Hebrew Preface to Louis Althusser's For Marx.

The philosophy of Louis Althusser is often contrasted with the ideas of Michel Foucault. At first sight, the disagreement seems to be about the concept of ideology: while Althusser seem to be huge advocate of the use of the concept, Foucault apparently dislikes and avoids the concept altogether. However, I argue in this article that this reading is only superficial and that it obscures the real debate between these two authors. Althusser, especially in his recently posthumously published (...) Sur la reproduction (1995), appears to agree on many points with Foucault. The real dispute lies not in the concept of ideology, but in its connection with its counterpart ‘science’. Both Althusser and Foucault were in a way epistemologists, focusing on the question on how sciences develop and how scientific practice works. Focussing on their shared background in the French epistemology, with authors such as Gaston Bachelard and Jean Cavaillès, the real discussion appears to be about whether science can really be opposed to ideology or not. Focusing on these aspects of their works can shed new lights on their oeuvre as well as on the nature of scientific practice. (shrink)

Indication as Concept: Althusser, Spinoza, and the Logic of the “Groupes Althussériens” (1965-1968).

In this paper I consider Althusser's concept of 'overdetermination' as a variation on the theme of a Spinozist physics of modes that attempts to incorporate the Marxist problematic of social antagonism.

Reading Gramsci and Reading Althusser A Philosophy for Dialectical Materialism -Irfan Ajvazi.

In this essay, I try to go through the questions and analysis that Judith Butler puts on Althusser’s work—reading fundamentally and almost exclusively the essay on the “Ideological State Apparatus” from 1970, and the relationship she maintains in her reading with the Freud’s concept of repression and the Lacanian “symbolic order”. My central hypothesis is that it is the Foucauldian reading of Freud and Lacan, begun early in 1990 with Gender Trouble, that guides Butler in his interpretation of the (...) Althusserian concept of interpellation understood almost exclusively from the perspective of the “hailing” example that Althusser provides in his essay from 1970. This leads Butler to a reading that I characterize here as biographical—for its obscene reliance on a particular episode in Althusser’s life: the murder of Helène Rytman—and anti-Cartesian, insofar as it attempts reading the ideological readiness of the subject as something beyond the split of the cogito, and materially effected by an ontological repetition. The problem with Judith Butler's concept of repression is its unappealable juridical nature—which is paradoxical for an erudite reader of Michel Foucault—insofar as the agent of repression appears as analogous to the State and therefore it results assimilable with rebellions “melancholic” subjectivity. This conflation of the psychological and the social is conducive to some mass psychologism, which forgets Althusser’s debt to Lacan when elaborating his theory of ideology. I proceed to investigate the origins of this theory in the text “Three Notes on the Theory of Discourses” (1968) and in the recently published Que faire (2018). My tentative conclusion is that there is an idea of supplementary violence (in the Lacanian sense of plus-de-jouir) constitutive of the unconscious in Althusserian theory of ideology that cannot be overlooked, and that is linked to his reading of Freud. (shrink)

Cet essai présente une description de plusieurs travaux inédits de Jacques Derrida au sujet de Marx et d'Althusser datant des années 1960 et 1970. Au-delà du travail philologique, il s'agit aussi d'une étude théorique de notions telles que 'idéologie', 'fétichisme', 'reproduction', 'division du travail', 'différence sexuelle', 'domination', 'économie politique', 'matérialisme dialectique', ou 'production culturelle' — tout autant à travers les textes marxistes que dans les lectures déconstructives qu'en propose alors Derrida. Durant les années 1970, dans le cadre de son (...) séminaire, Derrida s'efforce de penser une autre économie politique, au-delà de l'économie du propre qu'il identifie aussi bien chez les économistes classiques que chez leurs critiques marxistes. Ces lectures détaillées et combattives de textes marxistes restent aujourd'hui inédites. Leur prise en compte contribue à redéfinir l'image de Derrida et de la déconstruction, en témoignant de ses discussions très avancées de Marx, d'Althusser, et de la pensée marxiste — et ce dès la fin des années 1960 et le début des années 1970, plus de 20 ans avant la publication de Spectres de Marx (1993). -/- Une version plus courte de cet article fut traduite en espagnol par Ramiro Parodi, et publiée en 2019 dans le numéro 7 de la revue Demarcaciones — numéro consacré au 25ème anniversaire de la publication de Spectres de Marx. (shrink)

Cette note devait introduire à un public anglophone la traduction de la « Lettre de Louis Althusser datée du 18 mars 1966 et adressée au Comité central du PCF », elle est ici enrichie dans une version livrée au public français. Elle apporte le contexte historique et théorique nécessaire à la compréhension des interventions « anti-humanistes » de Louis Althusser qui questionne les choix politiques opérés par le PCF au cours des années 1960. Nulle part ailleurs, dans les (...) écrits publiés d’Althusser, nous ne voyons aussi clairement les enjeux politiques imbriqués dans son projet philosophique, ni comment ce projet évolua progressivement d’une entreprise « théoriciste » à la recherche d’une philosophie en lien plus étroit avec la pratique. Cette lettre nous paraît de la plus haute importance pour les spécialistes de l’œuvre d’Althusser, les historiens de la pensée marxiste, mais aussi plus largement à tous ceux qui s’intéressent à l’importance que peut revêtir le travail d’Althusser dans les débats actuels dans le champ de la philosophie marxiste. (shrink)

Este ensayo presenta una descripción de los escritos inéditos de Jacques Derrida sobre Marx y Louis Althusser en la década de 1970, y un estudio de conceptos como ideología, diferencia sexual, reproducción, violencia, dominación o hegemonía en perspectiva deconstructiva. Se trata de pensar en una otra economía, más allá de la economía del cuerpo propio. El artículo fue publicado en el Volumen 7 de la Revista Demarcaciones, "a 25 años de Espectros de Marx.".

(CONTENIDO: LA FILOSOFÍA DE ALTHUSSER A 50 AÑOS DE LIRE LE CAPITAL Pedro Karczmarczyk, 3; DISCURSO Y DECRETO: SPINOZA ALTHUSSER Y PÊCHEUX Warren Montag 11; ALTHUSSER LECTOR DE GRAMSCI Vittorio Morfino 43 LAS ABSTRACCIONES, ENTRE LA IDEOLOGÍA Y LA CIENCIA João Quartim de Moraes 67 ELOGIO DEL TEORICISMO. PRÁCTICA TEÓRICA E INCONSCIENTE FILOSÓFICO EN LA PROBLEMÁTICA ALTHUSSERIANA, Natalia Romé 85 MARXISMO Y FEMINISMO: EL RECOMIENZO DE UNA PROBLEMÁTICA1 115 Luisina Bolla* / Pedro Karczmarczyk* 115 RRESEÑAS El materialismo (...) de Althusser. Más allá del telos y del Eschaton de Vittorio Morfino, por Valentín Huarte 153; El sujeto en cuestión, Pedro Karczmarczyk (ed.) por Constanza Storani; 159 La posición materialista. El pensamiento de L. Althusser entre la práctica teórica y la práctica política, de Natalia Romé, por Ingrid Sarchman y Carolina Collazo 164. (shrink)

