Talk:Louis Althusser

message: The article on Althusser is fairly extensive, and yet I was unable to find a single reference to Spinoza and Spinozism. Outrageous! Althusser made several explicit references to Spinoza, cf. IISA:
(Lenin and Philosophy, London, 1971, p. 164):
"As is well known, the accusation of being in ideology only applies to others, never to oneself (unless one is really a Spinozist or a Marxist, which, in this matter, is to be exactly the same thing)."
--Golioder 21:30, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Is this mere name–dropping? Exactly how is Spinozism like Marxism? I would wager that this question would not be answered.Lestrade (talk) 02:26, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spinozism 

message: The article's description of the concept of the ideological interpellation was very poor, and also full of mistakes and miscomprehensions. I tried to fix it, though I am afraid another hour of work is required.
Note (quotations from IISA, Lenin and Philosophy, London, 1971):
* "Individuals are always-already subjects." (p. 164)
* The concept of interpellation is, I think, unexplainable without reference to the notion of recognition of ideological obviousnesses: "It is indeed a peculiarity of ideology that it imposes ... obviousnesses as obviousnesses, which we cannot fail to recognize and before which we have the inevitable and natural reaction of crying out ...: 'That's obvious! That's right! That's true!'" (p. 161)
* The passus on interpellation: p. 160-165
Someone else have fun with this, there is more important work for me to be done now... --Golioder 22:02, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Interpellation 

message: Althusser's essay On the Young Marx proposes that there is a great "epistemological break" between Marx's early,Feuerbachian (and not, as is usually assumed, Hegelian) writings and his later, properly Marxist texts.'
I'm not sure what point is being made here. Feuerbach's work is based on a re-reading of Hegel and Althusser himself describes the early Marx as tainted by "a Hegelian and Feuerbachian ideology" Hanshans23
:Well, Feuerbach's work isn't so much a "re-reading" of Hegel, than a radical attempt to reverse Hegel's idealism into a materialism.  Early Marx is definitely closer to Feuerbach than Hegel in that Marx follows Feuerbach in a materialist inversion of Hegel. The question of how radical are Marx's and Feurerbach's materialist departures from Hegel is still open though.--Agnaramasi 15:20, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Hegel and Feuerbach

message: Althusser killed his wife. As far as I understand it, he was not convicted of murder because he was found to be insane, thus irresponsible. Is it correct? David.Monniaux 23:45, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: "I get by with a little help from my friends."Lestrade (talk) 02:06, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Murder 

message: " We acquire our identities by seeing ourselves and our social roles mirrored in material ideologies." Mirror is poorly chosen here, isn't it? The concept of material ideology is precisely that it is not a simple mirror, as understood by traditional marxism. Anybody got a suggestion for another formulation? Santa Sangre 12:27, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mirror 

message: Could somebody in the know put the proper pronunciation of Mr. Althusser's name at the article's head?  Google yielded "alt-hoo-ser", but I wanted to confirm. CapeCodEph 22:48, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronunciation 

message: In the passus on interpellation, I deleted the word guilty, characterizing an althusserian subject. Reasons: as guilt belongs to the field of morality, Althusser himself would only use it with great deal of sarcasm & disdain. Even though Althusser's theory of ideology can be fruitfully applied to a theory of morals, I believe the neutral use in the context of interpellation can be misleading. Furthermore, guilt is a passive affect, whereas being an althusserian subject is an active "full-time job": being free and autonomous and active, subjects are always ready to perform as soldiers and workers. The interesting point of Althusser's theory of ideology is precisely the fact that his ideological subjects are not simply a flock of sheep or drones or fanatics that were consistently lied-to, but that their very illusion of freedom is the instrument of their subjection. - Regards, 193.77.113.193 20:27, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Guilt 

message: I suggest adding B.-H. Levy to the list of Althusser's students and those influenced by him.  The extent of his debt to Althusser is acknowledged in Adventures on the Freedom Road and his critical biography of Sartre. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by KD Tries Again (talk • contribs) 17:40, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Influenced 

message: Are there any recent evaluations on Althusser's works regarding Hegel, Marx, and Communism in light of the failure and collapse of Communism twenty years ago?Lestrade (talk) 02:09, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Recent evaluations

message: Did Althusser have anything to say about the disintegration of the USSR? I would think that such an event would have been important to him and his thinking.Lestrade (talk) 02:05, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Except he died the year before.--Jack Upland (talk) 06:32, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: That's true, but he did live to see the rise of Gorbachev and the events of 1989, so it's not inconceivable that he could have written about either subject. --Ismail (talk) 15:40, 22 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Collapse of Soviet Union

message: Since Marxism as a theory behind the organization of various states has proved unworkable (on which see Alec Nove's Economics of Feasible Socialism) it would seem to me that any article on Marxist subjects, practical or theoretical, ought to include criticisms, from the left, right and centre, of the positions elaborated in the main article. After all, we don't let Plato slip by without a criticism of his ideas, so why should the Marxists get a laissez passer? Althusser is notoriously vacuous as a philosopher, constantly changing his ideas and positions as each came under attack or proved in practise to be less than stable, yet nothing of this vigorous debate has made it into the article. A good place to begin would be Tony Judt's article on the occasion of the publication of Althusser's self-serving memoirs, which summed up Althusser's life and career ably and concisely. Here is part of Judt's summation of Althusser's work:
Althusser was engaged in what he and his acolytes called a “symptomatic reading” of Marx, which is to say that they took from him what they needed and ignored the rest. Where they wished Marx to have said or meant something that they could not find in his writings, they interpreted the “silences,” thereby constructing an entity of their own imagination. This thing they called a science, one that Marx was said to have invented and that could be applied, gridlike, to all social phenomena. Why invent a Marxist “science” when so much was already at hand, the Marxist “theory of history,” “historical materialism,” “dialectical materialism” and the rest? The answer is that Althusser, like so many others in the ‘60s, was trying to save Marxism from the two major threats to its credibility: the grim record of Stalinism and the failure of Marx’s revolutionary forecasts. Althusser’s special contribution was to remove Marxism altogether from the realm of history, politics and experience, and thereby to render it invulnerable to any criticism of the empirical sort. (New Republic, V. 210, 03-07-1994, p33.)
You might also consult Judt's essay in the New York Review of Books, (53:14, 21 Sept. 2006) on the life work of Marxist critic Leszek Kolakowski.
The lack of criticism of Althusser's Marxism, either as Marxism or as philosophy, is a major hole in the article, and greatly lessens its value to the reader and researcher. I would suggest that each section have a final paragraph detailing what the problems are with the concept, and what criticisms have been made.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Theonemacduff (talk • contribs) 18:30, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criticism 

