death_date death_place influenced era birth_place school_tradition influences image_size main_interests notable_ideas birth_date image article_title birth_name region
22 october 1990 paris , france michel balibar judith butler anthony giddens perry anderson nicos poulantzas pierre foucault macherey stephen resnick richard d. wolff giulio angioni bourdieu ranciere alain terry eagleton badiou jacques-alain miller slavoj zizek Étienne 20th-century philosophy birmendreïs , french algeria marxism , structuralism marx jean-jacques rousseau montesquieu lenin lacan gramsci machiavelli spinoza canguilhem bachelard freud 225px politics , economics , ideology the epistemological break overdetermination ideological state apparatuses interpellation 16 october 1918 althusser.jpg louis althusser
 louis pierre althusser western philosophy
louis althusser

louis pierre althusser -lrb- ; 16 october 1918 -- 22 october 1990 -rrb- was a french marxist philosopher .
he was born in algeria and studied at the École normale supérieure in paris , where he eventually became professor of philosophy .
althusser was a longtime member -- although sometimes a strong critic -- of the french communist party .
his arguments and theses 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 .
althusser is commonly referred to as a structural marxist , although his relationship to other schools of french structuralism is not a simple affiliation and he was critical of many aspects of structuralism .
althusser 's life was marked by periods of intense mental illness .
in 1980 , he killed his wife by strangling her .
he was declared unfit to stand trial due to insanity , and was committed to a psychiatric hospital for three years .
he did little further academic work , dying in 1990 .
