Althusser

ABSTRACT: With the emergence of new information and communication technologies, education is forced to adapt to cover these changes. The professional needs to re-signify this distance, developing a new perspective related to this way of teaching and learning in a virtual environment, which requires an interaction with the student, and at the same time will realize that the distance, may not interfere in their interaction, if you are able to make use of the technologies at your disposal. This research presupposes a historical reflection, demonstrating how the distance education that we know today has emerged, and starting from this framework, presents laws that legitimize this modality, the setbacks that the student finds in seeking this teaching, and in counterpoint the training of this professional who he changes from teacher to tutor, dissociating himself from his initial training oriented to traditional methods, aiming to identify the complementary adaptations that the teacher needs to pursue when performing activities in this modality of teaching, approaching the new technologies and making use of coherent methodologies.

Marksizm, bilimsel analizini ve Sosyalist ideolojisini dayandırdığı, ekonomik ve siyasal egemenliğin tarihsel ve toplumsal kaynaklarını inceleyen teorik çerçevesi itibarıyla, Devlet'e ve bu kapsamda bürokrasiye ilişkin geniş bir teorik birikim ürettiği gibi, örnekleri aşağıdaki başlıklar altında incelenen güncel katkı ve tartışmalarla, bu alandaki canlılığını sürdürmektedir. Oysa Türkiyeli bazı kaynaklar, Marksizm'in, özellikle Marx’ın ve Engels’in devlet ve bürokrasi konusunu başlı başına ele alan bir kuramsal çerçeve 'bırakmadığı’  fikrindedirler. Bu değerlendirme, bilimi, pozitivist tarzda dallara, disiplinlere ayırma alışkanlığından kaynaklanan bir yanılsamadır. Çünkü, Marksizm, Tarihsel Maddecilik, Sınıfsallık, Ekonomik determinizm başta olmak üzere, içeriğinin kuramsal ilişkisel bütünlüğü bakımından, Felsefe, İktisat, Tarih, Sosyoloji, Siyaset ve Yönetim bilim dallarına ayrılarak, o bilim dallarına özgü başlıklar altında, parçalı şekilde ele alınması imkânsız bir alternatif bilim metodu içermektedir. Bu hali ile, Marksizm'in teorik esasına hakim olma ihtiyacı hissedilmeksizin, felsefî doğasına uygun biçimde bir multi-disipliner Yöntem-bilim olarak değil, belirli bir bilim dalının alanıyla sınırlı, teknik ve 'tarihsel' bir kuram olarak düşünülüp işlenmesi, önemli ve yaygın bilgi sorunlarına neden olmaktadır. Öncelikle bu saptamadan hareket eden bu çalışma, sadece okuruna Marksizm’in bürokrasi düşüncesi ve pratiği hakkında bilgi verme amacının dışında, bu alanda sık rastlanmadığı gözlenen bir örnek olarak, ilk kaynaklara atıfla, ikincil, hatta üçüncül aktarımlardan kaynaklanan bilgi karmaşasını kendi içeriğinde aşmayı, böylece, çoğunluğu genç okurunu gerçeğe en yakın yere yönlendirmeyi hedeflemektedir.

Créé il y a une trentaine d’années, le Mouvement « Critique du droit » a réuni des juristes et politologues français (Lyon, Montpellier, Nice, Saint-Étienne Toulouse, Paris) qui, en se référant principalement au marxisme, ont défini un projet scientifique et pédagogique en rupture avec les recherches et enseignements en cours dans les facultés de droit. Il s’agit d’observer l’émergence , le développement de ce projet mobilisateur et militant
Aujourd’hui le Mouvement a disparu mais il a donné lieu à des expériences pédagogiques réussies, a engendré des institutions de recherche dont la qualité est reconnue même si elle n’a pas triomphé dans des universités qui s’européanisent, se professionnalisent mais ne se démocratisent pas.
Le « juridique » doit être resitué dans son contexte social et politique pour être justement évalué. C’est  à quoi conduit le point de vue critique qui défend la thèse selon laquelle le droit est aussi justiciable des sciences sociales et doit faire l’objet d’une véritable approche interdisciplinaire.