message: Is it true that Althusser faked much of his philosophical career or is this a urban myth? I am getting this info from here.
Stampit (talk) 02:03, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fake career of Althusser? 

message: As I have no access to any biographical sources on Althusser, I would be grateful if someone who does could add references to the biography section of this article. Hanshans23 (talk) 01:23, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: References for Biography Section

message: Apart from one brief mention, the "aleatory materialism" Althusser developed after his fall from grace is not discussed in the article. I am unable to access any primary or secondary sources that deal with Althusser's later work, and would be thankful if someone with knowledge of this area could contribute to the article. Hanshans23 (talk) 01:23, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Its a shame that it has been four years and this still hasn't been adressed. There continues to be almost no mention of his work after the 1980s.ProfNax (talk) 14:42, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Post-1980 Work

message: This article has been rated as high on the scale of importance for the wikipedia philosophy project. Does Althusser's work really occupy a place in the canon of Western philosophy on the level of Hume or Kant? Hanshans23 (talk) 00:51, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: indeed.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.193.90.254 (talk) 22:05, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I would demote it to Mid. The Sound and the Fury (talk) 12:40, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I hadn't seen the dates of those remarks, it is in fact already at mid-level importance. The Sound and the Fury (talk) 12:44, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: High importance?

message: A cry in the wilderness: It would be great if whoever wrote the page could fix the reference system. The Sound and the Fury (talk) 18:10, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm impressed by the recent reference-fixing efforts. The Sound and the Fury (talk) 02:22, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The referencing is still not perfect in that what's being referenced are essays from collections of Althusser's writings and different editions of the same title have different pages numbers for the same essays. I haven't inserted the ISBN into every single reference because it's incredibly tedious. If someone were to add to this article later they might be working from a different edition of the same book and this could lead to confusion for anyone who wanted to check the references. 20:01, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The job you have done is already good. The Sound and the Fury (talk) 02:49, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Referencing

message: The talk page claims that this article is too technical and hard to understand for non-experts. I wonder would the person who made this claim be willing to stand by this assertion after comparing the wikipedia page to Althusser's own writings? A lot of Critical Theory and Media Studies websites that contain info on Althusser tend to focus on a very narrow area of his thouht (his theory of ideology) and often completely oversimplify his views Hanshans23 (talk) 12:50, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Does anyone object to me removing the too technical claim? -- Hanshans23 (talk) 13:39, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Too technical?

message: Hanshans23 (and other concerned editors):
*I think what you are implying is this: "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" needs its own Wikipedia page. 
*When you write above that it may:  this is a clear and thoughtful rationale for starting its own page. I think you have begun to establish the criteria for a stand-alone article. Of course, there are other considerations, ie., getting the "Lead Section" in order along with references and citations. 
*There's also an ISA section on the "Ideology" Wikipedia page: (Ideology#Louis_Althusser.27s_Ideological_State_Apparatuses). This topic is just too unwieldy without having its own page. It's cluttering up, "shoe-horned" and "glutting", these two articles "Lous Althusser" and "Ideology" (and discussions in at least 6 other articles; more than just a half-dozen pages really). All could link to a new stand alone article.
*So, why not start a separate article on Wikipedia exclusively about Althusser's: "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" ?
***Not an opinion page from a certain POV
***That is, an article about this essay, Althusser's essay, its history, the writing of it, its publication history, its relevance, its influence (including supporting documentation, the fact of its importance and the fact of its wide range of influence, documented citations, etc., not the opinion of a group of wikipedia editors). Christian Roess (talk) 17:58, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" should be a stand-alone article

message: This section is too long and involves content that should not be featured here.  I suggest that it be made into its own page, especially as this page exists also 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideology#Louis_Althusser.27s_Ideological_State_Apparatuses  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aezaki (talk • contribs) 23:52, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" should be a stand-alone article

message: The double parentheses in these two sentences of the lead are inexplicable to me: "His arguments and thesis were set against the threats that he saw attacking ((the theoretical foundations of Marxism)). These included both ((the influence of empiricism on Marxist theory)), and ((humanist and reformist socialist orientations)) which manifested as ((divisions in the European communist parties)), as well as ((the problem of the "cult of personality" and of ideology))."  
Does anyone know the purpose of these parentheses?  Are they some sort of a mistake?  (I find this unlikely, as there are so many of them in such a short amount of text.)  Was there a punctuation mix-up or a coding mistake?  Can we take them out?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.22.24.84 (talk) 21:04, 15 June 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  What's with the double parentheses? 

message: The last sentence of the second paragraph in the "The epistemological break" reads "... It is therefore not governed by interests of society, class, ideology, or politics, and is distinct from the economic superstructure."
What does "economic superstructure" correspond to in Marxist terminology? Should it be replaced by "(economic) base and superstructure"  or just "base"? Erkaninan (talk) 20:52, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Economic superstructure?