211-454: Great Depression and Aftermath Cold War New Left Contemporary Active Historical Arena is an independent Australian critical and radical publishing cooperative that has been continuously producing writings since its founding in 1963. Established by figures in Australia’s ‘New Left’, Arena is a forum to debate and develop new ideas about society and the world, occupying
422-533: A bourgeois ideology of "humanity". His essay "Contradiction and Overdetermination" borrows the concept of overdetermination from psychoanalysis , in order to replace the idea of "contradiction" with a more complex model of multiple causality in political situations (an idea closely related to Antonio Gramsci 's concept of cultural hegemony ). Althusser is also widely known as a theorist of ideology . His best-known essay, " Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: Notes Toward an Investigation ", establishes
633-452: A hiatal hernia -removal surgery as he had difficulties breathing while eating. According to Althusser himself, the operation caused his physical and mental state to deteriorate; in particular, he developed a persecution complex and suicidal thoughts. He would recall later: I wanted not only to destroy myself physically but to wipe out all trace of my time on earth: in particular, to destroy every last one of my books and all my notes, and burn
844-494: A "bourgeois" philosophy. Starting from 1948, he studied history of philosophy and gave lectures on it; the first was about Plato in 1949. In 1949–1950, he gave a lecture about René Descartes , and wrote a thesis titled "Politics and Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century" and a small study on Jean-Jacques Rousseau 's " Second Discourse ". He presented the thesis to Jean Hyppolite and Vladimir Jankélévitch in 1950 but it
1055-484: A "critique of political economy ", and on its object. Althusser would later acknowledge that many of the innovations in this interpretation of Marx attempt to assimilate concepts derived from Baruch Spinoza into Marxism. The original English translation of this work includes only the essays of Althusser and Étienne Balibar , while the original French edition contains additional contributions from Jacques Rancière, Pierre Macherey and Roger Establet . A full translation
1266-470: A "return to Marx" and were attended by a new generation of students. For Marx (a collection of works published between 1961 and 1965) and Reading Capital (in collaboration with some of his students), both published in 1965, brought international fame to Althusser. Despite being criticized widely, these books made Althusser a sensation in French intellectual circles and one of the leading theoreticians of
1477-522: A "specter, a dead man walking". Althusser was forced to live in various public and private clinics until 1983, when he became a voluntary patient. He was able to start an untitled manuscript during this time, in 1982; it was later published as "The Underground Current of the Materialism of the Encounter" ("Le courant souterrain du matérialisme de la rencontre"). From 1984 to 1986, he stayed at an apartment in
1688-487: A 'finite' theory" in which he stressed "something vital and alive can be liberated by this crisis": the perception of Marxism as a theory that originally only reflected Marx's time and then needed to be completed by a state theory. The former was published as "Marxism Today" ("Marxismo oggi") in the 1978 Italian Enciclopedia Europea . The latter text was included in a book published in Italy, Discutere lo Stato , and he criticized
1899-462: A 1955–1956 lecture on "Les problèmes de la philosophie de l'histoire". This course along with others on Machiavelli (1962), 17th- and 18th-century political philosophy (1965–1966), Locke (1971), and Hobbes (1971–1972) were later edited and released as a book by François Matheron in 2006. From 1953 to 1960, Althusser basically did not publish on Marxist themes, which in turn gave him time to focus on his teaching activities and establish himself as
2110-809: A 1964 letter. According to Elliott, the autobiography produces primarily an impression of "destructiveness and self-destructiveness". Althusser, most likely, postdated the beginning of his depression to a later period (post-war), having not mentioned earlier manifestations of the disease in school and in the concentration camp. According to Moulier-Boutang, Althusser had a close psychological connection with Georgette from an early age, and although he did not often mention it in his autobiography, her "nervous illness" may have tracked his own. His sister also had depression, and despite their living separately from each other for almost their entire adult lives, their depression often coincided in time. Also, Althusser focused on describing family circumstances, not considering, for example,
2321-521: A Catholic, he became more associated with left-wing groups, joining the " worker-priests " movement and embracing a synthesis of Christian and Marxist thought. This combination may have led him to adopt German Idealism and Hegelian thought, as did Martin's influence and a renewed interest in Hegel in the 1930s and 1940s in France. In consonance, Althusser's master thesis to obtain his diplôme d'études supèrieures
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#17328522489342532-418: A blind eye as there were no other accommodation available. For Australians, the decade of the 1930s began with problems of huge unemployment, because the fall of the stock markets on Wall Street reduced confidence throughout the world. Most governments reacted to the crisis with similar policies, aimed at slashing back government spending and paying back loans. The Australian government could do little to change
2743-502: A book about Machiavelli during a depressive exacerbation but was interrupted by a three-months stay in a clinic. The main psychoanalyst he attended was the anti-Lacanian René Diatkine, starting from 1964, after he had a dream about killing his own sister. The sessions became more frequent in January 1965, and the real work of exploring the unconscious was launched in June. Soon Althusser recognized
2954-522: A book titled Dialogue franco-soviétique, sur la psychanalyse . After the PCF and the left were defeated in the French legislative elections of 1978 , Althusser's bouts of depression became more severe and frequent. In March 1980, Althusser interrupted the dissolution session of the École Freudienne de Paris , and, "in the name of the analysts", called Lacan a "beautiful and pitiful harlequin." Later, he went through
3165-463: A cage to prevent arrest. Overall campaigning was successful in terms of gaining improved welfare and relief as well as in disrupting and preventing housing evictions across Australia. Extraordinary sporting successes did something to alleviate the spirits of Australians during the economic downturn. In a Sheffield Shield cricket match at the Sydney Cricket Ground in 1930, Don Bradman ,
3376-401: A careful and sensitive "symptomatic reading". Thus, Althusser's project is to help readers fully grasp the originality and power of Marx's extraordinary theory, giving as much attention to what is not said as to the explicit. Althusser holds that Marx has discovered a "continent of knowledge", History, analogous to the contributions of Thales to mathematics or Galileo to physics , in that
3587-486: A complex structured whole. Practices are contradictory when they "grate" on one another and non-contradictory when they support one another. Althusser elaborates on these concepts by reference to Lenin 's analysis of the Russian Revolution of 1917 . Lenin posited that despite widespread discontent throughout Europe in the early 20th century, Russia was the country in which revolution occurred because it contained all
3798-554: A conference in Melbourne where he recommended a traditional deflationary response of balanced budgets to combat Australia's high levels of debt and insisted that interest on loans be met. It entailed the balancing of the budget through expenditure and wage cuts, without additional overseas borrowing, necessitating reductions in social welfare programs, defence spending and other sweeping cutbacks. The Premiers and Prime Minister Scullin agreed to this Melbourne Plan , which would go on to form
