One of the remarkable features of recent interest in the work of Louis Althusser has been the prominence granted to Althusser’s cultural criticism. However, aside from one notable exception, Althusser’s cultural criticism has not figured prominently in discussions of his late work, and the absence of Althusser’s cultural criticism from those discussions has perhaps unwittingly obscured both the genealogy of Althusser’s late aesthetic ontology and the logic of his last texts, of ‘The Underground Current of the Materialism of the Encounter’ and related writings on aleatory materialism. By tracing the genealogy of the aleatory impulse in Althusser’s cultural criticism, it is possible to show how that work resonates in Althusser’s late texts including the larger unpublished manuscript from which ‘The Underground Current of the Materialism of the Encounter’ has been drawn. This reading of the philosophy of the encounter also allows us to understand the importance of Nicolas Malebranche for Althusser’s aleatory materialism.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
Althusser, Louis undated, ‘Descartes et Malebranche’, IMEC Fonds Althusser, 20ALT/32/4.
Althusser, Louis undated, ‘Notes en vue d’un cours sur Descartes et Malebranche’, IMEC Fonds Althusser, 20ALT/32/5.
Althusser, Louis undated, ‘Notes sur Malebranche’, IMEC Fonds Althusser, 20ALT/58/26.
Althusser, Louis 1966a, ‘Notes sur le livre de Pierre Macherey: Pour une théorie de la production littéraire’, IMEC Fonds Althusser, 20ALT/11/14.
Althusser, Louis 1966b, ‘Notes sur «Théorie de la conjonction/théorie de la conjoncture»’, IMEC Fonds Althusser, 20ALT/11/13.
Althusser, Louis 1978, ‘Cours sur le mode d’exposition chez Marx’, IMEC Fonds Althusser, 20ALT/28/5.
Althusser, Louis 1979, ‘The Crisis of Marxism’, in Power and Opposition in Post- Revolutionary Societies, translated by Patrick Camiller and Jon Rothschild, London: Inklinks.
Althusser, Louis 1982a, ‘Conversation with Richard Hyland’, 2 July, IMEC Fonds Althusser, 20ALT/46/41.
Althusser, Louis 1982b, ‘Ouvrage sans titre commençant par «J’écris ce livre en octobre 1982»’, IMEC Fonds Althusser, 20ALT/29/7, 20ALT/29/8.
Althusser, Louis 1982c, ‘Sur le mode de production’, IMEC Fonds Althusser, 20ALT/29/2.
Althusser, Louis 1982d, ‘Sur la pensée marxiste’, IMEC Fonds Althusser, 20ALT/29/3.
Althusser, Louis 1985 [1985–6?], ‘Les Appareils idéologique d’état et la révolution mondiale’, IMEC Fonds Althusser, 20ALT/29/29.
Althusser, Louis 1986, ‘Thèses de juin’, IMEC Fonds Althusser, 813ALT/29/32.
Althusser, Louis 1990, ‘Marxism Today’, in Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scientists & Other Essays, translated by James Kavanagh, edited by Gregory Elliott, London: Verso.
Althusser, Louis 1993a [1966], ‘Trois notes sur la théorie des discours’, in Écrits sur la psychanalyse, texts assembled and presented by Olivier Corpet and François Matheron, Paris: Stock/IMEC.
Althusser, Louis 1993b, ‘Sur la pensée marxiste’, in Sur Althusser, passages; special edition of the journal Futur antérieur, pp. 11–29, Paris: l’Harmattan.
Althusser, Louis 1994, ‘Le Courant souterrain du matérialisme de la rencontre’, in Écrits philosophiques et politiques. Tome I, texts assembled and presented by François Matheron, Paris: Stock/IMEC.
Althusser, Louis 1996 [1966], ‘Letters to D.’, in Writings on Psychoanalysis: Freud and Lacan, edited by Olivier Corpet and François Matheron, translated by Jeffrey Mehlman, New York: Columbia University Press.
Althusser, Louis 1997a [1968], ‘Sur Brecht et Marx’, in Écrits philosophiques et politiques. Tome II, texts assembled and presented by François Matheron, Paris: Stock/IMEC.
Althusser, Louis 1997b [1977], ‘Sur Lucio Fanti’, in Écrits philosophiques et politiques. Tome II, texts assembled and presented by François Matheron, Paris: Stock/IMEC.
Althusser, Louis 1998, Lettres à Franca (1961–1973), Paris: Stock/IMEC.
Althusser, Louis 2001a [August 1966], ‘Cremonini, Painter of the Abstract’, in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, translated by Ben Brewster, New York: Monthly Review Press.
