliott 2006, p. 326; Roudinesco 2008, p. 115.
^ Roudinesco 2008, p. 115.
^ Jackson 1996, p. 135; Ferretter 2006, p. 114.
^ Elliott 2006, p. 326.
^ Elliott 2006, p. 327.
^ Jackson 1996, p. 136; Elliott 2006, p. 327.
^ Elliott 2006, p. 325.
^ Jackson 1996, p. 131.
^ a b Elliott 2006, p. 330.
^ Elliott 2006, p. 331.
^ Elliott 2006, pp. 330–331.
^ a b Jackson 1996, p. 135.
^ Jackson 1996, p. 136.
^ Althusser L., and Balibar E. (1965). Reading Capital, translated by
Ben Brewster, New Left Books, ISBN 0-902308-56-4.
^ Althusser, L. (1969), For Marx, translated by Ben Brewster, 33–34,
Verso. ISBN 1-84467-052-X.
^ Althusser, L., For Marx, 32
^ Althusser, L. (1969), "
Marxism
Marxism and Humanism" in For Marx, pp.
219–48.
^ Althusser, L. (1969), "Contradiction and Overdetermination" in For
Marx, pp. 87–128. ISBN 1-84467-052-X.
^ Althusser, L., "Contradiction and Overdetermination" in For Marx,
114
^ Althusser, L. (1970), "
Ideology
Ideology and
Ideological
Ideological State Apparatuses"
in Lenin and
Philosophy
Philosophy and other Essays (1971), translated by Ben
Brewster, pp. 121–76. ISBN 0-902308-89-0.
^ Althusser, L. (1995) Sur la reproduction, Presses Universitaires de
France. ISBN 9782130473725
^ Althusser, L. and Balibar, E. (1970), Reading Capital, pp. 119–45.
ISBN 0-902308-56-4.
^ Althusser, L. "Elements of Self-Criticism" (1974) in Essays in
Self-Criticism (1976), translated by Grahame Lock, pp. 101–62, 107.
New Left Books. ISBN 0-902308-87-4.
^ Althusser, L. and Balibar, E. (1970), Reading Capital, 25–28.
ISBN 0-902308-56-4.
^ Althusser, L. and Balibar, E. (1970), Reading Capital, 28.
ISBN 0-902308-56-4.
^ Althusser, L., "
Philosophy
Philosophy as a Revolutionary Weapon" (1968) in
Lenin and
Philosophy
Philosophy and other Essays (1971), pp. 13–26, 18.
ISBN 0-902308-89-0
^ Althusser, L., "Lenin and Philosophy" (1968) in Lenin and Philosophy
and other Essays (1971), pp. 27–66, 42. ISBN 0-902308-89-0
^ Althusser, L. and Balibar, E. (1970), Reading Capital, 24.
^ Althusser, L. and Balibar, E., Reading Capital, 36. It should be
noted that Althusser's definition of "empiricism" is much broader than
the traditional one.
^ Althusser, L. and Balibar, E., Reading Capital, 36–42
^ Althusser, L. and Balibar, E. (1970), Reading Capital, 41–43
^ Althusser, L. (1969). "On the Materialist Dialectic" in For Marx
(1969), pp. 161–218, 183–85. Verso ISBN 1-84467-052-X.
^ Althusser, L. and Balibar, E. (1970), Reading Capital, 59–60
^ Althusser, L. and Balibar, E. (1970), Reading Capital, 166–68.
^ Althusser, L. and Balibar, E., (1970). Reading Capital, 168–70.
^ Althusser, L. and Balibar, E. (1970). Reading Capital, 161–67.
^ Althusser, L., "Is It Simple to Be a
Marxist
Marxist in Philosophy" (1975)
in Essays in Self-Criticism (1976), pp. 163–215, 205.
ISBN 0-902308-87-4
^ Althusser, L. (1974), "Elements of Self-Criticism", 107–118
^ Althusser, L., "Preface to Capital Volume One" (1969) in Lenin and
Philosophy
Philosophy and Other Essays (1971), pp. 69–96, 90
ISBN 0-902308-89-0.