4009-447: A contempt for the materialist theory when it suppressed a "scientific concept". This struggle ultimately resulted in the debacle of the fraction "Union of the Left" and an open letter written by Althusser and five other intellectuals in which they asked for "a real political discussion in the PCF". That same year, Althusser also published a series of articles in the newspaper Le Monde under
4220-458: A contradiction between forces and relations of production may be necessary, but not sufficient, to bring about revolution. The circumstances that produced revolution in Russia were heterogeneous, and cannot be seen to be aspects of one large contradiction. Each was a contradiction within a particular social totality. From this, Althusser concludes that Marx's concept of contradiction is inseparable from
4431-591: A couple of days later, Black Thursday would mark the start of the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the subsequent global onset of the Great Depression. From the outset the Scullin administration was buffeted by the effects of the global economic crisis. Throughout Scullin's term, commodity prices continued to fall, unemployment rose, and Australia's big cities were depopulated as thousands of unemployed men took to
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#17328522489344642-551: A couple of days later, "Black Thursday" would mark the start of the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the subsequent global onset of the Great Depression. From the outset the government was buffeted by the effects of the global economic crisis. With the government unable to implement the deflationary Premiers' Plan , Labor had split by 1931 over how to deal with the crisis, with Treasurer Ted Theodore failing to implement his Keynesian inflationary plans, and New South Wales Premier Jack Lang losing office over his plans to boost
4853-762: A decision to establish Arena ’s own printery and, from 1974 onwards, to typeset, print and publish their own journal and related publications. Arena' s distinctive approach can thus be seen as having some superficial similarities with post-Marxist and post-classical attempts to apply a levels analysis of social life as developed (differently) by Jürgen Habermas and Louis Althusser . Its critical account of instrumentalised abstraction also has some surface parallels with Slavoj Žižek's critique of postmodernism in The Ticklish Subject and The Fragile Absolute , and Zygmunt Bauman 's analysis of 'liquid modernity’ in his recent works. More generally, Arena ’s distinctive approach
5064-435: A degree that its basic contradiction was of the possibility of meaningful life itself. By the end of the 1980s it was becoming increasingly difficult to bridge the deeper theoretical debates and more current analysis within one publication. Arena (quarterly) was concluded at issue 99/100 in 1992 and two new publications launched – the popular political and cultural commentary publication Arena Magazine (6 times per year) and
5275-797: A devoted Australian public went into shock. The 1938 British Empire Games were held in Sydney at the Cricket Ground from 5–12 February, timed to coincide with Sydney's sesqui-centenary (150 years since the foundation of British settlement in Australia). Unlike the United States, where Franklin Roosevelt 's inflationary New Deal attempted to stimulate the American economy, New Zealand where Michael Savage 's pioneering welfare state tried to reduce hardship, or
5486-650: A draft, only published posthumously, based on a 1972 lecture, and also wrote for the National Foundation of Political Science a piece titled "Machiavelli's Solitude" ("Solitude de Machiavel", 1977). In Spring 1976, requested by Léon Chertok to write for the International Symposium on the Unconscious at Tbilisi , he drafted a presentation titled "The Discovery of Dr. Freud" ("La découverte du docteur Freud"). After sending it to Chertok and some friends, he
5697-490: A dynamic relationship – crucial to which was an overcoming of the split between intellectual and manual labour as separate class and culturally grounded activities. Although this approach took up some of the themes of the counter-culture, it was also critical of the counter-culture's excessive valorisation of less abstract levels of life and the belief that modern subjects could or should withdraw into anti-technological primitivism. In Arena's immediate circles it found expression in
5908-701: A fiery left-wing populist , campaigned vigorously against the provisions of the Melbourne Agreement. He was elected in a landslide in the NSW state election of 1930 . Scullin departed for an Imperial economic conference in London, necessitating an absence of five months, during which time he managed to secure reduced interest payments for Australia. With James Fenton as acting Prime Minister and Joseph Lyons as acting treasurer in his absence, Labor continued to negotiate Australia's economic response, with Fenton and Lyons advocating
6119-564: A generation of French philosophers and French philosophy in general —among his students were Derrida, Pierre Bourdieu , Michel Foucault , and Michel Serres . In total, Althusser spent 35 years in the ENS, working there until November 1980. Parallel to his academic life, Althusser joined the French Communist Party ( Parti communiste français , PCF) in October 1948. In the early postwar years,
6330-461: A highly abstracted media society, falsely generalised and transhistoricised. These and other debates increasingly put the Arena editors in a critical relationship to what remained of the Left, which had enthusiastically embraced the celebration of difference and hybridity as the post-structuralist revolution swept English-speaking humanities departments in the 1980s. Paradoxically, this also led to some on
6541-539: A lack of unity amongst the ruling class; secondly, a foreign policy which played into the hands of revolutionaries, such as the elites who had been exiled by the Tsar and had become sophisticated socialists . For Althusser, this example reinforces his claim that Marx's explanation of social change is more complex than the result of a single contradiction between the forces and the relations of production. The differences between events in Russia and Western Europe highlight that
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6752-633: A lecture in Catalonia titled "Quelques questions de la crise de la théorie marxiste et du mouvement communiste international" ("Some Questions on the Crisis of Marxist Theory and the International Communist Movement") in which Althusser outlined empiricism as the main enemy of class struggle. He also started a rereading of Machiavelli that would influence his later work; he worked between 1975 and 1976 on "Machiavel et nous" ("Machiavelli and Us"),
6963-465: A long relationship until he was forty-two. They broke up when he met Franca Madonia, a philosopher, translator, and playwright from a well-off Italian bourgeois family from Romagna . Madonia was married to Mino, whose sister Giovanna was married to the Communist painter Leonardo Cremonini. Every summer the two families gathered in a residence in the village of Bertinoro , and, according to Roudinesco, "It
7174-440: A long time. It still makes me tremble ... We were living shut up in the cloister of our hell, both of us." I killed a woman who was everything to me during a crisis of mental confusion, she who loved me to the point of wanting only to die because she could not continue living. And no doubt in my confusion and unconsciousness I 'did her this service,' which she did not try to prevent, but from which she died. That, of course,
7385-415: A major influence on the white paper. Between 1947 and 1949 Chifley also attempted to nationalise the banking sector, arguing that public control over the finance industry would assist in preventing further depressions. These plans saw bitter and protracted opposition from the media, conservative parties and the banks themselves. The High Court of Australia ruled that the proposed nationalisation of banks