Mots clefs
Années 70, Critique du droit,  Droit et politique, juristes engagés, réforme du droit, pensée marxiste

El presente artículo tiene por objetivo problematizar la relación entre teoría y práctica política en la obra de Althusser. Asimismo, la relación entre teoría y política está íntimamente ligada al problema de la totalidad social. Es decir, para Althusser hay una relación estrecha entre el modo de concebir las prácticas y la conceptualización de la estructura social. Para ello, nos detendremos en la crítica que Althusser realizara a Hegel, puesto que condensa muchos de estos problemas. La totalidad hegeliana reduce todas las determinaciones y prácticas de la vida social al concepto produciendo de ese modo una “indistinción” entre las prácticas, en la medida en que todas ellas no son sino una manifestación del concepto. Frente a esta indistinción idealista, Althusser va a señalar la necesidad de pensar la articulación de prácticas singulares a la luz de lo que el llamará un “todo complejo y sobredeterminado”. En efecto, es a través del concepto de sobredeterminación que buscaremos pensar la primacía de la práctica política sobre la teoría. Intentaremos demostrar que esa primacía no supone un “salto a la política”, entendiendo por ello un desentendimiento de los problemas teóricos, ahora si resueltos a partir de su reducción a los conflictos políticos, sino que alude a una articulación diferencial que exige modos complejos del conocer.

En el presente trabajo analizaremos la lectura de Marx que Althusser llevó adelante con un conjunto de colaboradores. La misma llevó al filósofo francés a postular una serie de tesis sobre la ruptura epistemológica que le permitió a Marx constituir una ciencia de la historia, como un ámbito dotado de una legalidad específica, que desafiaba las lecturas dominantes realizadas primero en términos de un economicismo que fue crecientemente confrontado por lecturas izquierdistas que destacaban el papel en los escritos juveniles de Marx de conceptos como trabajo, elucidados de acuerdo a una clave que haría de "el hombre" el concepto crucial. Althusser pudo descubrir en ambas lecturas un supuesto compartido, la idea de que la historia sería un proceso dotado de un sujeto, donde el hombre sería el productor de su propia historia. Althusser desarrolló una lectura atenta de los textos juveniles de Marx para mostrar que esta idea es, por el contrario, el obstáculo epistemológico del que Marx tuvo que desembarazarse para poder desarrollar los lineamientos de una teoría científica de la historia, cuyos trazos mayores nos proponemos destacar en nuestra presentación.

This thesis examines the ways in which political journalists in the USA and UK talk about issues of truth and power as it relates to journalism’s role as the Fourth Estate. The theoretical basis comes from a critique of the two major structures underpinning the Fourth Estate, that of epistemology (the study of truth) and ideology (broadly, the study of power and ideas). This involves unpacking and critically examining the ability of news media to convey ‘true’ information and the ideological formations in which the news media production practice is situated. The epistemological theories of Realism, Pragmatism, Antirealism and Hyperrealism will first be elucidated in an in-depth theoretical discussion, focusing on the contributions of Baudrillard. Four major theories of ideology, that of personal ideological bias, chaos, control, and ideology as fetishistic disavowal will be examined, this time focusing on the work of Žižek.
This theoretical discussion is complimented by an analysis of interview questions relating to epistemological concerns and to ideology. The empirical data consists of twenty interviews conducted with political correspondents in the USA and UK. A version of critical discourse analysis is used to examine the ways in which journalists talk about the issues raised by the questions, what is termed their ‘discursive strategies.’ The categories for analysis are grounded in the discursive strategies used by the journalists themselves, examined to elaborate not simply the explicit content, but the deeper implicit meanings inherent in the way they answer.
This provided both an original theoretical discussion and an original set of empirically-derived data. It also allows us to further understand the role of journalism as the Fourth Estate, the types of ‘truth’ it brings to us, the types of ideologies that underpin the news production process via news media professionals, and how the system is maintained despite its inherent contradictions.

In the present paper we analyze a tradition of reflections on scientific 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 Bachelard and his peculiar study of the epistemological acts which allows a scientific field to break with its past. The study of these acts helps to overcome what Bachelard considers is the empiricist myth of continuity 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 is not an homogeneous view. Consequently we will try to show differences in the understanding of discontinuity. The revision of his own positions made by Althusser in his “Self-criticism” is a special standpoint in order to consider the alternatives that his disciples developed on different grounds.