^ Althusser, L., "Preface to Capital Volume One" (1969), 90.
^ Althusser, L. (1973). "Reply to John Lewis", 68 in Essays in
Self-Criticism (1976), pp. 35–79 ISBN 0-902308-87-4
^ Althusser, L. (1976). "Elements of Self-Criticism", 142.
^ Althusser, L. (1976). "Elements of Self-Criticism", 119–25
^ Althusser, L. and Balibar, E. Reading Capital, 99–100.
^ Althusser, L. (1969). "On the Materialist Dialectic" in For Marx
(1969), pp. 161–218, 166–67. Verso ISBN 1-84467-052-X.
^ Althusser, L. (1969). "On the Materialist Dialectic", 205.
^ Althusser, L. (1969). "On the Materialist Dialectic", 166–67.
^ Althusser, L. and Balibar, E. (1970). Reading Capital, 58
^ Althusser, L. and Balibar, E. (1970). Reading Capital, 177–78.
^ Althusser, L. (1969). "On the Materialist Dialectic", 177
^ Althusser, L. (1969). "Contradiction and Overdetermination",
94–100, in For Marx, pp. 87–128.
^ Althusser, L., "Contradiction and Overdetermination", 95.
^ Althusser, L. (1969). "Contradiction and Overdetermination", 97.
^ Althusser, L. (1969). "Contradiction and Overdetermination",
96–97.
^ Althusser, L., "Contradiction and Overdetermination", 99.
^ Althusser, L. (1969). "Contradiction and Overdetermination", 99.
^ a b Althusser, L., "Contradiction and Overdetermination", 100
^ Althusser, L., "Contradiction and Overdetermination", 101
^ As Althusser states, "No human, i.e. social individual can be the
agent of a practice if he does not have the form of a subject. The
'subject-form' is actually the form of the historical existence of
every individual, of every agent of social practices." Althusser, L.
(1973), "Reply to John Lewis" in Essays in Self-Criticism (1976), pp.
33–100, 95. ISBN 0-902308-87-4.
^ Althusser, L. (1970), "
Ideology
Ideology and
Ideological
Ideological State Apparatuses"
in Lenin and
Philosophy
Philosophy and other Essays (1971), pp. 121–76, 160.
ISBN 0-902308-89-0.
^ Althusser, L. (1970), "
Ideology
Ideology and
Ideological
Ideological State Apparatuses",
135–39
^ Althusser, L. (1970), "
Ideology
Ideology and
Ideological
Ideological State Apparatuses",
152
^ Althusser, L. (1970), "
Ideology
Ideology and
Ideological
Ideological State Apparatuses",
150
^ Althusser, L. (1970), "
Ideology
Ideology and
Ideological
Ideological State Apparatuses",
163.
^ Althusser, L. (1970), "
Ideology
Ideology and
Ideological
Ideological State Apparatuses",
163
^ Althusser, L. (1970), "
Ideology
Ideology and
Ideological
Ideological State Apparatuses",
161
^ a b Althusser, L. (1970), "
Ideology
Ideology and
Ideological
Ideological State
Apparatuses", 164
^ Althusser, L. (1970), "
Ideology
Ideology and
Ideological
Ideological State Apparatuses",
166
^ Althusser, L. (1970), "
Ideology
Ideology and
Ideological
Ideological State Apparatuses",
169
^ Althusser, L. (1970), "
Ideology
Ideology and
Ideological
Ideological State Apparatuses",
162
^ Althusser, L. (1970), "
Ideology
Ideology and
Ideological
Ideological State Apparatuses",
168
^ New Republic, V. 210, 03-07-1994, p. 33.
^ Cohen, G. A., Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence, x. Oxford
University Press, 1978. ISBN 0-19-827196-4. Cohen claims that
Althusser's work is an inadequately vague defence of Marx's theory.
^ Thompson, E. P., (1978) "The Poverty of Theory" in The Poverty of
Theory & other essays, pp. 193–397. Merlin, 1978.