7596-439: A man, into my masculinity. She loved me as a woman loves a man!" Roudinesco argued that Rytmann represented for him "the sublimated figure of his own hated mother to whom he remained attached all his life". In his autobiography, he wrote: "If I was dazzled by Hélène's love and the miraculous privilege of knowing her and having her in my life, I tried to give that back to her in my own way, intensely and, if I may put it this way, as
7807-518: A more conservative fiscal approach and the unions and caucus calling for repudiation of debts. In 1931 at an economic crisis conference in Canberra , Jack Lang issued his own programme for economic recovery. The Lang Plan advocated the repudiation of interest payments to overseas creditors until domestic conditions improved, the abolition of the Gold Standard to be replaced by a Goods Standard where
8018-449: A number of key debates and causes of the 1980s. The renewal of a 'hot' Cold War by the Reagan administration and of the nuclear arms race – 'exterminism' in E. P. Thompson 's phrase – was analysed as an over-determined consequence of an instrumentalised, maximally abstracted way of life. Advances in medical research such as in-vitro fertilisation were given a more critical account, examining
8229-575: A preface in July 1986 for the resulting book, Filosofía y marxismo , a collection of her interviews with Althusser that was released in Mexico in 1988. These interviews and correspondence were collected and published in France in 1994 as Sur la philosophie . In this period he formulated his "materialism of the encounter" or "aleatory materialism", talking to Breton and Navarro about it, that first appeared in Écrits philosophiques et politiques I (1994) and later in
8440-626: A primary producer within the British Empire , and Australia's important export industries, particularly primary products such as wool and wheat , suffered significantly from the collapse in international demand. Unemployment reached a record high of around 30% in 1932, and gross domestic product declined by 10% between 1929 and 1931. There were also incidents of civil unrest , particularly in Australia's largest city, Sydney . Though Australian Communist and far right movements were active in
8651-439: A process of production. Althusser conceives of society as an interconnected collection of these wholes: economic practice, ideological practice, and politico-legal practice. Although each practice has a degree of relative autonomy, together they make up one complex, structured whole (social formation). In his view, all practices are dependent on each other. For example, among the relations of production of capitalist societies are
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8862-402: A publisher and locked it in his desk drawer. The book was only published posthumously in 1992. Despite the critics, some of his friends, such as Guitton and Debray, defended Althusser, saying the murder was an act of love—as Althusser argued too. Rytmann had bouts of melancholy and self-medicated because of this. Guitton said, "I sincerely think that he killed his wife out of love of her. It
9073-500: A range of monographs, pamphlets and papers over the years on topics ranging from nuclear power and critical Australian political economy to the Iraq occupation. The Arena co-operative printed their own publications from 1974 to 1992, and continue to run a commercial printery with a specific focus on community and alternative publications, in Fitzroy, Melbourne. Since 1982, has published books on
9284-487: A range of theoretical-practical concerns, has sought to develop the more fundamental aspects of the Arena critique. Its brief is to promote ethically and theoretically concerned discussion about the prospects for cooperative life through a central focus on the reconstruction of class relations, forms of selfhood and community life in contemporary society. It publishes scholarly works by Australian and international scholars. Much of
9495-420: A religious offering , as I had done for my mother." Although Althusser was really in love with Rytmann, he also had affairs with other women. Roudinesco commented that "unlike Hélène, the other women loved by Louis Althusser were generally of great physical beauty and sometimes exceptionally sensitive to intellectual dialogue". She gives as an example of the latter case a woman named Claire Z., with whom he had
9706-504: A representative of the law, and he was forbidden to sign any documents. In February 1981, the court ruled Althusser as having been mentally irresponsible when he committed the murder, therefore he could not be prosecuted and was not charged. Nonetheless, a warrant of confinement was subsequently issued by the Paris police prefecture ; the Ministry of National Education mandated his retirement from
9917-415: A reputable philosopher and researcher. Althusser resumed his Marxist-related publications in 1960 as he translated, edited, and published a collection directed by Hyppolite about Ludwig Feuerbach 's works. The objective of this endeavour was to identify Feuerbach's influence on Marx's early writings, contrasting it with the absence of his thought on Marx's mature works. This work spurred him to write "On
10128-612: A row. Famous victories included the 1930 Melbourne Cup , following an assassination attempt and carrying 9 stone 12 pounds weight. Phar Lap sailed for the United States in 1931, going on to win North America's richest race, the Agua Caliente Handicap in Tijuana , Mexico, in 1932. Soon after, on the cusp of US success, Phar Lap developed suspicious symptoms and died. Theories swirled that the champion race horse had been poisoned and
10339-421: A short period. In 1948, he was approved to teach in secondary schools but instead made a tutor at the ENS to help students prepare for their own agrégation . His performance on the exam—he was the best ranked on the writing part and second on the oral module—guaranteed this change on his occupation. He was responsible for offering special courses and tutorials on particular topics and on particular figures from
10550-528: A slow recovery. Unemployment, which peaked at 32% in 1932, was 11% at the start of the Second World War compared to 17.2% in the United States. Following Lyons' death in 1939, Robert Menzies assumed the United Australia Party leadership and the prime ministership, however the 1940 federal election resulted in a hung parliament . A year later, Menzies' minority government was brought down in
10761-466: A sudden and unprecedented departure. This break represents a shift in Marx's work to a fundamentally different "problematic", i.e., a different set of central propositions and questions posed, a different theoretical framework. Althusser believes that Marx himself did not fully comprehend the significance of his own work, and was able to express it only obliquely and tentatively. The shift can be revealed only by
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#173285224893410972-428: A theory about society. Where classical political economy explains economic systems as a response to individual needs, Marx's analysis accounts for a wider range of social phenomena in terms of the parts they play in a structured whole. Consequently, Marx's Capital has greater explanatory power than does political economy because it provides both a model of the economy and a description of the structure and development of
11183-513: A unique place in Australian cultural and intellectual life ever since. Arena’s editors and authors share a commitment to creating a genuinely and fully human society for all—a society that draws on left social and political traditions and a ‘green’ revisioning of the world but goes beyond simple or entrenched versions of those ideas. Arena is especially interested in how people and communities draw on complex cultural histories and life-ways that may defy
11394-689: A variety of topics, from social theory, to Indigenous and colonial Australian history, and Asia-Pacific studies. Arena published the widely read Coercive Reconciliation , a collection of critical essays in response to the conservative Australia Government's 2007 intervention in Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory. More recently it published Being Arab: Arabism and the Politics of Identity . Great Depression in Australia Australia