En el presente trabajo intentaremos analizar cierta serie o tradición de reflexiones sobre el conocimiento científico que lo caracterizan por su discontinuidad en relación al conocimiento ordinario o sentido común. El origen de esta serie puede localizarse en la obra de Gaston Bachelard y su peculiar estudio de los actos epistemológicos con los que se rompe con el pasado en una disciplina científica. Estos actos contrastan con lo que este autor califica como el “mito continuista” del empirismo. Esta posición será apropiada por Althusser y desarrollada por sus discípulos Balibar y Pêcheux. Intentaremos mostrar que el factor común de la discontinuidad no constituye una posición monolítica, sino que cabe reconocer, en las posiciones que consideramos, maneras diversas de entender la naturaleza de la misma. En este sentido, la revisión de las posiciones que Althusser efectuó en su “autocrítica” constituye un punto de observación privilegiado del abanico de alternativas que algunos de sus discípulos desarrollarían sobre bases diversas.

The task of studying the impact of social class on physical and mental health involves, among other things, the use of a conceptual toolbox that defines what social class is, establishes how to measure it, and sets criteria that help distinguish it from closely related concepts. One field that has recently witnessed a wealth of theoretical and conceptual research on social class is psychology, but geographers' and sociologists' attitude of diffidence toward this " positivistic " discipline has prevented them from taking advantage of this body of scholarship. This paper aims to highlight some of the most important developments in the psychological study of social class and social mobility that speak to the long-standing concerns of health geographers and sociologists with how social position, perceptions, social comparisons, and class-based identities impact health and well-being.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.11.037

Datos del original: Morfino, Vittorio. "Le cinque tesi della 'filosofia' di Machiavelli". Cur. Riccardo Caporali, Vittorio Morfino y Stefano Visentin. Machiavelli: tempo e conflitto. Milán: Mimesis, 2013: 157-183. Palabras clave: Variación, esencia, virtù, fortuna, ocasión.

E.P. Thompson used the Confucian trope of “rectification of human names” to summarize the major themes of his work.  Such rectification has both political and scholarly ramifications that extend to poststructuralist debates over historical discourse (Ranajit Guha’s meditation on the method of Subaltern Studies, Hayden White’s theory of rhetorical universalism); organic relationship between working-class gesture, linguistic philosophy, and political economy (as exemplified in Piero Sraffa's renowned contribution to the "epistemological break" between the early and late Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophy); and the universality of class struggle in defining the crucial intellectual breakthroughs of the 1970s, from the works of Michel Foucault and Yoshimoto Takaaki to those of autonomist Marxism and history from below.  As is clear in Thompson’s revealing but also limited polemic against Louis Althusser, every act of rectification is necessarily incomplete and requires endless revision, both individually and collectively.

While secondary schooling has developed much over the past century, its original impetus has remained.  This includes the doctrine of social efficiency which may be understood as the ease of transition from student to workforce.  In a socially efficient classroom, students are shaped into factory workers and students.  Regardless of the lip-service paid to the “learning” and “understanding” that the contemporary secondary-classroom ostensibly facilitates, these are by no means the chief goal.  The present paper compares a socially efficient classroom to the schooling described by Althusser (1970) in his discussion of Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs).  Even today, schooling may well be understood as an ISA, indoctrinating students into the prevailing ideology first by alienating students from their role as democratic citizens, and secondly by employing controls—ideological and then repressive.  Together, this facilitates the de-democratization of the classroom and its students and effectively eliminates any possibility of an amendment to the prevailing ideology.  The consequences of these are considered which includes the increasing superfluousness of diplomas and degrees as well as incarceration rates of drop-out students.  So considered, Marx is used to explain how schooling protects the power of those in power while subjugating those without, and Deleuze is used to demonstrate the manner by which schooling is used to enact societal control.

Thematically, [The Wire is] about the very simple idea that, in this Postmodern world of ours, human beings -all of us -are worth less. We're worth less every day, despite the fact that some of us are achieving more and more. It's the triumph of capitalism.

