Talk:Louis Althusser

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[edit] Spinozism

The article on Althusser is fairly extensive, and yet I was unable to find a single reference to Spinoza and Spinozism. Outrageous! Althusser made several explicit references to Spinoza, cf. IISA:

(Lenin and Philosophy, London, 1971, p. 164): "As is well known, the accusation of being in ideology only applies to others, never to oneself (unless one is really a Spinozist or a Marxist, which, in this matter, is to be exactly the same thing)."

--Golioder 21:30, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Interpellation

The article's description of the concept of the ideological interpellation was very poor, and also full of mistakes and miscomprehensions. I tried to fix it, though I am afraid another hour of work is required.

Note (quotations from IISA, Lenin and Philosophy, London, 1971):

  • "Individuals are always-already subjects." (p. 164)
  • The concept of interpellation is, I think, unexplainable without reference to the notion of recognition of ideological obviousnesses: "It is indeed a peculiarity of ideology that it imposes ... obviousnesses as obviousnesses, which we cannot fail to recognize and before which we have the inevitable and natural reaction of crying out ...: 'That's obvious! That's right! That's true!'" (p. 161)
  • The passus on interpellation: p. 160-165

Someone else have fun with this, there is more important work for me to be done now... --Golioder 22:02, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Hegel and Feuerbach

Althusser's essay On the Young Marx proposes that there is a great "epistemological break" between Marx's early,Feuerbachian (and not, as is usually assumed, Hegelian) writings and his later, properly Marxist texts.'

I'm not sure what point is being made here. Feuerbach's work is based on a re-reading of Hegel and Althusser himself describes the early Marx as tainted by "a Hegelian and Feuerbachian ideology" Hanshans23

Well, Feuerbach's work isn't so much a "re-reading" of Hegel, than a radical attempt to reverse Hegel's idealism into a materialism. Early Marx is definitely closer to Feuerbach than Hegel in that Marx follows Feuerbach in a materialist inversion of Hegel. The question of how radical are Marx's and Feurerbach's materialist departures from Hegel is still open though.--Agnaramasi 15:20, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Murder

Althusser killed his wife. As far as I understand it, he was not convicted of murder because he was found to be insane, thus irresponsible. Is it correct? David.Monniaux 23:45, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

yes

Well, it's only technically true that that is why he was never convicted - he was never tried at all, largely due to friends of the ENS in the French establishment who assured that he was immediately whisked away and committed.-mgekelly 07:57, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

"I get by with a little help from my friends."Lestrade (talk) 02:06, 28 January 2008 (UTC)Lestrade

[edit] Mirror

" We acquire our identities by seeing ourselves and our social roles mirrored in material ideologies." Mirror is poorly chosen here, isn't it? The concept of material ideology is precisely that it is not a simple mirror, as understood by traditional marxism. Anybody got a suggestion for another formulation? Santa Sangre 12:27, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

I understand Althusser's conception of the mirror here in debt to Jacques Lacan - the 'mirror stage' in Lacanian theory is a structural turning point in the development of the child and the construction of his subjectivity via the process of identification. --Lonepilgrim 22:06, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Death

Is there a source for his dying at home? There are reports all over the internet of his dying in the asylum. I don't know if any of these are verifiable reports, however. KSchutte 18:09, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Here's Douglas Johnson's introduction to Althusser's memoir The Future Lasts Forever:
Althusser stayed in hospital until 1983. He then went to live, by himself, in the north of Paris...He was always in and out of hospitals. It was in one of them, in the department of the Yvelines, that he died of a heart attack on October 22nd 1990. He was 72. (vii)
So he didn't exactly "die at home," but his asylum hospitalization was over seven years before his death. -- Rbellin|Talk 19:48, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
Yep = he wasn't in an 'asylum' when he died just (like many people) in a hospital. mgekelly 14:20, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pronunciation

Could somebody in the know put the proper pronunciation of Mr. Althusser's name at the article's head? Google yielded "alt-hoo-ser", but I wanted to confirm. CapeCodEph 22:48, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Guilt