A comienzos de los años 60 el marxismo althusseriano y el psicoanálisis lacaniano coincidían en un punto: su voluntad de intervenir críticamente en una coyuntura teórica caracterizada por el avance de las ciencias humanas. Ambas corrientes señalaban, con grandes convergencias, que las “ciencias humanas” (de manera evidente en sus versiones “tecnocráticas”: ego psychology, pisicología social, sociología en sus distintos avatares, etc.) cumplían funciones de adaptación de los individuos al sistema social, considerado como un invariante. Dichas ciencias humanas se presentaban como (...) obstáculos epistemológicos para lo que entonces se pensaba como el re-comienzo del materialismo histórico y del psicoanálisis. El hallazgo de obstáculos semejantes no es una mera coincidencia. Ambas líneas de pensamiento convergen en puntos importantes, afirmando, en lo que podría pensarse como una común tendencia materialista, la subordinación de la esfera biológica a la de lo simbólico o a la práctica social, la primacía del significante sobre el sentido, la necesidad de conceptualizar formas originales de la causalidad, cuyo leit-motiv es la sobredeterminación. El presente trabajo busca explorar algunas de las tensiones contenidas en esta coincidencia. El punto de mayor tensión lo suscitan los desarrollos de Althusser y algunos de sus seguidores (en particular Pêcheux y Lecourt) acerca de la relación entre la categoría de sujeto, la de ideología y el conocimiento científico en tanto que “proceso sin sujeto”, al sostener la imposibilidad de un “sujeto de la ciencia”, tesis que sin embargo juega un rol importante en el pensamiento de Lacan. Esta tensión remite a diferentes factores: la diferente herencia epistemológica (Bachelard en un caso, Koyré en el otro), la diferente recepción de la historia de la filosofía (el caso de Descartes), como así también diferencias de registro de los conceptos clave: inconsciente por un lado, ideología y lucha de clases, por el otro. En este trabajo haremos algunas observaciones sobre los efectos que acarrea la diferente recepción de la filosofía de Descartes. (shrink)

This paper seeks to articulate the theoretical development of Marxism to post-Marxism by examining Louis Althusser’s influence on post-Marxist theory. I divide this paper into three parts and ask the following question: how did Althusser’s “return to Marx” conceptually prepare the rupture with Marx found in Laclau and Mouffe’s post-Marxism? The first part contextualizes the debate between economic determinism and Marxist humanism by elaborating on their main positions through Marx’s texts and his interpreters. The second part provides a (...) discussion of Althusser’s critiques of both economic determinism and humanism with the concept of “overdetermination” and thesis of the subject’s constitution through interpellation. The third part explores the Leninist and Gramscian backgrounds of the notion of “hegemony” and its reconfiguration through Althusser’s theoretical framework as found in the works of Laclau and Mouffe. I show that Althusser laid the groundwork for post-Marxism to develop out of Marxism through anti-essentialism that disputes the primacy of the forces of production and repudiates the constitutive subject’s alienated labor as an underlying principle of critique. (shrink)

This paper examines the intersection of Louis Althusser’s theory of ideology and Frantz Fanon’s account of the race-marked colonial person to explore how interpellation functions –and fails– in a racialized world. Althusser’s notion of interpellation describes how individuals are transformed into subjects under the ruling ideology through material practices. Yet while Althusser treats this process as universally reproduced under a given economic system and of “absolute guarantee” (Althusser 1971, 34), Fanon reveals its limits: colonized subjects are (...) not “always-already” interpellated as subjects. Drawing on Fanon’s phenomenological descriptions, I argue that under white supremacist ideology, the black person is not constituted as a universal subject but as a race-marked person whose status as a human being is shaped by the colonizer’s imposed imaginary. The default category of subject in the colonial order is the white subject, while the colonized person is treated as a “nonbeing” (Fanon 1986, 10). Reading Fanon alongside Althusser exposes a structural asymmetry: ideology both constitutes subjecthood for some and denies it for others, producing what I term non-interpellation. Fanon’s philosophy thus challenges Althusser’s assumption of a shared field of subjectivation by showing that, in the colonial context, interpellation’s “obviousness” (Althusser 1971, 1) relies on racial exclusion. Ultimately, I contend that confronting the colonial and racial limits of ideology requires rethinking the category of the subject —not as a fixed, reproducible universal, but as a historically contingent product of a material world divided between those who are interpellated as subjects and those who are denied subjecthood. (shrink)

The Philosophy of Ideology - Reading Althusser and Machiavelli Politically - Irfan Ajvazi.

A Philosophy for Communism Rethinking Althusser.

In the current “second reception” of Althusser, the concept of the capitalist mode of production as explored in Reading Capital and On the Reproduction of Capitalism has been relatively underdiscussed. The concept, however, remains an important component of larger discussions in Marxist theory. This paper rereads Althusser and Balibar’s early contributions to the concept of the mode of production alongside Marx and contemporary thinkers such as Jairus Banaji. In so doing, preliminary connections are made between Althusser’s second (...) reception and important recent interdisciplinary work on subsumption and heterogenous development. (shrink)

Kate Crawford presents AI as “both reflecting and producing social relations and understandings of the world”; or again, as “a form of exercising power, and a way of seeing… as a manifestation of highly organized capital backed by vast systems of extraction and logistics, with supply chains that wrap around the entire planet”. I interpret these material insights through a Marxist understanding of ideology, with reference to Marx/Engels, Guy Debord and Louis Althusser. In the German Ideology, Marx and Engels (...) present ideology as the alienated and alienating discourse of exchange, dissimulating the material forces of production and its science. Guy Debord presents the spectacle as the further representation of capital. The spectacle is a total Weltanschauung, pure appearance, where “whatever appears is good and where what is good, appears.” Above all, the spectacle is ideology, representing “the impoverishment, enslavement and negation of real life”. Louis Althusser presents ideology as essential for the reproduction of labor-power and capital. His notion of “interpellation” explains the subjective uptake of ideology, how we respond, “yes!” to its call. The algorithms of AI are enactments of surplus value generating capital as data. The AI data-world is the spectacle, “the autonomous movement of non-life” (Debord) where the proletariat/consumer is the producer of their own ideological subjection. Is resistance possible? What form might it take? And if AI is understood as ideology, i.e. as a language that obscures the true conditions of real life, then what are those true conditions? What is “real life”? (shrink)