11605-436: A whole society. In Althusser's view, Marx does not merely argue that human needs are largely created by their social environment and thus vary with time and place; rather, he abandons the very idea that there can be a theory about what people are like that is prior to any theory about how they come to be that way. Although Althusser insists that there was an epistemological break, he later states that its occurrence around 1845
11816-449: A woman in France, but whose psychiatric diagnosis absolved him. Sarraute criticized the fact that, when prestigious names are involved, a lot is written about them but that little is written about the victim. Althusser's friends persuaded him to speak in his defense, and the philosopher wrote an autobiography in 1985. He showed the result, L'avenir dure longtemps , to some of his friends and considered publishing it, but he never sent it to
12027-431: A world of reasoned action, ... a world of courage". According to him, they performed an indispensable maternal and paternal function for one another: "She loved me as a mother loves a child ... and at the same time like a good father in that she introduced me ... to the real world, that vast arena I had never been able to enter. ... Through her desire for me she also initiated me ... into my role as
12238-500: A young New South Welshman of just 21 years of age wrote his name into the record books by smashing the previous highest batting score in first-class cricket with 452 runs not out in just 415 minutes. The rising star's world-beating cricketing exploits were to provide much needed joy to Australians through the emerging Great Depression and Post World War One recovery. Between 1929 and 1931 the racehorse Phar Lap dominated Australia's racing industry, at one stage winning fourteen races in
12449-658: A ‘no confidence’ and the government fell. At the 1931 federal election , the ALP were left with just 14 seats after losing 32 seats, though an extra 4 seats were won by NSW Lang Labor. The Lyons-led United Australia Party in Coalition with the Country Party commenced its first term of government in January 1932. Before being voted out of office, the Scullin government had covered NSW's debt default. The federal government had paid NSW's bond installments and intended to recoup this money from
12660-496: Is "an inextricable tangle of 'facts' and 'phantasies'". His friend and biographer Yann Moulier-Boutang , after a careful analysis of the early period of Althusser's life, concluded that the autobiography was "a re-writing of a life through the prism of its wreckage". Moulier-Boutang believed that it was Rytmann who played a key role in creating a "fatalistic" account of the history of the Althusser family, largely shaping his vision in
12871-443: Is a mistake to attribute this economic determinist view to Marx. Just as Althusser criticises the idea that a social theory can be founded on a historical conception of human needs, so does he reject the idea that economic practice can be used in isolation to explain other aspects of society. Althusser believes that the base and the superstructure are interdependent, although he keeps to the classic Marxist materialist understanding of
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#173285224893413082-423: Is external to thought itself. By contrast, Althusser claims to find latent in Marx's work a view of knowledge as "theoretical practice". For Althusser, theoretical practice takes place entirely within the realm of thought, working upon theoretical objects and never coming into direct contact with the real object that it aims to know. Knowledge is not discovered, but rather produced by way of three "Generalities": (I)
13293-561: Is grounded in an emphasis on the constitutive role of abstraction both within the interpretive and the instrumental expression of rationality. Though it continued to publish a great deal of conventional radical-left political economic and geopolitical material, it was at this point that its orientation began to diverge from other Australian left publications such as Overland , and the Australian Left Review . This practical-theoretical approach led those associated with Arena into
13504-521: Is not clearly defined, as traces of humanism, historicism, and Hegelianism are found in Capital . He claims that only Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme and some marginal notes on a book by Adolph Wagner are fully free from humanist ideology. In line with this, Althusser replaces his earlier definition of Marx's philosophy as the "theory of theoretical practice" with a new belief in "politics in
13715-453: Is pointless to try to build a social theory on a prior conception of the individual. The subject of observation is not individual human elements, but rather "structure". As he sees it, Marx does not explain society by appealing to the properties of individual persons—their beliefs, desires, preferences, and judgements. Rather, Marx defines society as a set of fixed "practices". Individuals are not actors who make their own history, but are instead
13926-506: Is therefore not governed by interests of society, class, ideology, or politics, and is distinct from the superstructure . In addition to its unique epistemology, Marx's theory is built on concepts—such as forces and relations of production —that have no counterpart in classical political economy. Even when existing terms are adopted—for example, the theory of surplus value , which combines David Ricardo 's concepts of rent, profit, and interest—their meaning and relation to other concepts in
14137-433: Is what he said, but Rytmann's point of view is unknowable. Quebecois author Suzanne Léveillée has written that Rytmann wanted to leave him. Another Quebecois author, Francis Dupuis-Déri, also confirms that idea in an article about how the media dealt handled the murder, and later in a book titled Althusser Assassin . The crime seriously tarnished Althusser's reputation. As Roudinesco wrote, from 1980, he lived his life as
14348-508: The École normale supérieure in Paris , where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy. Althusser was a long-time member and sometimes a strong critic of the French Communist Party ( Parti communiste français , PCF). 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
14559-577: The 1929 federal election . Scullin was elected Prime Minister in a landslide which saw Stanley Bruce voted out as the Member for Flinders , the only time until the 2007 federal election that a sitting Prime Minister lost his seat. The James Scullin Labor Government had just assumed power with the commencement of the Scullin Ministry on 22 October following the 1929 federal election , however just
14770-663: The 1946 federal election , before their defeat at the 1949 federal election by the Menzies-led Liberal Party of Australia in Coalition with the Country Party . The comprehensive economic and social reforms and reformist nature of the Chifley Labor government was such that between 1946 and 1949, the Australian Parliament passed 299 Acts , a record until then, well beyond Labor's Andrew Fisher 's 113 Acts from 1910 to 1913. Curtin and Chifley, who often used
14981-522: The Cercle Politzer , a Marxist study group. Althusser also introduced colleagues and students to the party and worked closely with the communist cell of the ENS. But his professionalism made him avoid Marxism and Communism in his classes; instead, he helped students depending on the demands of their agrégation . In the early 1950s, Althusser distanced himself from his youthful political and philosophical ideals and from Hegel, whose teachings he considered
15192-553: The City of London at an average of £30 million per annum. In 1910, the federal government introduced a national currency, the Australian pound , which it pegged to the pound sterling . In effect, Australia was on the gold standard through the British peg. In 1914, Britain removed the pound sterling from the gold standard, creating inflation pressures. Britain returned the pound sterling to
