Althusser, The Infinite Farewell - Softcover

De Ípola, Emilio

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822370247 ISBN 13: 9780822370246

Verlag: Duke University Press, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

In Althusser, The Infinite Farewell-originally published in Spanish and appearing here in English for the first time-Emilio de Ípola contends that Althusser's oeuvre is divided between two fundamentally different and at times contradictory projects. The first is the familiar Althusser, that of For Marx and Reading Capital. Symptomatically reading these canonical texts alongside Althusser's lesser-known writings, de Ípola reveals a second, subterranean current of thought that flows throughout Althusser's classic formulations and which only gains explicit expression in his later works. This subterranean current leads Althusser to move toward an aleatory materialism, or a materialism of the encounter. By explicating this key aspect of Althusser's theoretical practice, de Ípola revitalizes classic debates concerning major theoretico-political topics, including the relationship between Marxism, structuralism, and psychoanalysis; the difference between ideology, philosophy, and science; and the role of contingency and subjectivity in political encounters and social transformation. In so doing, he underscores Althusser's continuing importance to political theory and Marxist and post-Marxist thought.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Emilio de Ípola is Distinguished Professor at the University of Buenos Aires and the author of several books in Spanish.

Étienne Balibar is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at UniversitÉ Paris Nanterre, and the author of Equaliberty, also published by Duke University Press.

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Althusser, The Infinite Farewell

By Emilio de Ípola, Gavin Arnall

Duke University Press

Copyright © 2018 Duke University Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8223-7024-6

Contents

Translator's Acknowledgments, 
Translator's Note on References, 
Foreword by Étienne Balibar, 
PROLOGUE. ALTHUSSER?, 
ONE. THE PAST, THAT STRANGE LAND, 
TWO. THE "CLASSIC" ALTHUSSER AND HIS SLIPS, 
THREE. THE TRAPS OF IDEOLOGY, 
FOUR. THE SOLITARY HOUR, 
CONCLUSION. ALTHUSSER'S LAST LESSON, 
Notes, 
Bibliography, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

THE PAST, THAT STRANGE LAND

In the prologue, I alluded to some anticipatory traces of the thought of the final Althusser, of the "subterranean" Althusser, traces that almost imperceptibly slipped in behind the beautiful exposition and carefully crafted prose of Althusser's most well-known works. Among other examples, I noted that already in Althusser's first book, Montesquieu, la politique et l'histoire, glimpses appeared every so often of the "subterranean current" that silently flowed below the exoteric work, although still outside of the main channel and not yet exhibiting the force with which it would rise to the surface many years later. I also suggested that after reading Althusser's first book I had begun to suspect that the essential idea was already there from the beginning. The reflections that Althusser shared with Franca Madonia in May of 1963 are therefore telling:

[I]n every beginning [commencement], Philosophy is there, completely whole. [...] This is why its beginning haunts it, until it recognizes itself as nothing more than that beginning itself. [...] To begin is its own absolute. To reach this absolute it is therefore enough for Philosophy to begin; to begin with those silhouettes that Theaetetus could not make out in the fog of night; to begin with those hats that, before Cartier-Bresson, during their first theoretical stage, Descartes and Comte saw slowly float by on the waterways of a street, toward the meeting of a crossroads; to begin, at last, with that flame shared without a word, simply, freely, between two beings, in spite of carrying the world with their gestures: the cigarette of a street worker that Sartre lights with his lighter; to begin with Aron's mangled ticket, punched at the entrance to the Métro in order to enter into the circulation of man; to begin with the round moon on the horizon, filled with trees, shadows, and dreams; to begin with the land overwhelmed by light where a madman painted his night. It is enough to begin.

Althusser wrote these words at the beginning of May 1963. According to the editor of his posthumous volume Écrits philosophiques et politiques, Althusser sent this note along with a letter to Madonia on May 6, 1963; the note was supposed to be included as part of the introduction to a book that was never written. With slight variations, these formulations would reappear often in Althusser's work, always leaving open, as in this first statement, the implicit question being posed.

Only in a much later text on Machiavelli does this tacit question receive an answer that is at least conclusive, if not exactly clear: "To the question that has forever haunted philosophy, and always will — with what should one begin? — Machiavelli replies quite non-philosophically, but with theses not lacking in philosophical resonance: one should begin at the beginning. The beginning is ultimately nothing. [...] It is necessary to begin with nothing — not with 'nothingness' but with the void." The individual who reasons in this way is not a novice thinker unfamiliar with the most arcane realms of philosophy. He is, on the contrary, a thinker of noted prestige who, in the 1960s, renewed and gave fresh strength to a Marxism that was theoretically exhausted and politically innocuous. He is a philosopher whose writings have been recognized, commended, and discussed by the entire world. He is an individual who has forged his thought and elaborated his writings with the (sometimes scorching) heat of imperishable works, chiefly though not solely those of Marx.

And nevertheless, he knows — he always knew — that he cannot rely on the knowledge of such masters to give birth to his own philosophy, or, more precisely, that these masters converge around the common teaching that there are no footholds, no given certainties, no luminous truths to which one can turn. One begins to philosophize in solitude, from the void.

There will of course be no shortage of individuals who think that such ideas are the fruit of fatigue or skepticism, or perhaps ramblings born out of the aftermath of the tragedy of 1980, the last convulsions, in short, of the last Althusser. However, the note attached to the letter for Madonia dates from 1963, which is to say from the beginning. Many years separate that letter and the text on Machiavelli, difficult years during which Althusser, struggling with insistent doubts and problems, produced his principal works and with them gave life to his philosophical and political program. The drama of 1980 seemed to mark the end of his public life as a thinker and intellectual. Nevertheless, slowly and at great costs, Althusser managed to recover and recuperate, at least in part, his capacity to think and to write. He could then return, not without great effort, to philosophy, or, to say the same thing with his words, to go back to the beginning.

IT IS A COMMONPLACE to refer to Althusser's "philosophical and political project." It was initially my intention, once the object of study had been redefined in the aforementioned terms, to clarify the meaning of that project. But I quickly realized that such a task assumed that many questions had already been answered and that many enigmas had already been resolved. I will clarify this point before continuing.

It is certain that an explicit philosophical and political program exists in Althusser's work, a declared project that, in agreement with the majority of his interpreters, would have been for better or for worse his sole contribution. Nonetheless, by going a bit deeper and without preconceptions into the details of Althusser's analysis and the subtle weaving of his writing, one discovers, not without growing confusion, the unexpected presence of certain dissonances, the intermittent yet systematic irruption of certain atypical declarations, and occasionally of certain incoherencies in the logic of the argument, all of which encourages doubt regarding the univocal character of Althusser's program.

One reasonable and possible reaction to these anomalies would be to propose the hypothesis that the "disobedient" statements indicate the existence of an other project, more radical but also more complicated, underlying Althusser's declared project. At stake for both, for the theses of the declared project as much as for the tenor of the discordant formulations, would be the relationship between philosophy and politics. Although divergent, these projects would intersect and coincide at certain points, blurring the borders that separate the one from the other, which could disorient the reader more than once and could possibly even mislead the author himself on occasions. This was the response that I had initially adopted, calling Althusser's first project declared and provisionally calling his second project subterranean.

As I will attempt to demonstrate, these terms should nevertheless be used with caution. If, through these terms, I...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Duke University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0822370247
• ISBN 13: 9780822370246
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 184
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Mare Nostrum Group B.V.; gpsr@mare-nostrum.co.uk; ; Doelen 72; Breda; 4831 GR; Niederlande