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

El presente trabajo confronta el abordaje de la cuestión del sujeto en Louis Althusser y Ludwig Wittgenstein. La comparación se produce porque el tratamiento del lenguaje de la filosofía del segundo Wittgenstein es particularmente apropiado para abordar la intervención del discurso en el proceso por el cual la ideología interpela a los individuos como sujetos, según Althusser. El descentramiento del sujeto obliga a repensar la dimensión de la agencia, y con ella, la de la política. Tanto Wittgenstein como (...) Althusser desembocan en una encrucijada: negación teórica de la noción de sujeto y reconocimiento de la existencia paradójica de la misma en la práctica. Ello implica deconstruir el par "determinismo-libertad" sobre el que se asienta la pregunta por la agencia. Sobre el final retomamos el trabajo de Michel Pêcheux sobre los efectos retroactivos del discurso, lo que implica un replanteo del vocabulario de la determinación, prominente en los escritos althusserianos. -:-:-:-:--:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-ABSTRACT:- The present paper compares Ludwig Wittgenstein’s and Louis Althusser’s approach to the problem of subject. This comparison is motivated by the fact that second Wittgenstein’s approach to language is particularly appropriate to think of the intervention of discourse in the process of ideological interpellation which, according to Althusser,constitutes individuals as subjects. The decentering of the involved subject requires rethinking the dimension of agency and, consequently, of politics. Both, Wittgenstein and Althusser, end in a crossroads: they refuse theoretical prominence to the notion of the subject, but at the same time they recognise the practical priority of this notion, which gives it a sort of paradoxical existence. This implies deconstructing the pair “determinism–liberty” where the priority of agency is located. We end with the work of Michel Pêcheux on the retroactive effects of discourse, that entail (in agreement with Wittgenstein) rethinking the vocabulary of determination, prominent in Althusserian writings. (shrink)

Althusser's doctrine of theoretical practice—the tripartite model in which knowledge is produced through the operation of a theory (Generalities II) upon a conceptual raw material (Generalities I) so as to yield a concrete-in-thought (Generalities III)—confronts an apparent paradox: it claims materialist credentials while situating the entire process of cognition within thought and excluding any direct relation between the object of knowledge and the real object. This article contends that the paradox is resolved, and the coherence of the doctrine rendered (...) intelligible, only when its epistemological genealogy is reconstructed as the synthesis of three epistemological legacies grounded in a Spinozist ontology, rather than as a series of discrete binary influences. The argument proceeds in three stages. First, it is shown that Althusser's model transposes Gaston Bachelard's phenomenotechnique—a doctrine developed for the experimental sciences, in which instruments constitute materialized theories—into a domain, the critique of political economy, that possesses no laboratory instrumentation; this instrumental lacuna is filled through the importation of Jean Cavaillès's thesis of the autonomy and immanent necessity of conceptual concatenations, which substitutes the concept for the material instrument and a subjectless process for the experimenter. Second, it is demonstrated that, in the absence of any correspondence criterion, the validity of Generalities III is secured by Spinoza's principle of the immanence of truth (veritas norma sui), in conjunction with the ontological parallelism that absolutely distinguishes the idea from its ideatum while guaranteeing the identity of their order. Third, it is established that Georges Canguilhem's account of the historical genesis and trans-theoretical persistence of concepts supplies the dynamic mechanism—recurrence, scientific ideology, the mutation of problematics—through which the transition from Generalities I to Generalities III can assume the form of an epistemological break from ideology to science. These legacies function, it is argued, not as isolated influences but as mutually dependent components of a single theoretical apparatus, and the reconstruction of that apparatus defends Althusser's demarcation between real object and object of knowledge against the standard charges of idealism, dogmatism, and sterile formalism. The article concludes by identifying the acknowledged limit of the synthesis—the deferred mechanism of cognitive appropriation, together with the second-degree compromise of immanence diagnosed by Balibar and conceded in Althusser's self-criticism—and by arguing that this limit constitutes the tradition's research program rather than its refutation. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to revisit some of Louis Althusser’s texts from the 1970s and 1980s in order to examine the relation between Althusser’s conceptualization of a materialism of the encounter and his calls for a new practice of politics as part of a strategy for communism. In particular, I try to discuss Althusser’s reference to political practice and the organizational forms associated with it, at the same time attempting to stress the tensions and aporias (...) running through these interventions. (shrink)

To explain Paulin J. Hountondji’s intellectual trajectory, I offer a critical account of his conception of the relationship between science and philosophy. Mapping the shift from his well-known critical writings on ethnophilosophy to his later work on scientific dependency is possible only if we recognize that Hountondji conceives of philosophy as essentially a theory of science (Wissenschaftslehre). Adequately characterizing Hountondji’s metaphilosophical orientation, however, requires greater specificity. The two most influential philosophers on Hountondji’s conception of the relationship between science and philosophy, (...) Edmund Husserl and Louis Althusser, would both have assented to the claim that philosophy is fundamentally a Wissenschaftslehre. However, they each adhered to different (and indeed contradictory) understandings of this claim. While Hountondji explicitly recognizes the dual influence of Husserl and Althusser on his conception of philosophy as a theory of science, he does not attempt to resolve the contradictions between Husserl’s understanding of the relationship between philosophy and science and Althusser’s conception of that relationship. By examining Hountondji’s relatively neglected later writings on scientific dependency, it becomes clear that his emphasis on the significance of the history and sociology of science points toward an Althusserian conception of philosophy qua theory of science rather than a Husserlian conception of what it is for philosophy to be a Wissenschaftslehre. (shrink)

RESUMEN En el presente trabajo nos proponemos un recorrido en torno al problema del discurso en Althusser. Comenzamos con sus primeros escritos sobre psicoanálisis para descubrir el rol que juegan allí Lacan y Spinoza. Luego, ofrecemos una reconstrucción del concepto de discurso en una de las obras más importantes de Althusser, Para leer El capital. Posteriormente, analizamos el modo en que la cuestión del discurso entronca con la cuestión de la articulación entre marxismo y psicoanálisis. Por último, reseñamos (...) brevemente la prolongación de esta cuestión en la revista que fue la cuna del estructuralismo filosófico francés, los Cahiers pour l’analyse. PALABRAS CLAVE Discurso. Sujeto. Análisis. Ideología. Psicoanálisis. RESUMO Neste artigo, propomo-nos a examinar o problema do discurso em Althusser. Começamos com os seus primeiros escritos sobre psicanálise, a fim de descobrir o papel desempenhado por Lacan e Spinoza. Oferecemos, então, uma reconstrução do conceito de discurso numa das obras mais importantes de Althusser, Para Ler Capital. Posteriormente, analisamos a forma como a questão do discurso se liga à questão da articulação entre o marxismo e a psicanálise. Finalmente, passamos brevemente em revista a extensão desta questão na publicação que foi o berço do estruturalismo filosófico francês, os Cahiers pour l’analyse. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Discurso. Sujeito. Análise. Ideologia. Psicanálise. (shrink)

Theory of Ideology and Historical Materialist Thoughts An Essay on Althusser and Lenin by Irfan Ajvazi.