15403-575: The House of Representatives when the two independents crossed the floor and switched their support to Labor, bringing John Curtin to power during World War II . At the 1943 federal election , Curtin led Labor to their greatest House of Representatives victory both in terms of proportion of seats and their strongest national two-party vote. Curtin died in 1945 however, and was succeeded as Labor leader and prime minister by Ben Chifley , who would lead Labor to their first successful federal re-election attempt at
15614-555: The Lang Plan in February 1931, which included a temporary cessation of interest repayments on debts to Britain and that interest on all government borrowings be reduced to 3% to free up money for injection into the economy. In 1929, as an emergency measure, Australia took the Australian pound off the gold standard, resulting in a devaluation relative to sterling. Starting in September 1930,
15825-462: The Marxist humanism —both popular at the time. At mid-decade, his popularity grew to the point that it was virtually impossible to have an intellectual debate about political or ideological theoretical questions without mentioning his name. Althusser's ideas were influential enough to arouse the creation of a young militants group to dispute the power within the PCF. Nevertheless, the official position of
16036-596: The Pope John Paul II through his former professor Jean Guitton. Most of the time, however, he and his wife spent locked in their ENS apartment. In the fall of 1980, Althusser's psychiatrist René Diatkine , who by now was also treating Althusser's wife Hélène Rytmann, recommended that Althusser be hospitalized, but the couple refused. Before me: Hélène lying on her back, also wearing a dressing gown. ... Kneeling beside her, leaning over her body, I am engaged in massaging her neck. ... I press my two thumbs into
16247-719: The University of Picardie Jules Verne and acquired the right to direct research on the basis of his previously published work. Some time after this recognition, Althusser married Hélène Rytmann. In 1976, he compiled several of his essays written between 1964 and 1975 to publish Positions . These years would be a period in which his work was very intermittent; he gave a conference titled "The Transformation of Philosophy" ("La transformation de la philosophie") in two Spanish cities, first Granada and then in Madrid , in March 1976. The same year he gave
16458-477: The conciliation and arbitration system of judicially supervised collective bargaining which had been the cornerstone of Australia's industrial relations system since the 1900s, which would allow employers alone to increase or decrease employee wages in response to economic and market conditions. The opposition Australian Labor Party , led by James Scullin , successfully depicted Stanley Bruce as wanting to destroy Australia's high wages and working conditions in
16669-427: The "raw material" of pre-scientific ideas, abstractions and facts; (II) a conceptual framework (or "problematic") brought to bear upon these; and (III) the finished product of a transformed theoretical entity, concrete knowledge. In this view, the validity of knowledge does not lie in its correspondence to something external to itself. Marx's historical materialism is a science with its own internal methods of proof. It
16880-475: The "science of history", historical materialism , Marx has constructed a revolutionary view of social change. Althusser believes these errors result from the notion that Marx's entire body of work can be understood as a coherent whole. Rather, Marx's thought contains a radical "epistemological break". Although the works of the young Marx are bound by the categories of German philosophy and classical political economy, The German Ideology (written in 1845) makes
17091-411: The "supports" ( Träger ) of these practices. Althusser uses this analysis to defend Marx's historical materialism against the charge that it crudely posits a base (economic level) and superstructure (culture/politics) "rising upon it" and then attempts to explain all aspects of the superstructure by appealing to features of the (economic) base (the well known architectural metaphor). For Althusser, it
17302-520: The "theoretical anti-humanism". The controversy was the pinnacle of a long conflict between the supporters of Althusser and Garaudy. In March, in Argenteuil , the theses of Garaudy and Althusser were formally confronted by the PCF Central Committee, chaired by Louis Aragon . The Party decided to keep Garaudy's position as the official one, and even Lucien Sève —who was a student of Althusser at
17513-469: The 'constitutive abstraction' approach. This is connected to an associated lineage of engaged theory . All of these are underpinned by a preoccupation with the questions of social abstraction, including the abstraction of intellectual practices. They include a special emphasis on the cultural and social contradictions of globalised hi-tech society, which the Arena editors took to be misrepresented within prevailing media theory and post-structuralism. Many of
17724-734: The 1920s, including the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Sydney's underground railway system in addition to the Commonwealth government beginning to fund major highways. New dams and grain elevators were built, and the rural railway network was expanded in nearly every state. Large sums of government money were made available to provide returned First World War servicemen with farmland and agricultural equipment under soldier settlement schemes. All these publicly funded projects were paid for by loans raised by both state and federal governments. Most of these loans were raised on capital markets in
17935-555: The 2006 Verso book Philosophy of the Encounter . In 1987, after Althusser underwent an emergency operation because of the obstruction of the esophagus , he developed a new clinical case of depression. First brought to the Soisy-sur-Seine clinic, he was transferred to the psychiatric institution MGEN in La Verrière . There, following a pneumonia contracted during the summer, he died of a heart attack on 22 October 1990. Althusser
18146-586: The Australian Federal and State governments to cut spending by 20%, including cuts to wages and pensions and was to be accompanied by tax increases, reductions in interest on bank deposits and a 22.5% reduction in the interest the government paid on internal loans. The policy contrasted with the approach put forward by the British economist John Maynard Keynes and which was pursued by the United States, which held that governments needed to spend their way out of
18357-654: The Australian banks began to slowly devalue the Australian pound, and a year later it had been devalued 30% against the Pound Sterling. This had the economic effect of increasing the cost of imported goods and increasing the cost of servicing government overseas debts, which were denominated in the overseas currency, typically in sterling. Jack Lang , the Labor Party Leader of the Opposition in New South Wales and
18568-557: The Depression had attracted the support of prominent Australian conservatives, known as "the Group", whose number included future prime minister Robert Menzies . In parliament on 13 March 1931, though still a member of the ALP, Lyons supported a no confidence motion against the Scullin Labor government. The United Australia Party was then formed from a coalition of citizens’ groups and with
18779-467: The Depression, they remained largely on the periphery of Australian politics, failing to achieve the power shifts obtained in Europe, and the democratic political system of the young Australian Federation survived the strain of the period. The James Scullin Labor Government had just assumed power with the commencement of the Scullin Ministry on 22 October following the 1929 federal election , however just
18990-654: The Depression. The plan was signed by New South Wales Labor Premier Jack Lang , but he was a notable critic of its underlying philosophy and went on to pursue his own policy of defaulting on debt repayments, which led to confrontation with the Federal Scullin and Lyons governments and resulted in the Lang Dismissal Crisis of 1932. The Labor Party soon split into three separate factions. Jack Lang and his supporters, mainly in New South Wales, were expelled from