The author of this paper questioned the linear chronological overdetermined history of Indic language and its subsequent genealogical classification by deploying following methods :(a) David Hume’s Regulatory Theory; (b) pratyavijna (roughly ‘retrospection’) darsana ;(c) Althusser’s concept of historicism; (d) the Buddhist concept of jataka ( Buddha himself did not believe in rebirth. Proofs are cited in the paper), the semantics of which was like this: non-reified existence of human being (jataka) with continuous flux. (d) primary repression caused by the other-mirrors (language-police/-judge/-managers) in semiotic order (Julia Kristeva). The author compared, with the help of the concept of Foucauldian genealogy, this linear history with ‘fast forward-rewind’ phenomenon in magnetic tapes.
There were four case studies offered by the author to nullify institutionalized linear chronological history of Indic languages as proposed by Suniti Kumar Chatterji and Sukumar Sen: (a) the dating of the Rgveda: it is not the oldest Veda, but constructed in the 6th C. B.C. by marginalizing Samasongs by means of grammaticalization/codification of Rg-recitations (cf.: http://www.academia.edu/409175/VEDIC_SONGS_TECHNOLOGY_WITHOUT_MACHINE ) ; (b) the Jataka- narratives were composed almost 500 to 600 years after the death of Buddha, though scholars had put it within the lifetime of Buddha; (c) In case of constructing the linguistic history of imagined Bangla, the author put a simple question: if anyone ask Luipada (one of the Carya- poets) or Candidasa (composer of Srikrsnakirtana) or the king Laksmanasena: are you a Bengali? Obviously they did not understand the connotation of Bangla/Bengali that was a 19th C. product/construct or historical apriori; (d) looking at the ontogeny of language acquisition, when a child is forming ”go-goed “ (Bangla examples are cited) type analogical formation, other-mirrors started to “rectify” it. The problematic question is: which one is earlier and which one is after?
According to author this institutionalized linear history of language, that, peculiarly enough, overlaps with history of literature, subscribes the nation statist genealogical fantasy and deals only with substantive arbitrary epi-phenomenal E-linguistic features—a leisure class’s conspicuous consumption. The problem of Comparative Philology or Historical linguistics is that this enterprise largely depends on the entailment theory of causality and frequent (?)One-after-another occurrences of arbitrary signifiers lead them to a dogmatic bad faith! If Chomskian UG is to be believed, how do we classify languages genealogically? And that is an inner contradiction of the linguistics. (cf. SSRN Paper ID:  http://www.academia.edu/411313/_Why_Do_I_Forsake_Historical_Linguistics_  ). This type of History is not only ahistorical, but anti-historical non-epistemology.

Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks are today acknowledged as a classic of the human and social sciences in the twentieth century. The influence of his thought in numerous fields of scholarship is only exceeded by the diverse interpretations and readings to which it has been subjected, resulting in often contradictory 'images of Gramsci'. This book draws on the rich recent season of Gramscian philological studies in order to argue that the true significance of Gramsci's thought consists in its distinctive position in the development of the Marxist tradition. Providing a detailed reconsideration of Gramsci's theory of the state and concept of philosophy, The 'Gramscian moment' argues for the urgent necessity of taking up the challenge of developing a 'philosophy of praxis' as a vital element in the contemporary revitalisation of Marxism.

Contemporary theorizations of neoliberalism are framed by a false dichotomy between, on the one hand, studies influenced by Foucault in emphasizing neoliberalism as a form of governmentality, and on the other hand, inquiries influenced by Marx in foregrounding neoliberalism as a hegemonic ideology. This article seeks to shine some light on this division in an effort to open up new debates and recast existing ones in such a way that might lead to more flexible understandings of neoliberalism as a discourse. A discourse approach moves theorizations forward by recognizing neoliberalism is neither a ‘top down’ nor ‘bottom up’ phenomena, but rather a circuitous process of socio-spatial transformation.