The present investigation intends to approach Michel Pêcheux's discourse analysis as a discipline that seeks to accomplish a long-term theoretical program proposed by Louis Althusser. By applying the "reproduction perspective" to the fundamental concepts of historical materialism, Althusser and his disciples brought renewal to the traditional conception of historical causality, ideology and the processes of subjection. Nevertheless, they considered that historical materialism needed to be articulated with psychoanalysis if social sciences were to be transformed. Althusser turned to (...) Lacan in order to develop a program that could give raise to a new order of scientific knowledge correlated to a new type of causality: structural causality. The link between these thinkers were not completely direct, but took place in the Cahiers pour l'analyse. We propose to look at Michel Pêcheux's materialist theory of discourse as one that carries out the articulation between Althusserian Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis to explain the processes of subjection and reproduction. In the introduction or chapter 1 we offer a systematic diagram of the conceptual articulation between historical materialism and psychoanalysis, describing in detail the place that Pêcheux's theory of discourse occupies there. In chapter 2 we propose a series of intellectual coordinates understand the encounter between Lacan and Althusser applying the categories of hyperstructuralism, philosophy of the concept and natural history of norms. In chapter 3 we address the central concepts of Althusserian Marxism based on the proposed articulation. In chapter 4 we address the central concepts of Lacanian psychoanalysis with the same aim. In chapter 5 we address the place that the concept of discourse occupies in Althusser's thought, the project of a general theory of the signifier and a general look at the interventions of Jacques Alain Miller and Pêcheux in the Cahiers pour l'analyse. In chapter 6 we specifically address Michel Pêcheux's discourse analysis program in his fundamental works. With this itinerary we hope to bring light and a better comprehension of the theoretical enterprise of Althusser and Pêcheux as an event in the history of scientific thought capable of offering us tools to understand the processes of social reproduction. Keywords: Historical materialism - Psychoanalysis - Reproduction - Ideology - Subject - Discourse Resumen: La presente investigación se propone abordar el análisis del discurso de Michel Pêcheux en tanto disciplina que busca llevar a cabo un programa teórico de largo alcance vislumbrado por Louis Althusser. Althusser y sus discípulos renovaron la disciplina marxista al aplicar lo que llamaron la "perspectiva de la reproducción" a los conceptos centrales del materialismo histórico, renovando la concepción de la causalidad histórica, la ideología y los procesos de sujeción. Consideraban, no obstante, que el materialismo histórico no se bastaba teóricamente a sí mismo y que requería de su articulación con el psicoanálisis para refundar las ciencias sociales. Althusser se acercó a Lacan con el fin de elaborar un programa que pudiera dar lugar a un orden de cientificidad novedoso que tenía como correlato tratar con un nuevo tipo de causalidad: la causalidad estructural. Este acercamiento fue más bien indirecto y fructificó fundamentalmente en la obra de los discípulos de ambos, nucleados en un principio en torno a los Cahiers pour l'analyse. En nuestro recorrido proponemos abordar la teoría materialista de los procesos discursivos de Michel Pêcheux como una teoría que busca hacer efectiva la articulación entre marxismo althusseriano y psicoanálisis lacaniano para explicar los procesos de sujeción-reproducción. En la introducción, que es nuestro capítulo 1, ofrecemos un cuadro sistemático de la articulación conceptual entre materialismo histórico y psicoanálisis, detallando el lugar que allí ocupa la teoría del discurso de Pêcheux. En el capítulo 2 proponemos una serie de coordenadas intelectuales para pensar el encuentro entre Lacan y Althusser aplicando las categorías de hiperestructuralismo, filosofía del concepto e historia natural de las normas. En el capítulo 3 abordamos los conceptos centrales del marxismo althusseriano en función de la articulación propuesta. En el capítulo 4 abordamos los conceptos centrales del psicoanálisis lacaniano en vistas del mismo objetivo. En el capítulo 5 abordamos el lugar que el concepto de discurso ocupa en las reflexiones de Althusser, el proyecto de una teoría general del significante y una mirada general de las intervenciones de Jacques Alain Miller y Pêcheux en los Cahiers pour l'analyse. En el capítulo 6 abordamos específicamente el programa del análisis del discurso de Michel Pêcheux en sus obras fundamentales. Con nuestro recorrido esperamos poder iluminar la empresa teórica de Althusser y Pêcheux como un acontecimiento en la historia del pensamiento científico capaz de ofrecernos herramientas para comprender los procesos de reproducción social. Palabras claves: Materialismo histórico - Psicoanálisis - Reproducción - Ideología - Sujeto - Discurso. (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre pointed to the ‘gap’ in Marxism where a theory of the individual should be. Three attempts to fill it vied in the context of an intense ideological debate within the Parti Communiste Français (PCF) which still resonates today. On the one hand, Louis Althusser’s denial of individual agency as traditionally understood, structuralist theory which proved difficult to apprehend, let alone apply, in a capitalist world. On the other, Roger Garaudy’s Marxist humanist explanation of personality, most likely unsatisfactory (...) for many Marxists on account of its spiritualistic leanings. Finally, Lucien Sève’s approach: very preliminary, often awkwardly formulated, and diluted over time, but a real alternative to structural Marxism and perhaps, in its final diluted form, not incompatible with a humanist approach after all. If the debate could be settled in his favour, the detailed practical work of applying the theory to psychology and other social sciences should take over with some urgency from here. (shrink)

Lee McIntyre Hakikat-Sonrası (Post-Truth, 2018) adlı kitabında, hakikat-sonrası (post-truth) kavramını pazarlama ve televizyon dünyalarındaki tarihsel kökenlerine ve davranışsal psikolojideki kaynaklara dayanarak düşünsel bir kökene bağlar. McIntyre, bu kavramın yalnızca epistemolojik bir sorun olduğunu öne sürer. Bu makalede; ilk olarak hakikat-sonrası kavramı ile hakikatin bağdaşım kuramı arasında benzerlikler belirtilerek ortaya çıkan ortak epistemolojik sorunlar incelenecektir. Daha sonra, kişiselleştirme teknolojileri ve bunların istenmeyen sonuçları olan yankı odası, filtreleme baloncuğu ve siber-balkanlaştırma ile Althusser’in devletin ideolojik aygıtları arasında bir koşutluk kurularak McIntyre’ın yaklaşımı (...) sorunsallaştırılacaktır. Dahası, söz konusu teknolojiler bireyleri birer üretici-tüketiciye (prosumer) dönüştürdüğü için hakikat-sonrası kavramının hem teorik hem de pratik felsefenin alanına girmesiyle aslında ideoloji kavramına karşılık gelen bir yeniyapımdan (neologism) fazlası olmadığı ileri sürülecektir. (shrink)

Louis Althusser is perhaps most well-known for his concept of ‘Ideological State Apparatuses’ (ISAs). However, Althusser is not clear about what role, if any, ISAs play in a post-capitalist society. At times, Althusser talks about ISAs (and the state) withering; at other times, they are merely reformed. Sometimes, ISAs are described as having an inescapable repressive dimension; on other occasions, they are a perfectly acceptable tool for the reproduction of socialism. In this paper, I offer a way (...) of thinking through this confusion that draws on the thought of the Daoist philosopher, Zhuangzi. I argue that Zhuangzian friendship represents a kind of radical equality that is reproducible without the traditional kind of ideological interpellation of ISAs, thereby allowing Althusser explain post-capitalist ideological reproduction. It is worth noting that in this paper, I am not engaging in a textual exegesis of the Zhuangzi. My primary interest is in using the contemporary literature on the Zhuangzi to think through a problem in Althusser’s philosophical system. (shrink)