19201-516: The ENS; and the ENS requested his family and friends to clear out his apartment. In June, he was transferred to the L'Eau-Vive clinic at Soisy-sur-Seine . The murder of Rytmann attracted much media attention, and there were several requests to treat Althusser as an ordinary criminal. The newspaper Minute , journalist Dominique Jamet and Minister of Justice Alain Peyrefitte were among those who accused Althusser of having "privileges" because of
19412-515: 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. He later described himself as a social anarchist . Althusser's life was marked by periods of intense mental illness. In 1980, he killed his wife,
19623-450: The European context it was possible to have a peaceful transition to socialism, which Althusser saw as "a new opportunistic version of Marxist Humanism". In a lecture given to the Union of Communist Students in the same year, he criticized above all the form in which this decision was taken. According to Althusser—echoing his notion of "French misery" exposed on For Marx —the party demonstrated
19834-628: The French city of Marseille as his father was to be the director of the Compagnie Algérienne bank branch in the city. Althusser spent the rest of his childhood there, excelling in his studies at the Lycée Saint-Charles [ fr ] and joining a scout group . A second displacement occurred in 1936 when Althusser settled in Lyon as a student at the Lycée du Parc . Later he was accepted by
20045-619: The Germans. Seized in Vannes in June 1940, he was held in a prisoner-of-war camp in Schleswig-Holstein , in Northern Germany, for the five remaining years of the war. In the camp, he was at first drafted to hard labour but ultimately reassigned to work in the infirmary after falling ill. This second occupation allowed him to read philosophy and literature. In his memoirs, Althusser described
20256-447: The Left failing to grasp Arena ’s standpoint, representing it, too, as an expression of the post-structuralist wave. Increasingly, Arena ’s arguments added up to a critique that was deep-cultural and/or ontological . As the USSR collapsed and capitalism was fully globalised, and as the environmental problem became compelling, it was becoming clear that a global system had developed to such
20467-538: The Lyons period gave Australia "stability and eventual growth" between the drama of the Depression and the outbreak of the Second World War. A lowering of wages was enforced and industry tariff protections maintained, which together with cheaper raw materials during the 1930s saw a shift from agriculture to manufacturing as the chief employer of the Australian economy - a shift which was consolidated by increased investment by
20678-455: The Magazine; they included an extended consideration of the relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia, and the challenges faced by traditional Indigenous communities within a modern framework; the importation and development of the 'culture wars' and the rise of right-wing populism as a response to the 'ungrounding' of social life under globalisation ; the contradictions arising from
20889-615: The Maoist journal La Cause du peuple called him a revisionist , and he was condemned by former students, mainly by Jacques Rancière . After it, Althusser went through a phase of "self-criticism" that resulted in the book Essays in Self-criticism ( Éléments d'autocritique , 1974) in which he revisited some of his old positions, including his support of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia . In 1969, Althusser started an unfinished work that
21100-553: The NSW Government. A dramatic episode in Australian history followed Lyons first electoral victory. When NSW Premier Jack Lang refused to pay interest on overseas State debts, the Lyons government stepped in and paid the debts and then passed the Financial Agreement Enforcement Act to recover the money it had paid. In an effort to frustrate this move, Lang ordered State departments to pay all receipts directly to
21311-543: The PCF was one of the most influential political forces and many French intellectuals joined it. Althusser himself declared, "Communism was in the air in 1945, after the German defeat, the victory at Stalingrad, and the hopes and lessons of the Resistance." Althusser was primarily active on the "Peace Movement" section and kept for a few years his Catholic beliefs; in 1949, he published in the L'Évangile captif (The captive gospel),
21522-435: The PCF. He supported a structuralist view of Marx's work, influenced by Cavaillès and Canguilhem, affirming that Marx laid the "cornerstones" of a new science, incomparable to all non-Marxist thought, of which, from 1960 to 1966, he espoused the fundamental principles. Critiques were done to Stalin's cult of personality and Althusser defended what he called "theoretical anti-humanism ", as an alternative to Stalinism and
21733-460: The Resistance while he was remote from the anti-Nazi combat; she was a Jew who carried the stamp of the Holocaust , whereas he, despite his conversion to Marxism, never escaped the formative effect of Catholicism; she suffered under Stalinism at the very moment when he was joining the party; and, in opposition to his petit-bourgeois background, her childhood was not prosperous—at the age of 13 she became
21944-528: The Sainte-Anne hospital and a psychiatric examination was conducted on him. Due to his mental state, Althusser was deemed to not understand the charges or the process to which he was to be submitted, so he remained at the hospital. The psychiatric assessment concluded he should not be criminally charged, based on article 64 of the French Penal Code , which stated that "there is neither crime nor delict where
22155-591: The Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scientists ( Philosophie et philosophie spontanée des savants ). Another Althusser's significant work from this period was "Lenin and Philosophy", a lecture first presented in February 1968 at the French Society of Philosophy [ fr ] . During May 68 , the tumultuous events of May 1968 in France, Althusser was hospitalized because of a depressive breakdown and
22366-581: The Treasury instead of into Government bank accounts. The New South Wales Governor , Sir Philip Game , intervened on the basis that Lang had acted illegally in breach of the state Audit Act and sacked the Lang Government , who then suffered a landslide loss at the subsequent 1932 state election . Australia would recover relatively quickly from the global financial downturn, with recovery beginning around 1932. Lyons pursued an orthodox fiscal policy, favouring
22577-579: The United Kingdom where rearmament (from 1936) increased deficit spending, there was no significant mechanism for inflationary Keynesian economic policy responses in Australia. Australia's recovery during the 1930s was led by the manufacturing sector. Federation in 1901 had granted only limited power to the federal government. For example, income taxes were collected by the State governments. Some argued that Australia's protectionist high tariffs worked to hurt
22788-461: The United Kingdom's terms of trade . A sluggish economy in Britain naturally reduced British demand for imports from Australia throughout the 1920s and this had affected Australia's balance of payments. Throughout the 1920s the Australian unemployment rate floated between 6% and 11%. The Great War had also caused many necessary infrastructure projects to be delayed or abandoned, many of which began in
22999-465: The United States, did not embark on a significant Keynesian program of spending to recover from the Depression. Nevertheless, the Australian recovery began around 1932. Australians took consolation from sporting achievements through the Depression, with cricketer Don Bradman and race horse Phar Lap achieving long-lasting fame. The Great War ( World War I ) had depleted Britain's savings and foreign investments, and wartime inflation had deeply upset
23210-592: The Young Marx: Theoretical Questions" ("Sur le jeune Marx – Questions de théorie", 1961). Published in the journal La Pensée , it was the first in a series of articles about Marx that were later collected in his most famous book For Marx . He inflamed the French debate on Marx and Marxist philosophy, and gained a considerable number of supporters. Inspired by this recognition, he started to publish more articles on Marxist thought; in 1964, Althusser published an article titled "Freud and Lacan" in