Student notes on E. P. Thompson, Althusser, and positivism (By Chris Wright) Reading E. P. Thompson's The Poverty of Theory, his polemic against Althusser. A crushing demolition. I give Thompson credit for working through all the verbiage. He also draws some interesting parallels between Popperian positivism and Althusserian structuralism. -Let's talk about positivism for a minute, sometimes called empiricism. That word 'empiricism' has so many different meanings it can get confusing, but there are in fact connections between Karl Popper's positivism and traditional British empiricism. At least, they fit together well. Positivism, in a nutshell, means a rejection of 'deep theories' meant to explain social phenomena, theories, like structuralist [or 'institutionalist'] ones, that get below 'appearances' or unproblematic 'facts' and posit tendencies or structural dynamics or other things that aren't experimentally 'verifiable' or falsifiable. Positivism wants only to record discrete facts with the help of statistics, computers, experiments, data-collection, etc. Minimal theorizing to explain it all. Social reality just is this collection of isolated facts; relations don't exist, only individuals. This shares the spirit of nominalism, which likewise acknowledges only 'individuals,' concrete particulars, and not universals (relations, etc.) --because if those 'existed' then we would have to deal with a "prodigiously teeming Platonic heaven" of abstract objects floating around everywhere, and, you see, we're committed to Occam's razor, to postulating only those entities that are necessary to account for our best scientific theories. And so on and so forth. I need not point out how incredibly silly this all is: yes, it's true that only 'concrete particulars' in spacetime exist and not abstract objects --because existence just means 'having a location in spacetime' -but in another sense 'abstract objects' do exist, insofar as we use words, numbers, etc. Sure, they're a 'fiction' strictly speaking --the number 2 doesn't literally exist in some particular place; the relation between worker and capitalist doesn't exist in the sense that you can point to it like a tree --but we have to assume them in order to talk. See my paper on ontology. Popper denies the existence of any 'class' such as 'army'; an army is just a collection of soldiers, he says. Okay, brilliant, way to go. But what is a soldier? Someone who belongs to an army. Oops. I guess armies exist after all. (See Alasdair MacIntyre, "Breaking the Chains of Reason.") You see how this is all very 'bourgeois,' by the way. Thompson says it well in the last sentence of this passage, in which he speaks in the voice of a positivist:

Liksom en gam cirklar runt ett kadaver, så kretsar denna bok runt ett antal rättsliga föreställningar och begrepp som genom åren kommit att uppta, och alltmer begränsa, rättsvetenskapens synfält.

Här presenteras emellertid ingen metod, inte heller någon teori eller något program och än mindre någon lära – och allra minst någon institutionaliserad allmän rättslära – utan vad som framläggs utgör schematiska och provisoriska sonderingar i det rättsliga vetandets och språkets förorter. Denna skrift är ett bidrag till ett utkast till ett försök att ange grunddragen till en kritik av det rättsliga vetandet.

I boken behandlas frågan om villkoren för det rättsliga vetandet men framför allt under vilka förutsättningar det är möjligt att frigöra sig från det. Så som vi känner det.

Th is article aims to show that the theory of violence in Marx and Engels is driven by a conceptual syntax which can be found in two important chapters of Hegel's Science of Logic ('Actuality' and 'Teleology'). Th ese categories are the timeless schemata of the appearance of historical violence in Hegel's Outlines of the Philosophy of Right. However it is possible to fi nd in Marx's writing on violence a sort of counter-movement that cannot be inscribed in the process of the becoming-subject of substance.

The objective of the master thesis presented here is to chart a concept of causality adequate for a historical materialism at pace with the times, uncircumventable for grasping complex social phenomena and relationships, their reproduction and transformation following Marx’s materialist notion of social reality. Thereby the main focus does not lie on Marx’s notion of causality, which is not closer explicated by himself as causality. Rather this in general (systematically) relatively little theorized notion within Marxist discourses will be discussed alongside theoretical approaches which seem to be most fruitful for this enquiry: Structural Marxism, Political Marxism and Critical Realism. By means of a brief outline of the Marxian preface of 1859, which is central to many Marxist approaches, it will be attempted to es-tablish the main field under discussion in terms of a history of theory. With respect to an immanently critical and comparative method, the thesis henceforth expounds the aforementioned theories while taking their respective notions of causality as well as, among other things, the interrelated understanding of social structure in relation to agency, the specific effectivities of the involved entities and the notions of lawfulness into account. What is hereby striven for, is to contour though the critical and comparative exposition of the said theories a non-empiricist, non-teleological and non-determinist notion of causality appropriate to the complexity of social reality, without taking a recourse to theoretically restricted positivist or historico-philosophical patterns of explanation and interpretation. In the end the critical impetus of this thesis is to accentuate the importance of causality in a critical theory of society after Marx.