ISBN 0-85036-231-8.
^ Kolakowski, Leszek (1971), "Althusser's Marx". Socialist Register
1971, pp. 111–28.
^ Berg, Axel van den (1980). "Critical Theory: Is There Still Hope?"
The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 86 No. 3 (Nov 1980), pp.
449–78.
^ Cohen, G.A. 'Complete Bullshit', pp. 94–5 in his Finding Oneself
in the Other (ed. Michael Otsuka) (2013) Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
^ Cohen, G.A. 'Complete Bullshit', pp. 95 in his Finding Oneself in
the Other (ed. Michael Otsuka) (2013) Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
^ a b Sprinker, Michael; Kaplan, E. Ann (1993). The Althusserian
Legacy. Verso. p. 1. ISBN 978-0-86091-594-2.
^ Badiou, Alain (July 2009) [21]. Pocket Pantheon: Figures of Postwar
Philosophy. Verso. p. 192. ISBN 978-1-84467-357-5.
^ Althusser Homepage at The
Cahiers pour l'Analyse website Archived 5
May 2010 at the Wayback Machine.
^ http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/kill-the-philosopher-in-your-head/
^ Adair, Gilbert. "Getting Away with Murder". The Independent.
Retrieved 14 April 2014.
^ Elliott 2006, p. 389.
^ a b Elliott 2006, p. 392.
^ Elliott 2006, pp. 391, 394.
^ Elliott 2006, pp. 391, 397.
^ Elliott 2006, p. 397.
^ a b Elliott 2006, p. 398.
^ Elliott 2006, pp. 402–403; Lewis 2014.
^ a b c d e f Elliott 2006, p. 403.
^ Janik 2015, p. 1.
^ Elliott 2006, p. 400.
^ Diefenbach et al. 2013, p. 353.
^ Elliott 2001, p. xi; Balibar 2005a, p. v; Elliott 2006;
Moulfi 2013, p. 1.
^ Elliott 2006, pp. 318, 374.
^ Elliott 2006, pp. 389, 392, 394.
^ Elliott 2006, pp. 374, 392–393.
^ Elliott 2006, pp. 374, 400–402.
Bibliography[edit]
Althusser, Louis (1988). Navarro, Fernanda, ed. Filosofía y marxismo
(in Spanish). Siglo XXI. ISBN 968-23-1474-7.
Althusser, Louis (1992). Corpet, Olivier; Moulier-Boutang, Yann, eds.
L'avenir dure longtemps: suivi de Les faits. Éditions Stock / IMEC.
ISBN 978-2-246-7796-12.
Althusser, Louis (2006). Politique et Histoire de Machiavel à Marx:
cours à l'École normale supérieure de 1955 à 1972. Éditions du
Seuil. ISBN 978-2-020-6283-34.
Althusser, Louis (2011). Corpet, Olivier, ed. Lettres à Hélène:
1947-1980. Éditions Grasset. ISBN 978-2-246-7796-12.
Anderson, Perry (1989). Considerations on Western Marxism. Verso.
ISBN 978-0-86091-720-5.
Balibar, Étienne (2005a). "Avant-propos pour la réédition de 1996".
In Althusser, Louis. Pour Marx (in French). La Decouverte.
pp. I–XIV. ISBN 2-7071-4714-1.
Balibar, Étienne (2005b). "Note biographique". In Althusser, Louis.
Pour Marx (in French). La Decouverte. pp. 266–274.
ISBN 2-7071-4714-1.
Benton, Ted (1984). The Rise and Fall of Structural Marxism: Althusser
and His Influence. New York: St. Martin's Press.
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Biard, Joel (1995). "Les écrits philosophiques de Louis Althusser"
[The philosophical writings of Louis Althusser]. La Pensée (in
French) (303): 137–145. ISSN 0031-4773.
Callinicos, Alex (1982). Is There a Future for Marxism?. Springer
Publishing. ISBN 1-349-16677-4.
