Louis Althusser (1918–1990)

Whilst not being an intellectual power house (you could probably glean most of his insights from giving Pink Floyd’s The Wall another spin) Althusser certainly stands as a decent springboard for your own thought. Frankly the discussions of ideology were the least interesting, with Althusser’s discussions of the Subject/subject distinction (by being hailed by a policeman in the street, by being ‘picked out’ as it were, you are shown to always-already be inscribed as a subject within an ideological framework, your placement within the structure being forced upon you - Althusser dubs this process ‘interpellation’), of class struggle being the motor of history (contra humanist/petty-bourgeois attempts to portray Man as the maker of history, able to craft and transcend his position with the stuff/material of history, all utilised/co-opted as a smokescreen for ideological and economist purposes, even with thinkers such as Sartre who construe themselves as Marxist revolutionaries giving into these tendencies, unconsciously opening the door for a regressive kind of thought that throws up obstacles when it comes to a scientific knowledge of historical/dialectical materialism), however any and all of his discussions concerning God are incredibly weak and unconvincing, as he espouses a dull and unpalatable atheism that strikes one as markedly adolescent. His attempts to evade God as the Subject of history, as some philosophical concept as discardable as consciousness, substance, Reason etc. etc. are just bone headed, and I hope there’s an essay of his out there where he tackles ontotheology/the question of God more directly. Having now read a decent chunk of his Reading Capital I can confidently say that this is a far less nuanced and sophisticated output by Althusser, but I still had a blast working through it. It’s a real bummer that he strangled his wife though, and its terrible that he spent the rest of his life haunted by the fact that he was never convicted for it, that he could never assume responsibility for her death, even if it was ruled to have been due to hallucinations brought about by a new regiment of antipsychotics. Also my book started to fall apart due to this infernal fucking English heatwave, and I’ve had a hell of a time sticking it back together and sanding down the parts that stuck out - the Ideological and Repressive State Apparatuses are out to get me folks, they’re shutting down free thought !!!… (altro)

"[Althusser] is a professional philosopher who is also a prominent member of the [French Communist] Party without being committed to the official eclecticism. For Althusser, a complete Marxist philosophy remains an unfulfilled desideratum. Only the cornerstone of the building has been laid: the structure remains to be erected. For all its apparent modesty, this approach discloses a resolute determination to build a total system. Is it an accident that Althusser (like Antonio Gramsci a generation earlier) operates within a Catholic culture, as the theorist of a movement which for its adherents has become a substitute for the Church? At any rate the effective completion of his project points in the direction of an all-encompassing synthesis. Impressive in its way, there is nonetheless something scholastic about it. One wonders what Marx would have thought of it."(citations omitted) (1966)… (altro)

Protagonista central de los debates marxista de la segunda mitad del siglo XX, Louis Althusseres autor de una obra que en los últimos años ha comenzado a ser leída como fundante de un pensamiento posmarxista en el que la teoría de la historia priorita la dimensión del acontecimiento,del encuentro contingente que deja de lado toda sustancia y todo sujeto del devenir histórico. marcado por su afinidad temprana con el cristianismo y por la posterior influencia de Lacan y del estructuralismo el posmarxismo de Althusser comienza a tomar forma en los cursos que, entre 1955 y 1972, dicto en la escuela normal Superior sobre los problemas de la filosofía de la historia, maquiavelo, y la filosofía política En los siglos 17 y 18, y que, hasta ahora inédito se reúnen en este volumen por primera vez.
Entre ellos, la relación del autor con la enseñanza filosófica se expresa como una experiencia de pensamiento en la que se trata de volver a captar –para ponerse a su altura– el trabajo de "algunos hombres que intentaron el esfuerzo mayor de lucidez que puede haber". Althusser se vale de la audiencia de especialización del curso para intentar construir, no una filosofía nueva, sino una práctica nueva de la filosofía apuntando incansablemente a que las cosas se muevan.… (altro)