L’article propose un retour sur l’assassinat, en 1980, d’Hélène Rytmann-Legotien par son mari, Louis Althusser, alors célèbre philosophe marxiste enseignant à l’École normale supérieure, à Paris. Il s’agit de saisir la signification politique de ce meurtre et du discours psychologisant diffusé dans l’espace public pour déresponsabiliser, voire justifier, le meurtrier. À la lumière d’analyses féministes des discours sur la violence masculine contre les femmes (Mélissa Blais, Patrizia Romito, Jalna Hanmer), l’article rappelle le contexte social du meurtre (le patriarcat français dans les années 1970 et 1980), avant de discuter du phénomène de protection et de solidarité masculine dont peut bénéficier un homme qui assassine son épouse mais qui est doté d’un fort capital social et culturel. Une attention particulière est portée aux manœuvres par lesquelles le meurtrier et ses alliés ou amis parviennent à le faire paraître comme victime et à faire disparaître dans son ombre la véritable victime assassinée.

[English]
TITLE: An ordinary man : Louis Althusser killed his wife, Hélène Rytmann-Legotien, who wanted to leave him

ABSTRACT: The article offers a look at the assassination in 1980 of Hélène Rytmann-Legotien by her partner, Louis Althusser, then a famous Marxist philosopher teaching at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. The goal is to grasp the political significance of this murder and of public discourse about the killer’s psychology, which tended to absolve him of his responsibility or even to justify the murderer. Based on feminist analysis of discourse about male violence against women (Mélissa Blais, Patrizia Romito, Jalna Hanmer), the article reviews the social context (French patriarchy in 1970 and 1980), before discussing the phenomenon of male solidarity and protection in favour of a man who murders his partner but who has strong social and cultural capital. Particular attention is paid to the manoeuvers by which the murderer and his friends and allies managed to position him as a victim and to evacuate the real murder victim.