Corpet, Olivier (1994). "Avertissement". In Althusser, Louis. Sur la
philosophie (in French). Éditions Gallimard.
ISBN 978-2-070-7389-46.
Corpet, Olivier (2005). "The
Tbilisi
.svg/400px-Georgia,_Ossetia,_Russia_and_Abkhazia_(en).svg.png)
Tbilisi Affair". In Althusser, Louis;
Corpet, Olivier; Matheron, François. Writings on Psychoanalysis:
Freud and Lacan. Jeffrey Mehlman (translator). Columbia University
Press. ISBN 0-585-04147-4.
Cotten, Jean-Pierre (1979). La pensée de
Louis Althusser
Louis Althusser (in French).
Toulouse: Privat. ISBN 2-7089-1435-9.
Diefenbach, Katja; Farris, Sara R.; Kirn, Gal; Thomas, Peter (2013).
Encountering Althusser:
Politics
Politics and Materialism in Contemporary
Radical Thought. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.
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Elliott, Gregory (2006). Althusser: The Detour of Theory. Leiden,
Boston: Brill Publishers. ISBN 978-9-004-15337-0.
Elliott, Gregory (2001). "Introduction: In the Mirror of Machiavelli".
In Althusser, Louis; Matheron, François.
Machiavelli
Machiavelli and Us. Verso
Books. ISBN 1-859-84282-8.
Ellner, Steve (2014). Latin America's Radical Left: Challenges and
Complexities of Political Power in the Twenty-first Century. Plymouth:
Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-442-22950-1.
European Graduate School. "Louis Althusser –
Philosopher – Biography". Archived from the original on
September 24, 2015.
Ferretter, Luke (2006). Louis Althusser. Routledge Critical Thinkers.
Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-0-415-32732-9.
L'Institut mémoires de l'édition contemporaine (IMEC) (1997).
"Inventaire des archives de
Louis Althusser
Louis Althusser deposees a L'IMEC"
(PDF).
Jackson, Ned (February 1996). "The first death of
Louis Althusser
Louis Althusser or
totality's revenge".
History
History and Theory. Wiley-Blackwell. 35 (1):
131–146. doi:10.2307/2505519.
Jay, Martin (1984). "
Louis Althusser
Louis Althusser and The Structuralist Reading of
Marx".
Marxism
Marxism and Totality: The Adventures of a Concept from Lukács
to Habermas. Berkley, Los Angeles: University of California Press.
pp. 385–422. ISBN 0-520-05742-2.
Janik, Mateusz (2015). "Louis Althusser, On the Reproduction of
Capitalism: Three Reading Strategies". Décalages. 1 (4).
Kelly, Michael (1982). Modern French Marxism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
ISBN 0-631-13202-3.
Kirshner, Lewis A. (2003). "The Man Who Didn't Exist: The Case of
Louis Althusser". American Imago. 60 (2): 211–239.
doi:10.1353/aim.2003.0012.
Lazarus, Sylvain (1993). Politique et philosophie dans l'œuvre de
Louis Althusser. Presses Universitaires de France.
ISBN 2-130-45500-X.
Levine, Andrew (1981). "Althusser's Marxism". Economy and Society.
Southampton: The Camelot Press. 10 (3): 243–283.
ISSN 0308-5147.
Levine, Andrew (1999). Audi, Robert, ed. The Cambridge Dictionary of
Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
ISBN 0-521-63722-8.
Lewis, William S. (2014). Zalta, Edward N., ed. "Louis Althusser".
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. California: Stanford University.
ISSN 1095-5054.
Lewis, William S. (2016). "Althusser's Scientism and Aleatory
Materialism". Décalages. 2 (1).
Majumdar, Margaret A. (1995). Althusser and the End of Leninism?.
Pluto Press. ISBN 978-0-7453-0888-3.
Moulfi, Mohamed (2013). "Althusser, lecteur de Machiavel". Décalages
(in French). 1 (3).
Poisson, Catherine (1998). "Louis Althusser's The Future Lasts
Forever: The Failure of Auto‐Redemption". Contemporary French &
Francophone Studies. 2 (1): 107–125.