Althusser, Louis 2001b [April 1966], ‘A Letter on Art in Reply to André Daspre’, in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, translated by Ben Brewster, New York: Monthly Review Press.
Althusser, Louis 2003a [26 June 1966], ‘The Philosophical Conjuncture and Marxist Theoretical Research’, in The Humanist Controversy and Other Writings, edited by François Matheron, translated by G.M. Goshgarian, London: Verso.
Althusser, Louis 2003b [1966], ‘Three Notes on the Theory of Discourses’, in The Humanist Controversy and Other Writings, edited by François Matheron, translated by G.M. Goshgarian, London: Verso.
Althusser, Louis 2003c [1967], ‘The Historical Task of Marxist Philosophy’, in The Humanist Controversy and Other Writings, edited by François Matheron, translated by G.M. Goshgarian, London: Verso.
Althusser, Louis 2005a [1986], ‘Du Matérialisme aléatoire’, Multitudes, 21: 178–194.
Althusser, Louis 2005b [1962], ‘The “Piccolo Teatro”: Bertolazzi and Brecht. Notes on a Materialist Theatre’, in For Marx, translated by Ben Brewster, London: Verso.
Althusser, Louis 2006, ‘The Underground Current of the Materialism of the Encounter’, in Philosophy of the Encounter, Later Writings 1978–1987, edited by François Matheron and Olivier Corpet, translated with an introduction by G.M. Goshgarian, London: Verso.
Althusser, Louis 2012a [1966], ‘On Genesis’, Décalages, 1, 2: Article 11, available at: <http://scholar.oxy.edu/decalages/vol1/iss2/11>.
Althusser, Louis 2012b [1966], ‘Sur la genèse’, Décalages, 1, 2: Article 9, available at: <http://scholar.oxy.edu/decalages/vol1/iss2/9>.
Althusser, Louis 2014, Initiation à la philosophie pour les non-philosophes, text collated and annotated by G.M. Goshgarian, with a preface by Guillaume Sibertin-Blanc, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Althusser, Louis 2017, Philosophy for Non-Philosophers, edited and translated by G.M. Goshgarian, with an introduction by Warren Montag, London: Bloomsbury.
Althusser, Louis 2018, ‘Preface to Le concept de loi économique dans Le Capital, by Gérard Duménil’, translated by G.M. Goshgarian, Rethinking Marxism, 30, 1: 4–24.
Althusser, Louis, Étienne Balibar, Roger Establet, Pierre Macherey and Jacques Rancière 2016, Reading Capital: The Complete Edition, translated by Ben Brewster and David Fernbach, London: Verso.
Althusser, Louis and Lucien Sève 2018, Correspondance 1949–1987, Paris: Éditions sociales.
Aristotle 1984, Physics, translated by R.P. Hardie and R.K. Gaye, in The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, Volume 1, edited by Jonathan Barnes, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Badiou, Alain 2019, Malebranche: Theological Figure, Being 2, translated by Jason E. Smith with Susan Spitzer, New York: Columbia University Press.
Balibar, Étienne 1996, ‘Avant-propos pour la réédition de 1996’, in Louis Althusser, Pour Marx, Paris: La Découverte/Poche.
Balibar, Étienne 2015, ‘Althusser’s Dramaturgy and the Critique of Ideology’, differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 26, 3: 1–22.
Balibar, Étienne 2018, ‘Lire le Capital’, Période, 17 December, available at: <http://revueperiode.net/lire-lire-le-capital/#footnote_0_6491>.
Balibar, Étienne and Pierre Macherey 1974, ‘Présentation’, in Renée Balibar, Les Français fictifs, Paris: Hachette.
Bargu, Banu 2012, ‘In the Theater of Politics: Althusser’s Aleatory Materialism and Aesthetics’, Diacritics, 40, 3: 86–111.
Bargu, Banu and William S. Lewis 2020, ‘Disjecta Membra: Althusser’s Aesthetics Reconsidered’, Filozofski vestnik, 41, 1: 7–60.
Bosteels, Bruno 2017, ‘Reading Capital from the Margins: Notes on the Logic of Uneven Development’, in The Concept in Crisis: Reading Capital Today, edited by Nick Nesbitt, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Darwin, Charles 1981, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, edited with an introduction by J.W. Burrow, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Debray, Régis 2011, ‘Un si beau camp de vacances’, Médium, 4, 29: 273–280.
de Ípola, Emilio 2012, Althusser, l’adieu infini, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Fardy, Jonathan 2020, Althusser and Art, Alresford: Zero Books.