In questa tesi si presenta l’indagine svolta sulla concettualizzazione gramsciana dell’«egemonia» e sulle interpretazioni più recenti e rappresentative delle diverse correnti di studi. Nella prima parte della tesi si prendono in esame gli scritti di Gramsci: con l’analisi delle Tesi di Lione e del saggio sulla Questione meridionale si ricostruisce la funzione teorica e politica dell’«egemonia» nell’elaborazione tattica del Partito Comunista d’Italia, impegnato a creare un sistema di alleanze tra operai e contadini e a raggiungere gli obiettivi della liberazione dal fascismo e della rivoluzione, sull’onda del bolscevismo (CAP. I). Seguendo questa prospettiva, di modernizzazione economico-sociale e giuridico-politica delle nazioni, si ricostruisce la trama concettuale dei Quaderni del carcere in cui l’«egemonia» è rappresentata come un fatto filosofico che riguarda la coscienza e la conoscenza collettiva della storia dei conflitti (CAP. II). Con particolare attenzione verso le note sull’emancipazione delle classi subalterne, si rileva che la funzione teorica e politica dell’«egemonia» si situa nella sfera della scienza della politica: con l’analisi del giacobinismo francese e del risorgimento italiano (Q. 19), Gramsci compone il quadro analitico e comparativo utile ad una lettura innovativa delle diverse fasi dello sviluppo politico del capitalismo tra il XVIII e il XX secolo. La razionalizzazione delle attività produttive, emblematicamente espressa nel fordismo e nell’americanismo (Q. 22), è rappresentata come la tendenza storica immanente entro cui il «gorilla ammaestrato» (l’operaio) può elevarsi se matura la consapevolezza di dover produrre un’«egemonia» alternativa, ai gruppi sociali e politici dominanti, e una frattura nei continui ricorsi storici dell’autoritarismo (CAP. III). In questo contesto, si ricostruiscono i parametri con cui giudicare l’alternativa civile, tra una pratica politica democratica e una burocratica, e la dicotomia tra la soggettivazione e la subordinazione. Ripercorrendo la concettualizzazione dell’«egemonia» si ottiene una teoria della «bipolarità» del potere politico quale risultato di processi storici molecolari in cui trionfa sempre il partito più organizzato e capace di guidare la costruzione di un «apparato egemonico». Su questa base, si ricostruisce il ruolo decisivo degli «intellettuali organici» nella composizione e nella connessione degli strumenti e degli istituti fondamentali su cui si fonda l’unità civile e politica di qualsiasi vita statale. La produzione del potere è il tema che riconduce, infine, al periodo precedente il carcere: la funzione soggettiva e determinante attribuita al partito politico risulta il completamento della concettualizzazione, in continuità con il progetto di Lione (CAP. IV).
Nella seconda parte della tesi, invece, si prendono in esame le posizioni di Louis Althusser e di Christine Buci-Glucksmann rappresentative del dibattito sul pensiero politico di Gramsci all’interno dei partiti comunisti europei negli anni Settanta. Usando gli scritti postumi di Althusser si nota una convergenza sostanziale con la teoria del partito di Gramsci. Fa eccezione, tuttavia, il tema della guerra di posizione che viene rielaborata da Buci-Glucksmann per dimostrare la necessità della costruzione del consenso all’interno della società civile oltre che nelle classi di riferimento. Althusser incontra Gramsci sul terreno della scienza politica di Machiavelli, mentre Buci-Glucksmann avvia una riflessione sul significato filosofico-civile dell’«egemonia» (CAP. V). Le concettualizzazioni successive focalizzano l’attenzione sulla crisi della politica all’interno del conflitto di civiltà e riscoprono la funzione teorica e politica dell’«egemonia» nel rappresentare una nuova logica politica. Si ricostruiscono, in questa cornice, le posizioni Ernesto Laclau, Edward Said, Ranaijt Guha, Partha Chattereje e Robert W. Cox. Con le prime due, espressive dei Cultural Studies, si ricostruisce l’approccio di movimento e di contrappunto che si intende dare alla produzione culturale contemporanea nel tentativo di superare le frontiere simboliche e repressive poste dal rafforzamento dei nazionalismi e degli essenzialismi identitari. Con le altre due, espressive dei Subaltern Studies, si ricostruisce la prospettiva che si intende dare alle classi subalterne ridotte, nella maggior parte del mondo, in uno stato di frammentarietà politica e di indigenza. Con la posizione di Cox, espressiva degli studi gramsciani nelle Relazioni Internazionali si dà conto della prospettiva intergovernativa ed interstatale con cui uscire dall’attuale fase post-egemonica e trovare le soluzioni adeguate alle sfide del XXI secolo (CAP.VI). Il filo conduttore tra la prima e la seconda parte della tesi, dunque, è rappresentato dall’indagine il più possibile esaustiva sul significato originario e sull’attualità dell’«egemonia».

L’intervento di Althusser ha toccato i grandi temi della filosofia e della politica degli anni Sessanta e Settanta – la dialettica, lo storicismo, l’umanesimo, il determinismo sociale – e continua a interrogare in profondità lo statuto della filosofia. Questo libro documenta la diffusione e la ricezione in Italia dell’opera del filosofo marxista francese Louis Althusser (1918-1990). I documenti di un dibattito culturale oggi dispersi, frammentari e di difficile reperimento (un paradosso dell’information overflow), sono raccolti, descritti e schedati alla luce degli attuali standard bibliografici internazionali. Ne risulta un libro che ha l’ambizione di rappresentare il repertorio definitivo ed esauriente delle pubblicazioni di e su Althusser in Italia e inoltre un saggio innovativo, e metodologicamente aggiornato, sul fenomeno della ricezione. La copertura cronologica del repertorio va dal 1959, anno di pubblicazione della prima recensione all’opera di Althusser dedicata a Montesquieu da parte di Norberto Bobbio, alla scoperta delle inedite riflessioni sul materialismo aleatorio e sul destino della filosofia. La bibliografia è corredata di indici per autore, per rivista, per argomento. Il volume è arricchito da alcuni saggi che ricostruiscono le diverse fasi della ricezione e i differenti orientamenti critici (marxismo storicistico, e altre forme eterodosse di marxismo, ma anche fenomenologia e pensiero cattolico) che si sono confrontati con Althusser. Pur nel rigore imposto da un saggio bibliografico, l’autore ci offre uno spaccato su cinquant’anni di storia filosofica italiana.