Though Althusser often spoke of his commitment to philosophical materialism—a position organically linked to his ongoing elaboration of the specific philosophical effects of Marxism—this paper argues that Althusser’s materialism must also include a commitment to realism and naturalism. Though Althusser does not use these terms himself, he nonetheless remains a realist to the extent that he argues for the capacity of conceptual thought to know a mind-independent reality and a naturalist to the extent that he is a (...) consequent Darwinian (like Engels and Lenin before him) who conceives of cognition as a contingent and evolved phenomenon. It is only on the basis of these considerations that Althusser’s polemic against empiricism can be properly understood and the stakes of his philosophical project properly evaluated. (shrink)

This paper argues that the reading of Althusser which finds a pronounced continuity in his conception of the relations among science, philosophy, and politics is the correct one, this essay will begin with an examination of Althusser’s “scientism.” The meaning of this term (one that differs slightly from contemporary usages) will be specified before showing how and in what way Althusser’s political philosophy between 1960 and 1980 can be described as “scientistic.” The next section details the important (...) political role Althusser assigned to the sciences and particularly to the science of historical materialism during this period. This accomplished, the arguments of interpreters who emphasize the apparent difference in Althusser’s attitude towards science before and after 1980 will be considered. Here, possible reasons for such a reading will be rehearsed. Next, with the support of recently published and archival documents, this essay will engage in a close and comparative reading of Althusser’s texts from the 1970s and 1980s that have as their subject the relations among philosophy, science, and politics. This survey will show the continuity in Althusser’s position vis-à-vis the sciences: namely, that if we want good (i.e. desired) socio-politico-economic changes to result from our political actions, then it is necessary to engage in social scientific research or, at the very least, to consult such research and to use this knowledge in our political decision making. All this serves to support the conclusion that Althusser’s “new” political philosophy from the 1980s is not really so new. On the contrary, his writings on the materialism of the encounter and aleatory materialism represent prolongations and elaborations of positions and ideas already developed in the 1960s and 1970s and that include a mostly consistent understanding of the relations between scientific knowledge and political action. This is true even if the rhetorical and philosophical style in which these ideas are put forth in the 1980s differs from the ways in which these ideas were introduced during the prior two decades. (shrink)

La discusión sobre las consecuencias políticas del pensamiento de L. Wittgenstein ha girado sobre la posibilidad de construir miradas críticas sobre lo social, su legitimidad, amplitud, fuerza, etc. Sin embargo, aproximar a Wittgenstein a una posición materialista, como la entendía L. Althusser, conduce a una comprensión diferente de la crítica, vinculada a la tarea de deconstruir el discurso filosófico que intenta unificar y organizar jerárquicamente las evidencias (certezas) constitutivas de los diferentes juegos de lenguaje en los que se despliega (...) lo social. Se intenta extraer de esta aproximación una distinción entre la filosofía como práctica teórica ideológica y como práctica teórica crítica. The discussion regarding the political consequences of Wittgenstein's thought has focused on the possibility of building critical approaches to the legitimacy, amplitude, strength, etc. of the social sphere. However, bringing Wittgenstein close to a materialist position as understood by L. Althusser leads to a different understanding of critique, linked to the deconstruction of the philosophical discourse that attempts to unify and hierarchically organize the certainties that are constitutive of the different language games in which the social is deployed. On the basis of this approach, the article attempts to draw a distinction between philosophy as ideological theoretical practice and as critical theoretical practice. (shrink)

If there is one thing that everyone knows about Louis Althusser, it is that he killed his wife - the sociologist and résistante Hélène Rytmann-Légotien. In this article, William S. Lewis asks how should this fact effect the reception of Althusser's work, and how should those who find Althusser's reconceptualisation of Marx and Marxism usefully respond?

Aproximaciones a la escuela francesa de epistemología Los problemas que dominan a la epistemología pueden contextualizarse históricamente como una forma de racionalidad filosófica. La filosofía se ha presentado a lo largo de la historia como un discurso en el que sus diversos componentes (metafísica, ontología, gnoseología, ética, lógica, etc.) se mostraron unidos en el molde de la ?unidad del saber?. En este marco unitario alguna de las formas del saber filosófico detenta usualmente una posición dominante. El énfasis colocado en la (...) unidad del saber filosófico, o en ?la unidad del pensamiento humano?, es una herencia que el pensamiento filosófico recibe de sus raíces mítico-teológicas. Dicha visión se vio sometida, en la historia de la filosofía, a un proceso de secularización por el cual la instancia dominante pasó de la teología a la metafísica y de ésta a la teoría del conocimiento. Entre los siglos XIX y XX, este proceso atestiguó un cambio ulterior, colocando a la epistemología como instancia dominante de la racionalidad filosófica. La sucesión debe verse como una consecuencia de la funcionalización social de los dispositivos de creencias (ideología), lo que provoca que los mismos se conviertan, en determinado momento, en un obstáculo para la producción de nuevos conocimientos. De esta manera, los nuevos conocimientos, para desarrollarse, se ven forzados a provocar reestructuraciones en el campo filosófico, ya sea mediante el reemplazo de la instancia dominante, la incorporación o creación de nuevas formas de saber filosófico -tal el caso de la epistemología-, o de la marginalización relativa de otras. Se trata de en un proceso complejo (que no es ni lineal, ni biunívoco), en el que cabe no obstante discernir un esquema de la sucesión temporal de las formas filosóficas que dominan la pretendida ?unidad del pensamiento humano? (filosofía). El que acabamos de describir es un proceso lento de sustitución y reemplazo en el tipo de garantías que se le exige elaborar a la filosofía. Algunos momentos, como el ocaso de las garantías de la fe, acaecido con el surgimiento de la filosofía moderna, podrían parecer a primera vista contrajemplos para esta concepción de la evolución del saber filosófico. Podría creerse, en efecto, que con la constitución de esferas autónomas de discurso (teología, ciencia, filosofía), del discurso filosófico se desgajó en un discurso de una naturaleza diferente: la ciencia. Sin embargo, una mirada más atenta revela un paisaje diferente, puesto que esta transformación estuvo acompañada, primero, por la aparición de una nueva instancia dominante de la unificación del conocimiento filosófico. Se trata de la búsqueda de una nueva clase de garantías, las del origen y el fundamento del conocimiento, es decir, las de la gnoseología o teoría del conocimiento, en el interior de la cual se verificó finalmente un nuevo desplazamiento, con la constitución, a fines del siglo XIX y principios del siglo XX, de la ?filosofía de la ciencia? o epistemología. Este modelo para la conceptualización del desarrollo del discurso filosófico tiene la ventaja de permitirnos pensar la relación que la epistemología guarda con la instancia de saber filosófico dominante en el seno de la cual se desarrolla: la de la gnoseología. A partir de las relaciones que la epistemología guarda con la temática de las garantías del conocimiento podemos apresar, en un esquema heurístico que será complejizado de diversos modos en este libro, la diferencia entre las tesis características de la epistemología anglosajona y de la epistemología francesa. De acuerdo con en este esquema heurístico, el rasgo más característico de la epistemología anglosajona es su sujeción, en la mayor parte de su desarrollo, a la teoría del conocimiento, lo que se revela en la persistencia de algunos aspectos de la filosofía de la representación y en la reproducción de la oposición idealista entre sujeto y objeto como dos polos cuya armonía debería establecerse, filosóficamente, en términos de la verdad. En su lugar, la epistemología francesa se propuso el estudio de los mecanismos de producción de los conocimientos. La epistemología, desde esta perspectiva, ya no fue vista primordialmente como el estudio de los fundamentos del conocimiento científico, sino como la teoría de las condiciones y las formas de la práctica científica y la historia de esta práctica, tal como aparece en las distintas ciencias concretas. Expresado de otra manera, el contraste se podría establecer mediante la observación de que mientras los anglosajones hacen filosofía de la ciencia como una extensión de la lógica, los franceses la hacen como una extensión de la historia de la ciencia, es decir, encontrando en la historia el laboratorio del epistemólogo. Ahora bien, según veremos, el campo de la epistemología francesa ha cobijado una buena cantidad de debates que tienen que ver primordialmente con dos tendencias en tensión: la que enfatiza la autonomía de lo epistemológico y aquella que destaca la determinación social del pensamiento. Los trabajos de este libro esperan problematizar este y otros ejes, explorando las perspectivas de los ?clásicos? de la escuela francesa en epistemología (Bachelard, Canguilhem, Althusser, Foucault, etc.), las relaciones entre los mismos y los diálogos que cabe establecer entre estos y otras corrientes de pensamiento. ÍNDICE: La ruptura epistemológica, de Bachelard a Balibar y Pêcheux, Pedro Karczmarczyk La ruptura epistemológica según Bachelard, Althusser y Badiou, Carlos Gassmann Visitaciones Derrideanas, Jazmín Anahí Acosta Epistemología sin sujeto cognoscente. Superación, disolución o sujeción de la subjetividad en Popper, Wittgenstein y Foucault, Silvia Rivera; La torsión política del concepto de verdad en Michel Foucault, Manuel Cuervo Sola Canguilhem y Foucault. De la norma biológica a la norma política, Andrea Torrano Psicología e ideología: Foucault, Canguilhem y Althusser, Matías Abeijón . (shrink)