23421-489: The amount of money in circulation was linked to the amount of goods produced, and the immediate injection of £18 million of new money into the economy in the form of Commonwealth Bank of Australia credit. The Prime Minister and all other state Premiers refused. With the rejection of the Theodore and Lang inflationary plans, the governments of Australia met to negotiate a compromise in 1931. The resulting Premiers' Plan required
23632-519: The autobiography). Althusser believed that he did not have a genuine "I", which was caused by the absence of real maternal love and the fact that his father was emotionally reserved and virtually absent for his son. Althusser deduced the family situation from the events before his birth, as told to him by his aunt: Lucienne Berger, his mother, was to marry his father's brother, Louis Althusser, who died in World War I near Verdun , while Charles, his father,
23843-453: The basis of the Premiers' Plan . Ted Theodore , Treasurer in Scullin's Government, supported an inflationary policy of increased government spending in times of a recession, a view espoused in 1936 by John Maynard Keynes . The Senate and Commonwealth Bank (then also acting as the country's central bank) rejected Theodore's spending plans. The Labor Premier of New South Wales meanwhile announced
24054-404: The bed, it was new, exciting, exalting, and violent. When she (Hélène) had left, an abysm of anguish opened up in me, never again to close. His feelings toward her were contradictory from the very beginning; it is suggested that the strong emotional impact she caused in him led him to deep depression. Roudinesco wrote that, for Althusser, Rytmann represented the opposite of himself: she had been in
24265-456: The beginning of his teaching at the ENS—supported it, becoming the closest philosopher to the PCF leadership. General secretary of the party, Waldeck Rochet said that "Communism without humanism would not be Communism". Even if he was not publicly censured nor expelled from the PCF, as were 600 Maoist students, the support of Garaudy resulted in a further reduction of Althusser's influence in
24476-688: The book The Basic Concepts of Historical Materialism of his former student, the Chilean Marxist sociologist Marta Harnecker . By this time, Althusser was very popular in Latin America: some leftist activists and intellectuals saw him almost as a new Marx, although his work has been the subject of heated debates and sharp criticism. As an example of this popularity, some of his works were first translated to Spanish than into English, and others were released in book format first in Spanish and then in French. At
24687-590: The budget through a temporary cessation of interest repayments on debts to Britain and that interest on all government borrowings be reduced by 3% to free up money for injection into the economy. Labor defector Joseph Lyons helped to form the United Australia Party through the ending of the Nationalist Party of Australia and succeeded Scullin as Prime Minister of Australia from the 1931 federal election until his death in 1939. Thus Australia, unlike
24898-444: The buying and selling of labour power by capitalists and workers respectively. These relations are part of economic practice, but can only exist within the context of a legal system which establishes individual agents as buyers and sellers. Furthermore, the arrangement must be maintained by political and ideological means. From this it can be seen that aspects of economic practice depend on the superstructure and vice versa. For him this
25109-607: The commonwealth government into defence and armaments manufacture. Lyons saw restoration of Australia's exports as the key to economic recovery. A devalued Australian currency assisted in restoring a favourable balance of trade. During the Great Depression, different parts of Australian society experienced different hardships, challenges and opportunities. There was increased movement of many people to and from country areas in search of work. City and urban people planted gardens to produce fruit and vegetables. In some urban areas co-operatives were formed based on barter systems to share what
25320-413: The concept of ideology. Althusser's theory of ideology draws on Marx and Gramsci, but also on Freud 's and Lacan's psychological concepts of the unconscious and mirror-phase respectively, and describes the structures and systems that enable the concept of self. For Althusser, these structures are both agents of repression and inevitable: it is impossible to escape ideology and avoid being subjected to it. On
25531-400: The consequent creation of new class and cultural divisions whose social character made necessary a thorough revision of the classical Marxist theory of class and base and superstructure accounts of the social whole. A key to this theoretical trend was extended commentary on the transformation of the modern university, the instrumentalisation of education, and the revolt against this that formed
25742-402: The contradictions possible within a single state at the time. In his words, it was the "weakest link in a chain of imperialist states". He explained the revolution in relation to two groups of circumstances: firstly, the existence within Russia of large-scale exploitation in cities, mining districts, etc., a disparity between urban industrialization and medieval conditions in the countryside, and
25953-457: The core of many of the social upheavals of the 1960s and beyond, as was a focus on colonialism in the Asia-Pacific region, including relations between Australia and its then colony Papua New Guinea, and between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. By the mid-1970s – as the radical Left faltered and social democracy became increasingly instrumentalised – Arena contributors were focusing on
26164-528: The countryside in search of menial agricultural work. The stagnant economy had reduced economic activity and therefore tax revenues. However, the debt commitments of both state and federal governments remained the same. Australia became severely at risk of defaulting on its foreign debt which had been accumulated during the relative prosperity and infrastructure-building frenzy of the 1920s. The Great Depression in Australia saw huge levels of unemployment and economic suffering amid plummeting export income. Although
26375-442: The cult of a criminal ideology into the heart of one of the best French institutions. Philosopher Pierre-André Taguieff went further on claiming Althusser taught his students to perceive crimes positively, as akin to a revolution. Five years after the murder, a critique by Le Monde 's Claude Sarraute would have a great impact on Althusser. She compared his case to the situation of Issei Sagawa , who killed and cannibalized
26586-426: The deflationary economic measures of the Premiers' Plan , and refused to accept NSW Premier Jack Lang's proposals to default on overseas debt repayments. Australia entered the Depression with a debt crisis and a credit crisis. According to author Anne Henderson of the conservative Sydney Institute [1] , Lyons held a steadfast belief in "the need to balance budgets, lower costs to business and restore confidence" and
26797-425: The degree to which social life could be seen not through a base/superstructure/ideology model, but as nested levels of material abstraction, from the least abstract – face-to-face daily life – to the most abstract, such as global commodity and image/media circulation. A focus on material abstraction had its origins in a redirection of the implications of both the critique of technology by figures like Jacques Ellul and
27008-476: The desire to deserve her love, in his memoirs, largely determined his adult life and career, including his admission to the ENS and his desire to become a "well-known intellectual". According to his autobiography, ENS was for Althusser a kind of refuge of intellectual "purity" from the big "dirty" world that his mother was so afraid of. The facts of his autobiography have been critically evaluated by researchers. According to its own editors, L'avenir dure longtemps