The fiftieth anniversary of the publications of For Marx and Reading Capital indeed calls for celebrations of Althusser's accomplishments, a Marxist legacy endowed by the opening years of the twenty-first century with renewed timeliness and urgency. However, celebrating Althusser on this occasion should involve not only returning to the (in)famous anti-humanist author of these 1965 works centered on claims regarding Marx's alleged "epistemological break" of 1845-it also should involve revisiting lesser-known moments in Althusser's extended oeuvre and, in so doing, recovering other Althussers than the best-known one of For Marx and Reading Capital. Herein, I engage in the latter mode of honoring Althusser. Specifically, I scrutinize his shifting, ambivalent relations with Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis. Doing so enables me to (re)construct an Althusserian (or quasi-Althusserian) version of dialectical and historical materialisms in which philosophical anthropology à la Hegel and Marx, analysis à la Freud and Lacan, and various branches of biology, all on equal footing with each other, cooperate so as to yield a compatibilism both uncompromisingly materialist and, at the same time, thoroughly anti-reductionist.

Il ne fait pas de doute aujourd'hui que Louis Althusser a été un des principaux médiateurs ou «passeurs» dans cette véritable renaissance du spinozisme que connaît la philosophie post-marxiste occidentale. La contribution d'Althusser à cette renaissance ne s'est pourtant jamais matérialisée dans un grand ouvrage de référence ou un enseignement structuré. Non seulement on ne trouve pas dans l'oeuvre publiée ou inédite d'Althusser le livre sur Spinoza qu'il s'était proposé d'écrire 1 , ou les notes de ce cours sur Spinoza que beaucoup supposent qu'il aurait donné 2 , on chercherait aussi en vain une seule leçon de ses cours généraux consacrée à l'auteur de l'Ethique. On ne trouve pas non plus de traces de cette «Ethique des temps modernes»

Produit d’un mémoire de Master 2 en Esthétique du cinéma sous la direction de Luc Vancheri, soutenu en mai 2013, ce texte est une tentative pour penser la politique en dehors de son attachement direct au cadre idéologique et partisan – représenté par l’affiliation du groupe Dziga Vertov au marxisme. Il en résulte une interrogation sur ce qu’une politique des formes peut désigner, sur le statut épistémologique qui est le sien, ainsi que sur les puissances d’image qu’elle est susceptible de déployer.

Cet article rend hommage à André Tosel en proposant une exploration de sa proposition d’un communisme de la finitude. Dans ce cadre, l’aliénation capitaliste se présente comme une contradiction en acte entre d’une part un fantasme d’illimitation et de maîtrise, refoulant la finitude, la contingence et la conditionnalité de toute réalisation humaine, et d’autre part, la condamnation de masses toujours plus nombreuses à une finitude résignée, à l’impuissance et à l’immaîtrise de leur existence, déniée dans sa puissance immanente de création de nouvelles normes de vie. Nous montrons ainsi comment pour Tosel les perspectives émancipatrices d’un communisme à venir ne sont pas séparables d’une nouvelle articulation du fini et de l’infini qu’il s’agit de penser, produire et expérimenter dans une nouvelle forme d’être-en-commun.

This essay measures Louis Althusser’s debt to Antonio Gramsci in light of his general theory of reading and his reflections on the science, philosophy, and politics of Marxism. It considers their respective approaches to reading, highlighting the differences between a “philosophical reading” in Althusser’s sense and a “political reading” in the spirit of Gramsci. Further, it considers how some of Althusser’s key concepts—ideology, the state, conjuncture, utopian realism—are elaborated through a critical engagement with Gramsci’s political thought.