Althusserian Theory: From Scientific Truth to Institutional History

Scholars have emphasized the scientific and the rationalist features of Althusser's work, but few have noted its post-structuralist aspects, especially its Foucauldian accounts of discourse and power. In the early Pour Marx, Althusser divides ideological practices from objective science and theoretical norms from empirical facts; however, in several later essays Althusser repudiates his earlier faith in theory's normative force as well as his broad distinction between science and ideology. He argues that every discipline establishes its own relationship between its ideological history and its formal, scientific ideals. This argument, together with Althusser's earlier rejection of totalizing approaches, establishes important parallels with Foucault's archaeological studies. The literary theory of Tony Bennett, who develops a Foucauldian critique of traditional and Marxist aesthetics, illuminates the rich implications of these parallels for cultural analyses. This article is available in Studies in 20th Century Literature: http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol18/iss1/3 Althusserian Theory: From Scientific Truth to Institutional History Philip Goldstein University of Delaware The spectacular collapse of the USSR and other Communist states has only exacerbated the hostile relationship of Marxism and postmodern theory. On the one hand, Marxists complain that postmodern theorists refuse to see society as a whole or to preserve culture's autonomous ideals (Best and Kellner 220; Jameson, "Regarding Postmodernism" 39). On the other hand, postmodern theorists fear that Marxism cannot overcome its totalitarian nature or answer its poststructuralist opponents (Poster 38-39; Barrett 157-61). Even the innovative theory of Louis Althusser suffers from this debilitating opposition. Scientific realists praise the Althusser who fears that liberal humanist beliefs destroy the objectivity of Marxist theory; theoretical rationalists esteem the Althusser who defends the autonomous norms of formal thought, but postmodern theorists complain that Althusser, along with the Marxist tradition, cannot assimilate the twentieth century world of discourse, media, and high-tech communications. I mean to show that, in addition to the scientific and the rationalist stance, Althusserian theory develops a postmodern stance that resists the totalitarian character of its predecessors and elaborates a Foucauldian account of knowledge. Moreover, the literary theory of Tony Bennett, who criticizes traditional and Marxist aesthetics in these Foucauldian terms, outlines the rich implications of this Althusser for cultural study. The Scientific Althusser Objective, scientific, but hardly postmodern, the first Althusser emerges in Pour Marx, which brings together his essays on the young Marx, dialectics, theater, science, and humanism. When he wrote these essays in the late 1950s and the early 1960s, Marxism-Leninism, the French Communist party, and the French Left enjoyed a high prestige inconceivable in post-Communist America. At the same time, the ongoing revelations of Stalinist dogma and brutality led Althusser to fear that an intrusive, non-scientific humanism was corrupting Marxist theory. To defend the integrity of a scientific Marxism, he critiques humanist accounts of Karl Marx. He grants that Feuerbach's humanism 1 Goldstein: Althusserian Theory: From Scientific Truth to Institutional Histo Published by New Prairie Press 16 STCL, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Winter, 1994) influenced the young Marx, but he argues that Marx repudiated this speculative humanism and adopted a scientific outlook. A critic of established religion, Feuerbach argued that by attributing society's powers to God, religion alienates human kind from its essential powers or "species-being." Even though a society's art, science, industry, government, or education produced impressive works, the established religion attributed these achievements to God's will, divine providence, or some equally mystical figure, not to humanity's social powers. A critic of Hegel, Feuerbach also argued that what Hegel called the "cunning of reason" mystified social forces in a similar way; they simply develop the pre-determined rationality of the world spirit, not the potentiality of their own powers. Althusser admits that this secular, humanist critique of religion and Hegel allowed Marx "to think the contradiction between the essence of the state [reason] and its existence [unreason]" (Pour Marx 231; my translation). Still, Althusser insists that in The German Ideology Marx discovered the fault of Feuerbach's theory: it remains speculative. Like Hegel, Feuerbach does not abstract the theoretical concepts ofthe mind from the nature ofempirical reality. He idly deduces empirical reality from the mind's concepts and denies, as a result, the authenticating force of what Marx calls "sensuous human activity" (German 197). Marx recognizes that Feuerbach repudiates Hegel's alienated reconstruction of society's essential powers but not Hegel's speculative reconstruction of scientific concepts. Althusser suggests that, unlike Feuerbach, Marx rejects this speculative self-consciousness and goes on to develop a purely scientific Marxism. As Althusser says, the "rupture with . . . all philosophical humanism is not a secondary detail; it is one with the scientific discovery of Marx" (Pour Marx 234). Some critics say that this account of Marx's rupture with Hegelian theory justifies the unjustifiable dogmas of Marxism-Leninism, the French Communist Party, or the Stalinist USSR (Barrett 87-88; Fougeyrollas 20-22; Jay 405, 411). Other critics say that this account of a Marxist science rejects only Stalinist "humanism," not all Hegelian theory (Aronowitz 124-25; Jameson Political 27). These contrary views misconstrue Althusser's account of Marx's rupture with Feuerbach and, more generally, Hegelian humanism. Primarily philosophical, this account assumes that Marxist theory is a hermeneutic practice subverting the theoretical self-consciousness of Hegelian theory. In Reading Capital, Althusser, whose colleague at the Ecole Normal Superieure was Jacques Derrida, says that Marxist philosophy is a circular hermeneutic, not a transcendent truth. Marxist philosophy construes knowledge in a phenomenological manner, as a circular 2 Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature, Vol. Iss. 1 [ 994], Art. 3 http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol18/iss1/3 DOI: 10.4148/2334-4415.1335