Goshgarian, G.M. 2003, ‘Introduction’, in The Humanist Controversy and Other Writings, edited by François Matheron, translated by G.M. Goshgarian, London: Verso.
Goshgarian, G.M. 2012, ‘Introductory Note, “Sur la genèse”’, Décalages, 1, 2, Article 8, available at: <http://scholar.oxy.edu/decalages/vol1/iss2/8>.
Lecourt, Dominique 1983, ‘Marx au cible de Darwin’, in De Darwin au Darwinisme: science et idéologie, Paris: J. Vrin.
Macherey, Pierre 1974 [1966], Pour une théorie de la production littéraire, Paris: François Maspero.
Macherey, Pierre 1994, ‘Pour une théorie de la reproduction littéraire’, in Comment la littérature agit-elle?, edited by the Centre de recherche sur la lecture littéraire de Reims, pp. 17–28, Paris: Éditions Klincksieck, available via the Wayback Machine at: <http://stl.recherche.univ-lille3.fr/sitespersonnels/macherey/accueilmacherey.html>.
Macherey, Pierre 2005, For a Theory of Literary Production, translated by Geoffrey Wall, London: Routledge.
Malebranche, Nicolas 1992, Treatise on Nature and Grace, translated with an introduction and notes by Patrick Riley, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Malebranche, Nicolas 1997a, Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion, edited by Nicholas Jolley, translated by David Scott, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Malebranche, Nicolas 1997b, The Search After Truth, translated and edited by Thomas M. Lennonand Paul J. Olscamp, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Matheron, François 1997, ‘La récurrence du vide chez Louis Althusser’, in Lire Althusser aujourd’hui; special edition of the journal Futur antérieur, pp. 23–48, Paris: l’Harmattan.
Matheron, François and Yoshihiko Ichida 2011, ‘Althusser, un «type apart», une bibliothèque à part?’, Les Temps Modernes, 3, 664: 194–209, available at: <http//www.cairn.info/revue-les-temps-modernes-2011-3-page-194.htm>.
Montag, Warren 2003, Louis Althusser, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Montag, Warren 2013, Althusser and His Contemporaries: Philosophy’s Perpetual War, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Montag, Warren 2015, ‘Discourse and Decree: Spinoza, Althusser and Pêcheux’, Cahiers de GRM, 7: 2–18.
Montag, Warren 2017, ‘“To Shatter All the Classical Theories of Causality”: Immanent and Absent Causes in Althusser and Lacan (1963–1965)’, in The Concept in Crisis: Reading Capital Today, edited by Nick Nesbitt, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Morfino, Vittorio 2010, Le temps de la multitude, translated from the Italian by Nathalie Gailius, Paris: Éditions Amsterdam.
Morfino, Vittorio 2019, ‘Beyond the “Repressive Hypothesis”: “Subject” and “Libido- Effect” in Althusser’, translated by Stefano Pippa, Rethinking Marxism, 31, 3: 273–290.
Pippa, Stefano 2019, Althusser and Contingency, Milan: Mimesis International.
Sibertin-Blanc, Guillaume 2011, ‘De la théorie du théâtre à la scène de la théorie: réflexions sur “Le ‘Piccolo’, Bertolazzi et Brecht” d’Althusser’, in Le Moment philosophique des années 1960 en France, edited by Patrice Maniglier, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Sotiris, Panagiotis 2020, A Philosophy for Communism: Rethinking Althusser, Historical Materialism Book Series, Chicago: Haymarket Books.
Wilson, Sarah 2010, The Visual World of French Theory: Figurations, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 787 | 163 | 22 |
Full Text Views | 85 | 19 | 2 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 225 | 52 | 5 |
One of the remarkable features of recent interest in the work of Louis Althusser has been the prominence granted to Althusser’s cultural criticism. However, aside from one notable exception, Althusser’s cultural criticism has not figured prominently in discussions of his late work, and the absence of Althusser’s cultural criticism from those discussions has perhaps unwittingly obscured both the genealogy of Althusser’s late aesthetic ontology and the logic of his last texts, of ‘The Underground Current of the Materialism of the Encounter’ and related writings on aleatory materialism. By tracing the genealogy of the aleatory impulse in Althusser’s cultural criticism, it is possible to show how that work resonates in Althusser’s late texts including the larger unpublished manuscript from which ‘The Underground Current of the Materialism of the Encounter’ has been drawn. This reading of the philosophy of the encounter also allows us to understand the importance of Nicolas Malebranche for Althusser’s aleatory materialism.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 787 | 163 | 22 |
Full Text Views | 85 | 19 | 2 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 225 | 52 | 5 |