In the passus on interpellation, I deleted the word guilty, characterizing an althusserian subject. Reasons: as guilt belongs to the field of morality, Althusser himself would only use it with great deal of sarcasm & disdain. Even though Althusser's theory of ideology can be fruitfully applied to a theory of morals, I believe the neutral use in the context of interpellation can be misleading. Furthermore, guilt is a passive affect, whereas being an althusserian subject is an active "full-time job": being free and autonomous and active, subjects are always ready to perform as soldiers and workers. The interesting point of Althusser's theory of ideology is precisely the fact that his ideological subjects are not simply a flock of sheep or drones or fanatics that were consistently lied-to, but that their very illusion of freedom is the instrument of their subjection. - Regards, 193.77.113.193 20:27, 10 June 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Influenced

I suggest adding B.-H. Levy to the list of Althusser's students and those influenced by him. The extent of his debt to Althusser is acknowledged in Adventures on the Freedom Road and his critical biography of Sartre. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by KD Tries Again (talk • contribs) 17:40, 4 January 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Recent evaluations

Are there any recent evaluations on Althusser's works regarding Hegel, Marx, and Communism in light of the failure and collapse of Communism twenty years ago?Lestrade (talk) 02:09, 28 January 2008 (UTC)Lestrade

[edit] Collapse of Soviet Union

Did Althusser have anything to say about the disintegration of the USSR? I would think that such an event would have been important to him and his thinking.Lestrade (talk) 02:05, 9 February 2008 (UTC)Lestrade

[edit] Criticism

Since Marxism as a theory behind the organization of various states has proved unworkable (on which see Alec Nove's Economics of Feasible Socialism) it would seem to me that any article on Marxist subjects, practical or theoretical, ought to include criticisms, from the left, right and centre, of the positions elaborated in the main article. After all, we don't let Plato slip by without a criticism of his ideas, so why should the Marxists get a laissez passer? Althusser is notoriously vacuous as a philosopher, constantly changing his ideas and positions as each came under attack or proved in practise to be less than stable, yet nothing of this vigorous debate has made it into the article. A good place to begin would be Tony Judt's article on the occasion of the publication of Althusser's self-serving memoirs, which summed up Althusser's life and career ably and concisely. Here is part of Judt's summation of Althusser's work:

Althusser was engaged in what he and his acolytes called a “symptomatic reading” of Marx, which is to say that they took from him what they needed and ignored the rest. Where they wished Marx to have said or meant something that they could not find in his writings, they interpreted the “silences,” thereby constructing an entity of their own imagination. This thing they called a science, one that Marx was said to have invented and that could be applied, gridlike, to all social phenomena. Why invent a Marxist “science” when so much was already at hand, the Marxist “theory of history,” “historical materialism,” “dialectical materialism” and the rest? The answer is that Althusser, like so many others in the ‘60s, was trying to save Marxism from the two major threats to its credibility: the grim record of Stalinism and the failure of Marx’s revolutionary forecasts. Althusser’s special contribution was to remove Marxism altogether from the realm of history, politics and experience, and thereby to render it invulnerable to any criticism of the empirical sort. (New Republic, V. 210, 03-07-1994, p33.)

You might also consult Judt's essay in the New York Review of Books, (53:14, 21 Sept. 2006) on the life work of Marxist critic Leszek Kolakowski.

The lack of criticism of Althusser's Marxism, either as Marxism or as philosophy, is a major hole in the article, and greatly lessens its value to the reader and researcher. I would suggest that each section have a final paragraph detailing what the problems are with the concept, and what criticisms have been made. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Theonemacduff (talk • contribs) 18:30, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Fake career of Althusser?

Is it true that Althusser faked much of his philosophical career or is this a urban myth? I am getting this info from here. Stampit (talk) 02:03, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

The book review you are referring to 'Louis Althusser, The Paris Strangler' by Tony Judt appears to be somewhat tendentious. The author seems to take Althusser at face value whenever it suits him, taking Althusser's self-deprecating style literally: Judt seems to take Althusser at his word when the latter writes that he knew 'a few passages of Marx'. At the same time, Judt says Althusser's autobiography shows that he was on the 'edge of insanity'. In that sense Judt is doing exactly what she accuses Althusser of -- selective lecture symptomale (symptomatic reading) Modern Tribal (talk) 03:17, 19 April 2008 (UTC)