Comments on: Encounters

By: Nate

Nate — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 21:08:00 +0000

Thanks Daniel. I’ve got that book out the library but haven’t read it yet. It does seem like a pretty break in Althusser’s work, judging from the impression I’ve got (which is admittedly based on hearsay more than reading Althusser). The translator’s intro to the book is at pains to stress a continuity in Althusser’s work, which is a bit ironic given Althusser’s own stressing of break in Marx. There is of course something worthwile in saying “the late stuff doesn’t mean the early stuff isn’t worth anything” and suggesting a re-reading based on the late stuff.
take care,
Nate

By: Daniel Olmos

Daniel Olmos — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 03:49:00 +0000

Thank you for this very timely interrogation, Nate. I too never thought I’d take Althusser seriously, but this underside is quite striking– a veritable “epistemological break,” I suppose. As a complimentary piece, I’d suggest you all take a look at Negri’s piece on “Notes on the Evolution of the Thought of Later Althusser,” among other essays, in Antonio Callari and David F. Ruccio’s “Postmodern Materialism and the Future of Marxist Theory: Essays in the Althusserian Tradition” (Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press, 1996). There’s some structuralist non-sense in there but there is several that deal precisely with Late Althusser.

By: Nate

Nate — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 21:46:00 +0000

Thanks Brian. I’ve never taken Althusser seriously before (my thought was basically: “structures that determine us that we can’t really impact? the fucking PCF? wanker.”) This new collections pretty good though. He mentions Deleuze in passing here and there too, as being in a similar vein. I like the Althusser a bit better just for stylistic reasons (Deleuze sounds kinda like beat poetry, makes me think of hippies), but D&G are folk I really want to know more about.

I think the point about starting with the class (or, for someone whose not a workerist, with some other place) as it is is super important. Instead of taking the class as it should be. There’s a really good quote by EP Thompson that loosely relates to this, I’ll chase it up soon. If we wait for folk to be perfect then we won’t start anything, and if we go to folk trying to tell them to keep quiet and listen to our bright ideas then we reproduce a world of talking heads and order-taking hands.

By: brian

brian — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 12:31:00 +0000

Top post Nate! It’s really weird coming across Althusser again: I remember having to deal with him & that whole structuralist Marxist school many years ago, and it’s not a place I ever thought I’d be re-visiting…

Anyway there seems to be some sort of crossover here between “aleatory materialism” and Deleuze & Guattari’s “pragmatics”. I’m not a D&G expert (again, you make a great point about time as control: I don’t have the time for D&G), but a couple of their themes echo your comments. Firstly, the idea about starting where you are, rather then where (you think) you’d like to be. At the risk of sounding like a cracked record, that was the attraction of Class War: it started with the class (OK, I know that’s another debate) rather than with some programme. That’s clearly related to the notion of immanence, which runs along similar lines to the ‘internal’. And then there's the idea that you look at the dynamics (lines of flight) not fixed points: so again, we’re all always bodies in motion, and we are made up of many bodies, and create new ones with others. And then there’s the stuff on actuality, possibility, chance and Hardt’s comment on the old idea that heaven already exists here on earth, just half an inch to the left…

I’ll stop here because I get the feeling I’m painting myself into a corner that I’ll only get out of by re-reading Althusser. If I put down the brush now, I can gggnnhh just reach gggnnhh that nnnnnhh open window aaaaahhhh!!!