Roudinesco, Élisabeth (2008). "Louis Althusser: The Murder Scene".
Philosophy
Philosophy in Turbulent Times: Canguilhem, Sartre, Foucault,
Althusser, Deleuze, Derrida. William McCuaig (translator). New York:
Columbia University Press. pp. 97–131.
ISBN 978-0-231-14300-4.
Schrift, Alan D. (2006). "Key Biographies in Brief". Twentieth-Century
French Philosophy: Key Themes and Thinkers. Oxford: Blackwell
Publishing. pp. 86–88. ISBN 978-1-405-13218-3.
Stolze, Ted (2013). "Althusser, Louis". In McGee, R. Jon; Warms,
Richard L. Theory in Social and Cultural Anthropology: An
Encyclopedia. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications.
pp. 7–10. ISBN 978-1-412-99963-2.
Further reading[edit]
Althusser: A Critical Reader (ed. Gregory Elliott).
Barker, Jason and G. M. Goshgarian (eds.), "Other Althussers", Special
issue of diacritics (43 (2), 2015), ISSN 0300-7162.
Callari, Antonio and David Ruccio (eds.) "Postmodern Materialism and
the Future of
Marxist
Marxist Theory: Essays in Althusserian Tradition"
(Wesleyan University Press, 1995).
Angioni, Giulio, Rapporti di produzione e cultura subalterna,
Cagliari, EDeS, 1974.
Assiter, Alison (June 1984). "Althusser and structuralism". British
Journal of Sociology. London School of Economics. 35 (2): 272–296.
doi:10.2307/590235. JSTOR 590235.
Assiter, Alison (1990). Althusser and feminism. London Winchester,
Mass: Pluto Press. ISBN 9780745302942.
Callinicos, Alex, Althusser's
Marxism
Marxism (London: Pluto Press, 1976).
de Ípola, Emilio. Althusser, el infinito adiós (2009)
James, Susan, 'Louis Althusser' in Skinner, Q. (ed.) The Return of
Grand Theory in the Human Sciences
Judt, Tony, "The
Paris
Paris Strangler," in The New Republic, Vol. 210, No.
10, March 7, 1994, pp. 33–7.
Waters, Malcolm, Modern Sociological Theory, 1994, page 116.
Lewis, William,
Louis Althusser
Louis Althusser and the Traditions of French Marxism.
Lexington books, 2005.
McInerney, David (ed.), Althusser & Us, special issue of
borderlands e-journal, October 2005.
Montag, Warren, Louis Althusser, Palgrave-Macmillan, 2003.
Montag, Warren (2013). Althusser and His Contemporaries: Philosophy's
Perpetual War. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press.
ISBN 978-0-822-35400-0.
Resch, Robert Paul. Althusser and the Renewal of
Marxist
Marxist Social
Theory. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. (link)
Heartfield, James, The ‘Death of the Subject’ Explained, Sheffield
Hallam UP, 2002, James Heartfield (1980-12-19). "Postmodernism and the
'Death of the Subject' by James Heartfield". Marxists.org. Retrieved
2011-06-18.
Lahtinen, Mikko, "
Politics
Politics and Philosophy:
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli and
Louis Althusser's Aleatory Materialism", Brill, 2009 (forthcoming in
paperback via Haymarket, 2011).
Tedman, Gary, Aesthetics and Alienation Zero Books 2012
Thomas, Peter D., "The Gramscian Moment: Philosophy, Hegemony and
Marxism", Brill, 2009 (forthcoming in paperback via Haymarket, 2011).
External links[edit]
Wikiquote has quotations related to: Louis Althusser
The
Louis Althusser
Louis Althusser Internet Archive at Marxists.org
Texts by or on Althusser at Generation-Online
Texts on Althusser on the site of the Sorbonne Marx Seminar[permanent
dead link]
Texts from Althusser & texts about him – in French on Multitudes
website.
Décalages: An Althusser Studies Journal
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VIAF: 24596917
LCCN: n79021234
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