Se trata de un artículo que busca una relectura de los textos y problemas en la obra del filósofo francés Louis Althusser. Hay dos líneas argumentativa que sigue la relectura: 1) su materialismo aleatorio, y 2) su teoría del lenguaje.

This article examines Jacques Derrida’s work of self-reflection on his own teaching practice by using as a guiding thread the problematics of reproduction in the seminars of the 1970s. The first part of the article examines the sequence of seminars taught by Derrida at École normale supérieure from 1971 to 1977 to show how the concept of reproduction is deconstructed by Derrida across several seminars. Derrida systematically demonstrates, across several themes and fields (sociology and economy, biology and sexuality, art, technique, (...) ontology, and so on), that the critical recourse to the concept of reproduction (for instance, in its Marxist form) risks being complicit in the reproductive system it criticizes. The deconstructive motif of débordement is introduced to problematize this onto-logic of re-production. The second part of the article analyzes more specifically the unpublished seminar “GREPH, le concept de l’idéologie chez les idéologues français” (1974–75), in which Derrida examines the seminar function, his role as a teacher, and his own situation within the French educational system. In particular, Derrida offers a deconstructive critique of the reproductive effects of teaching, and of the institution of philosophy inasmuch as it functions as a reproductive machine. This work of deconstruction is done in the seminar notably through readings of Marx, Engels, and Althusser, with special attention to the concepts of ideology, reproduction, and sexual difference. (shrink)

Can deconstruction be accomplished not through the close reading of just one discourse, but through its combination with another? This paper aims at exploring this second way of performing deconstruction through a particular case study: Marxism and psychoanalysis. In the body of the essay, the history of Freudo-Marxism is divided into two parts, depending on which psychoanalyst stands as point of reference: Freud or Lacan. We proceed by studying the four main strategies by virtue of which a genuine combination between (...) Marxism and psychoanalysis has been historically attempted: separation (Reich), domination (Marcuse), contradiction (Althusser) and, finally, deconstruction (Laclau). (shrink)

Afin d’examiner la forme et la fonction « cours » dans le corpus de Derrida, je propose une lecture du séminaire inédit « GREPH. Le concept de l’idéologie chez les idéologues français ». Ce séminaire fut mené dans le cadre des engagements politico-institutionnels du GREPH. Il constitue donc un point d’entrée privilégié pour saisir le rapport complexe que Derrida entretient avec l’enseignement, et plus généralement avec l’institution philosophique. Au cours de ce séminaire, Derrida s’intéresse au « corps enseignant » en (...) tant qu’il fonctionne comme « machine reproductrice » au sein de l’organisation économique générale de la société. Courant deux lièvres à la fois, Derrida mêle une réflexion généalogique sur l’histoire de l’enseignement philosophique en France et en Europe à une analyse théorique de concepts marxistes et sociologiques tels que « capital », « reproduction », ou « appareil idéologique ». À travers des lectures déconstructrices et transformatrices de Marx et d’Althusser, Derrida s’efforce de penser une autre économie — une économie du texte débordant la logique reproductrice qu’il identifie aussi bien chez les économistes classiques que chez leurs critiques marxistes. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is explore what demands living in liberty places on citizens in Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws. In contrast to the ideas of liberty from many of the thinkers that were to follow him, Montesquieu’s notion of liberty requires that citizens subject themselves to the regulative relationships required by his normative conception of the law. For Montesquieu, living in liberty is not just a situation in which one avoids what the law forbids and is otherwise (...) left ’free’ without interference and coercion. For Montesquieu, liberty is a positively elaborated ideal with normative demands and a set of “necessary relations” that citizens must form. The result is that a life of liberty is defined in a significant way by the laws that bind a citizen because liberty is not the freedom to construct different ways of life, but the freedom to live securely within a particular way of life. I highlight this overlooked feature of The Spirit of the Laws by mobilizing Aron, Althusser and Durkheim’s work on the law in Montesquieu to draw out the implications of Montesquieu’s notion of law for liberty. (shrink)

