CONTEMPORARY ALEATORICISMS

2017

diacritics

2013

The article reviews Althusser's Philosophy of the Encounter, examining in turn the problem of the Epistemological Break and the idea of matérialisme aléatoire. It looks at Althusser's critique of the concept of commodity fetishism and suggests a possible response. It goes on to situate the matérialisme aléatoire in the context of the history of atomism with particular reference to the work of Boltzmann. It provides a possible technique of both rejecting teleology whilst retaining the arrow of time.

World Review of Political Economy, 2013

The article reviews Althusser's Philosophy of the Encounter, examining in turn the problem of the Epistemological Break and the idea of matérialisme aléatoire. It looks at Althusser's critique of the concept of commodity fetishism and suggests a possible response. It goes on to situate the matérialisme aléatoire in the context of the history of atomism with particular reference to the work of Boltzmann. It provides a possible technique of both rejecting teleology whilst retaining the arrow of time.

2013

French philosopher Louis Pierre Althusser (1918 -1990) helped define the politico-theoretical conjuncture of pre- and post-1968. Today, there is a recrudescence of interest in his thought, especially in light of his later work, published in English as Philosophy of the Encounter (Verso, 2006). This has led to renewed debates on the reformulation of conflicting notions of materialism, on the event as both philosophical concept and political construction, and on the nature of politics and the political. These original essays by leading scholars aim to provide a new assessment of Althusser's thought, especially in relation to contemporary debates. Organized in four sections that represent the main currents in Althusser's scholarship, the book discusses materialism and the different formulations of the relationship between politics and philosophy, Althusser's interpretations of political thinkers (including Machiavelli, Deleuze and Gramsci), the resources he provides to critique political economy and politics in post-Marxist thought, and the theorization of ideology and politics. Encountering Althusser is a groundbreaking resource that highlights Althusser's continuing relevance to contemporary radical thought. - See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/encountering-althusser-9781441146366/#sthash.qsXzSemE.dpuf

Décalages, 2012

Over time Althusserian theory has come to define, Balibar (1994) argues, two distinct types of theoretical object: the first are large structural totalities (such as the capitalist mode of production), the second are conjunctures (specific concrete circumstances). However, a problem is created by this separation because it forces the theorist to follow one or the other of two distinct lines of philosophical inquiry. This begs the question as to whether this separation can be overcome; and, if so, how? This paper develops the argument that Althusser’s concept of aleatory materialism can be used as a bridge between structural totalities and conjunctures. An outline of aleatory materialism is first developed, before then being used to interrogate examples of both structural and conjunctural arguments. Althusser’s (1982/2006) and Balibar’s (1968/2006) accounts of the failed Italian, but successful British, establishment of a capitalist mode of production are used to establish structural examples of aleatory change. Following this is an analysis of Althusser’s assessment of Machiavelli and his development of the two concepts of conjuncture and dispositif. The paper concludes by arguing aleatory materialism enables the conceptualisation of a non-reductionist materialism that holds: (a) social and natural ontology is sui generis; (b) structures are immanent and require constant renewal; (c) social theory/philosophy must abstractly break structures into their component parts; and (d) that the Althusserian formulation of politics as ‘struggle’ is key to producing social change.

The heyday of Louis Althusser’s influence stretched between the early 1960s, with the publications of For Marx (1965) and Reading Capital (1968), and the early 1970s. Thereafter, Althusserianism precipitously declined with the rise of poststructuralism and anti-Marxist politics, as well as trenchant critiques by fellow Marxists, from Jacques Rancie`re’s Althusser’s Lessons (1974) to E. P. Thompson’s The Poverty of Theory (1978). The former blamed Althusser’s anti-humanism for the denunciations of the student movement by the intellectual class, while the latter characterized his philosophy as ‘‘Stalinism reduced to the paradigm of Theory’’ (1978: 374). Yet, as Warren Montag notes, ‘‘the effect of the repeated efforts... to finish with Althusser once and for all is to defer the desired end and thus paradoxically keep his oeuvre alive’’ (2013: 2). After Althusser’s death and the demise of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, there was renewed interest in his work. Such interest only grew with the steady stream of posthumous publications of Althusser’s writings and the visibility and impact of figures such as Slavoj Žižek, Alain Badiou, and Étienne Balibar, long influenced by Althusser. This still unfolding legacy is fertile ground for critical reevaluations of Althusser’s place in the Marxist tradition.

ICI Berlin Press, 2021

The chapter will consider the continuity of Althusser’s thought and revise my previous interpretation backdating aleatory materialism to the sixties. I will analyse the context in which the concept of ‘encounter’ emerged in the sixties and show in a second moment that it is possible to identify this concept in the texts of the eighties, but only in one of the two tendencies which traverses this group of texts, the one I would call a materialist tendency. This tendency is intertwined with another tendency, an eschatological one — which emerged in the late seventies.

In the normal understanding of the course of 20th-century French philosophy it is understood that there was a period following World War II that was dominated by structuralism, a philosophy that argued that are ahistorical and eternal structures--whether linguistic, economic, or familial--that pre-exist and determine our actions. This was supposedly followed by a period of post-structuralism that argued against this idea of structures and emphasized historical change, immanence, and contingency. Of the period of structuralism an exemplar is Louis Althusser , who developed an influential system called structural Marxism that emphasized Marxism as a scientific enterprise with the economic structure of the modes of production as its object. Of the later an exemplar is Gilles Deleuze who created an influential philosophy of becoming that emphasized the constant transformation of reality and the failure of any structure to fully enclose itself and prevent "lines of flight" out of it. By these definitions Althusser and Deleuze are often placed as polar opposites of contemporary French thought.