Resumen: En el presente trabajo intentaremos analizar cierta serie o tradi-ción de reflexiones sobre el conocimiento científico que lo caracteri-zan por su discontinuidad en relación al conocimiento ordinario osentido común. El origen de esta serie puede localizarse en la obrade Gaston Bachelard y su peculiar estudio de los actos epistemológicoscon los que se rompe con el pasado en una disciplina científica. Estosactos contrastan con lo que este autor califica como el “mitocontinuista” del empirismo. Esta posición será apropiada porAlthusser y desarrollada (...) por sus discípulos Balibar y Pêcheux. Inten-taremos mostrar que el factor común de la discontinuidad no consti-tuye una posición monolítica, sino que cabe reconocer, en las posi-ciones que consideramos, maneras diversas de entender la naturale-za de la misma. En este sentido, la revisión de las posiciones queAlthusser efectuó en su “autocrítica” constituye un punto de obser-vación privilegiado del abanico de alternativas que algunos de susdiscípulos desarrollarían sobre bases diversas. -/- Abstract In the present paper we analyze a tradition of reflections onscientific knowledge which distinguish it because of its“discontinuity” with common sense or ordinary knowledge. The beginning of this tradition can be traced back to Gaston Bachelardand his peculiar study of the epistemological acts which allows ascientific field to break with its past. The study of these acts helps toovercome what Bachelard considers is the empiricist myth ofcontinuity of knowledge. Bachelard’s views were retaken by Althusser and further developed by his students Balibar and Pêcheux.We will try to show the common commitment with discontinuity isnot an homogeneous view. Consequently we will try to showdifferences in the understanding of discontinuity. The revision of hisown positions made by Althusser in his “Self-criticism” is a specialstandpoint in order to consider the alternatives that his disciplesdeveloped on different grounds. (shrink)

En su célebre artículo sobre la ideología y los aparatos ideológicos de estado, Althusser indicaba que las evidencias por las cuales una palabra “designa una cosa” o “posee una significación” se ubicaban, junto con la evidencia de ser sujetos, al nivel de los efectos ideológicos fundamentales. Por otra parte, Althusser destacaba la carencia de una teoría de la garantía ideológica. Con la primera observación, Althusser se limitaba a señalar un paralelo, sin establecer una conexión. Con la segunda, (...) llegaba a fijar una meta teórica. En el presente trabajo intentaremos reconstruir el trayecto recorrido por Michel Pêcheux para establecer una conexión allí donde Althusser designó una analogía, e intentaremos mostrar cómo el desarrollo de esta conexión permite establecer las líneas generales de una teoría de la garantía ideológica. Nos concentramos en Les vérités de La Palice (1975), en particular en la operación que, siguiendo los límites de lo que Pêcheux denomina “el materialismo de Frege”, intenta convertir en regla lo que en el campo del pensamiento fregeano se presentaba como un non-sens: que el sentido de las palabras, expresiones y proposiciones se viera afectado por su asociación con otras palabras, expresiones y proposiciones. A partir de allí seguimos la construcción de los conceptos fundamentales con los que Pêcheux intenta definir un “nuevo objeto”: formación discursiva, proceso discursivo, interdiscurso, discurso transverso e intradiscurso, guiado por dos mecanismos discursivos extrapolados de la reflexión fregeana: el de lo preconstruido y el de la articulación o efecto de sostén (grosso modo: procesos metafóricos y metonímicos). Intentaremos destacar dos puntos: que los mecanismos discursivos identificados están sometidos a una divergencia (décalage), a partir del cual pueden comenzar a pensarse las paradojas de la interpelación ideológica sin sucumbir a sus evidencias. La divergencia a la que aludimos consiste en que la inscripción del proceso sin sujeto en la ideología requiere la duplicación de los elementos para que puedan actuar sobre sí como si fueran otros que sí mismos. Insistiremos en que es esta divergencia o contradicción, interna a la forma sujeto, y no la propia forma sujeto, lo que constituye el motor del proceso. Por otra parte, intentaremos mostrar que los dos mecanismos aludidos dan lugar a una concepción dual del sujeto ideológico, por el cual éste está sometido a la “garantía empírica”, por la que el sujeto se identifica a sí mismo, a los otros y al mundo de objetos que lo rodea, y a la “garantía especulativa”, que produce el retorno de lo universal de la formación discursiva en el discurso del sujeto. El paso continuo de una forma de garantía a la otra (de la posición del sujeto del discurso como enunciador a su posición de sujeto universal, pretendido “sujeto de la ciencia” por medio de la identificación con el otro) da cuenta del hecho de que “la ideología no tiene afuera”, ya que tiende a absorber espontáneamente cualquier discrepancia en la forma sujeto, o ruptura con la misma, en el interior de la forma sujeto. (shrink)

En el presente trabajo examinaremos la tesis de Althusser que sostiene que la categoría de sujeto es un elemento constituyente de toda ideología. Debido a ello, la terna “ideología-interpelación-sujeto” poseería carácter omnihistórico. Sin embargo, algunos intérpretes encuentran un inconveniente en esta tesis, debido a la asociación del término ‘sujeto’ con la ideología burguesa. Para intervenir en este entramado de problemas nos proponemos tomar algunas indicaciones sobre la “evidencia del significado” y sus vínculos con la “evidencia del sujeto” que han (...) sido propuestas por Michel Pêcheux. En particular reflexionaremos sobre a constitución de los individuos en sujetos en la ideología, su “reclutamiento” y la exhaustividad que le compete. Nos apoyaremos en este desarrollo en algunas observaciones de Wittgenstein. (shrink)

En el presente trabajo intentaremos mostrar la relevancia del planteo filosófico wittgensteiniano para la fundamentación y el desarrollo de una teoría materialista del discurso. Tomaremos como punto de partida para examinar esta tesis la propuesta de una teoría materialista del discurso desarrollada por Michel Pêcheux (1938-1983). Pêcheux fue un pensador marxista, discípulo de Louis Althusser, a quien habitualmente se ubica en los orígenes de lo que se conoce como “Escuela francesa de Análisis del discurso”2. En nuestro trabajo nos concentraremos (...) en los supuestos filosóficos de su concepción del discurso, puesto que en los mismos hallamos una caracterización filosóficamente interesante de la posición materialista, convergente en muchos de sus desarrollos con la filosofía de Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Despite the centrality of ideology critique in the works of Louis Althusser and his students, the Marxian concept of “appearance” as constitutive of the necessary obfuscation of social modes of exchange has not been sufficiently explicated. Furthermore, perceived incompatibility between ideology and commodity fetishism by this group of philosophers has amounted to a critical lacuna in the shape of a materialist theory of the valueform. This essay articulates the concept of appearance as framed by Gilles Deleuze’s concept of expression (...) in an attempt to foreground the structuring relations that immanently determine capital, appearance, and value. By carefully reformulating Marx’s value-form theory through the rationalist metaphysics of Baruch Spinoza, this essay endeavors to produce a value-form theory compatible with the Spinozist Marxist tradition. (shrink)

Em Na dança das imbricações ou uma coreografia materialista: o discurso nas fronteiras, presto minha homenagem à Suzy Lagazzi a partir de um gesto que me fez retornar a diferentes textos da homenageada. Nesse retorno, chamo atenção para o batimento entre o direito e a análise de diferentes materialidades significantes que permeia a obra de Lagazzi, e se detém no modo como o significante “imbricação” marca o percurso teórico analisado, de maneira especial no que concerne à “imbricação do político junto (...) ao jurídico”. Duas perguntas sustentam o empreendimento neste texto: como o significante "imbricação" materializa relações entre dois momentos de uma teoria? Que relações parafrásticas são possíveis entre essas repetições? Referências: Suzy Lagazzi; Louis Althusser; Michel Pêcheux, Eni Orlandi e Guilherme Adorno. (shrink)

Althusser contrasts the Repressive State Apparatus (or RSA) with the Ideological State Apparatus (or ISA). His favored example of the ISA is the school, because it trains citizens in the virtues of work and patriotism as well as inculcating, by precept and discipline, the necessary attitudes and skills for fulfilling the roles assigned to them by their social class in the capitalist..

The idea that Derrida kept silent on Marx before the publication of Spectres de Marx, in 1993, has become a commonplace in Derrida studies and in the history of Marxism and French 20th century political thought. This idea has often been accompanied by a certain representation of the relationship between deconstruction and dialectical materialism, and fed the legend of deconstruction’s «apoliticism» – at least before what some have called Derrida’s «ethicopolitical turn», usually dated in the early 1990s. Against this narrative, (...) this essay analyzes Derrida’s notorious «silence on Marx» before Specters of Marx from the perspective of the archives. Archival research transforms the narrative: Derrida’s «silence on Marx» was only «relative». Beyond the scene of publications, archives reveal another scene: multiple engagements with Marx and Marxist thought, marked and remarked in many archival documents – more particularly in a series of early seminar notes from the 1960s and 1970s. How does this archival scene transform our interpretation of Derrida’s «silence»? (shrink)

Gaston Bachelard occupies a unique position in the history of European thinking. As a philosopher of science, he developed a profound interest in genres of the imagination, notably poetry and novels. While emphatically acknowledging the strength, precision and reliability of scientific knowledge compared to every-day experience, he saw literary phantasies as important supplementary sources of insight. Although he significantly influenced authors such as Lacan, Althusser, Foucault and others, while some of his key concepts are still widely used, his oeuvre (...) tends to be overlooked. And yet, as I will argue, Bachelard’s extended series of books opens up an intriguing perspective on contemporary science. First, I will point to a remarkable duality that runs through Bachelard’s oeuvre. His philosophy of science consists of two sub-oeuvres: a psychoanalysis of technoscience, complemented by a poetics of elementary imagination. I will point out how these two branches deal with complementary themes: technoscientific artefacts and literary fictions, two realms of human experience separated by an epistemological rupture. Whereas Bachelard’s work initially entails a panegyric in praise of scientific practice, he becomes increasingly intrigued by the imaginary and its basic images, such as the Mother Earth archetype. (shrink)

-/- Starting from the hypothesis that all human forms of life have a political dimension – be it clearly expressed or hidden, conscious or unconscious – this volume examines the ways in which political life can be fruitfully analyzed with the help of phenomenological methodologies. Examining issues of power dynamics as they relate to pervasive epistemic and axiological commitments as well as deeply seated socio-cultural and institutional practices, this text opens and develops, through a radical critical lens and a commitment (...) to the emancipatory potential of theoretical work, innovative paths for phenomenological investigations of the complex political aspects of our shared lived experiences. These investigations, both focused on the content matter at hand and on their own methodology, draw on phenomenological resources as well as resources from other philosophical traditions and fields, such as critical theory, feminist philosophy, and queer theory. -/- While various theories in political philosophy nurture an open suspicion about subject-oriented philosophical approaches (c.f., Adorno, Althusser, for example), this volume questions the status of the subject of political experience in order to explore multiple forms of political subjectivation. These guiding questions allow an investigation into a new field of research where phenomenological methodologies can help negotiate the political challenges of our time. This book appeals to students and researchers working in phenomenology and related disciplines. (shrink)

Marx’ın yapıtlarında ahlaki bir kaygı taşıdığı ve bu doğrultuda bir etik teorisine sahip olduğu düşüncesi günümüzde tartışılmaya devam eden bir meseledir. Bu tartışma genellikle Marx'ın yabancılaşma, insan doğası ve kapitalizm hakkında ileri sürmüş olduğu düşünceleri üzerinden yürütülmektedir. Bu kapsamda, ilk olarak, makalede Marx’ın yabancılaşma teorisi ve bu kavramın nasıl ortaya çıktığına ilişkin tarihsel arka plan verilmektedir. Daha sonra yabancılaşma ile insan doğası arasındaki ilişkiyi kurarak, Marx'ın insan doğası anlayışının ona bir etik teorisi imkânı sağlayıp sağlamadığı tartışılmaktadır. Bu bağlamda, Marx'ın etik (...) teorisine hizmet eden evrensel bir insan doğası anlayışına sahip olduğu fikri, Louis Althusser ve Norman Geras'ın analizi ile irdelenmektedir. Yapılan tartışmalar doğrultusunda, nihai olarak, makalede Marx’ın bir etik teorisine ve ahlak anlayışına sahip olduğu sonucu desteklenmektedir. (shrink)

O presente trabalho pretende estabelecer algumas precisões históricas e conceituas em torno da formação da história arqueológica de Michel Foucault, tendo como foco um livro póstumo e recém lançado, intitulado La Question Anthropologique (2022). Esse livro trata de um curso sobre “antropologia” ministrado por Foucault entre 1952 (ou 1951) e 1955, em Lille e na ENS. As precisões históricas e conceituais tratadas aqui são em torno dos seguintes contextos: primeiramente, analisa-se a escassa literatura de comentário anterior ao lançamento do livro (...) em 2022; depois, parte-se ao horizonte de leituras de Foucault na época, especialmente ocorridos em torno da figura de Nietzsche. Essas leituras ocorrem em diversas frentes, tais como as figuras de Heidegger e Jaspers, a importância da história das ciências, a interlocução com Althusser e Jacques Martin em torno de Marx e a questão da loucura e da psicanálise. -/- The present work aims to establish some historical and conceptual clarifications surrounding the formation of Michel Foucault’s archaeological history, considering a recently published posthumous book entitled La Question Anthropologique (2022). This book thematizes a course on “anthropology” given by Foucault between 1952 (or 1951) and 1955, in Lille and at the École Normale Supérieure. The historical and conceptual analysis concerns the following subjects: firstly, the text analyzes the scarce secondary literature published before the book’s launch in 2022; secondly, the article focuses some readings made by Foucault in those years, especially surrounding the figure of Nietzsche. These readings occur on several fronts, such as: the influence of Heidegger and Jaspers, the role of the history of sciences, the dialogue with Althusser and Jacques Martin on Marx and the themes of madness and psychoanalysis. (shrink)