27219-438: The determination of the base "in the last instance" (albeit with some extension and revision). The advantage of practices over human individuals as a starting point is that although each practice is only a part of a complex whole of society, a practice is a whole in itself in that it consists of a number of different kinds of parts. Economic practice, for example, contains raw materials, tools, individual persons, etc., all united in
27430-456: The early 1950s, the Vatican prohibited Catholics from membership in the worker priests and left-wing movements—and it certainly affected Althusser since he firmly believed in this combination. Initially afraid of joining the party because of ENS's opposition to communists, Althusser did so when he was made a tutor—when membership became less likely to affect his employment—and he even created at ENA
27641-605: The economic downturn was a product of international events, Australian governments grappled with how to respond. Conventional economists said governments should pursue deflationary policies. Radicals proposed inflationary responses and increased government spending. Division emerged within the Labor Party over how to respond. In August 1930, Scullin invited Sir Otto Niemeyer of the Bank of England to come to Australia to advise on economic policy. Niemeyer met with Federal and State leaders at
27852-404: The economy and that influential interest groups sought no change in this aspect of policy. Additionally, there was no significant banking reform or nationalisation of private businesses. The devaluation of the Australian pound, abandonment of the Gold Standard, recovery of major trading partners like the United Kingdom and public works projects instituted by State and local governments led to
28063-466: The effects of the depression strongly. Because of the severe economic contraction, the reduction of purchasing goods, employers couldn’t afford to keep excessive workers. A five-year unemployment average for 1930-34 was 23.4%, with a peak of approximately 30% of the nation being unemployed in 1932. This was one of the most severe unemployment rates in the industrialised world, exceeded only by Germany. Many hundreds of thousands of Australians suddenly faced
28274-416: The effects of the slump and the tough economic times ahead. This affected the country in many ways. Because of economic downturn, people’s lives changed drastically. Australia had supplied huge amounts of wool for uniforms during World War 1, and many exports helped Australia achieve a high standard of living in the 1920s. The majority of the people of Australia lived very well prior to the fall, so they felt
28485-424: The emergence of new production relations can be explained by the failure of these mechanisms. Marx's theory seems to posit a system in which an imbalance in two parts could lead to compensatory adjustments at other levels, or sometimes to a major reorganization of the whole. To develop this idea, Althusser relies on the concepts of contradiction and non-contradiction, which he claims are illuminated by their relation to
28696-405: The end of life. Psychoanalyst Élisabeth Roudinesco has argued that the absurd war experience was essential for Althusser's philosophical thought. Althusser resumed his studies at the ENS in 1945 to prepare himself for the agrégation , an exam to teach philosophy in secondary schools. In 1946, Althusser met sociologist Hélène Rytmann , a Jewish former French Resistance member with whom he
28907-421: The experiences of solidarity, political action, and community in the camp as the moment he first understood the idea of communism. Althusser recalled: "It was in prison camp that I first heard Marxism discussed by a Parisian lawyer in transit—and that I actually met a communist". His experience in the camp also affected his lifelong bouts of mental instability, reflected in constant depression that lasted until
29118-468: The extension of its range by Marshall McLuhan . Marx's analysis of the commodity, particularly as reconstructed by Alfred Sohn-Rethel , consolidated that movement. The dominant social contradiction was seen as no longer between labour and capital, but between deep-seated human cultural needs grounded in the less abstract levels of life and the drawing of ever-larger areas of life into the most abstracted, and instrumentalised levels of life. Contemporary life
29329-418: The face of a strangled woman in my life. And yet I know that this is a strangled woman. What is happening? I stand up and scream: I've strangled Hélène! On 16 November 1980, Althusser strangled Rytmann in their ENS room. He himself reported the murder to the doctor in residence who contacted psychiatric institutions. Even before the police arrival, the doctor and the director of ENS decided to hospitalize him in
29540-517: The fact he was Communist. From this point of view, Roudinesco wrote, Althusser was three times a criminal. First, the philosopher had legitimated the current of thought judged responsible for the Gulag ; second, he praised the Chinese Cultural Revolution as an alternative to both capitalism and Stalinism; and finally because he had, it was said, corrupted the elite of French youth by introducing
29751-434: The field of history" and "class struggle in theory". Althusser considers the epistemological break to be a process instead of a clearly defined event — the product of incessant struggle against ideology. Thus, the distinction between ideology and science or philosophy is not assured once and for all by the epistemological break. Because of Marx's belief that the individual is a product of society, Althusser holds that it
29962-712: The first time after receiving a diagnosis of schizophrenia . He suffered from bipolar disorder , and because of it he had frequent bouts of depression that started in 1938 and became regular after his five-year stay in German captivity. From the 1950s onward, he was under constant medical supervision, often undergoing, in Lewis' words, "the most aggressive treatments post-war French psychiatry had to offer", which included electroconvulsive therapy , narco-analysis , and psychoanalysis. Althusser did not limit himself to prescribed medications and practised self-medication. The disease affected his academic productivity; in 1962, he began to write
30173-411: The gold standard in 1925 at pre-1913 parity, effectively revaluing both currencies significantly and unleashing crushing deflationary pressures and falling export demand. This had the immediate effect of making British and Australian exports far less competitive in non-British markets, and affected Australia's terms of trade. In 1931, as an emergency measure during the Great Depression, Australia left
30384-484: The gold standard, resulting in a devaluation relative to sterling. A variety of pegs to sterling applied until December 1931, when the government set a rate of £1 Australian = 16 shillings sterling. This was intended to ease entry of Australian goods into the British and other linked markets. Falling export demand and commodity prices placed massive downward pressures on wages, particularly in industries such as coal mining. Due to falling prices, bosses were unable to pay
30595-478: The government continue the use of Keynesian methods in economic policy as well as further expansion of the Curtin and Chifley economic and social legacies . Louis Althusser Louis Pierre Althusser ( UK : / ˌ æ l t ʊ ˈ s ɛər / , US : / ˌ ɑː l t uː ˈ s ɛər / ; French: [altysɛʁ] ; 16 October 1918 – 22 October 1990) was a French Marxist philosopher who studied at
30806-452: The government, joining the opposition Nationalist Party to form the United Australia Party . The Australian Labor Party would remain in government through the parliamentary term however, with Scullin as Prime Minister, and except for a brief stint by Scullin, Theodore as Treasurer. The stance of Joseph Lyons and James Fenton against the far more radical proposals of the Labor movement to deal with
31017-627: The highly regarded higher-education establishment ( grande école ) École Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Paris. At the Lycée du Parc, Althusser was influenced by Catholic professors, joined the Catholic youth movement Jeunesse Étudiante Chrétienne , and wanted to be a Trappist . His interest in Catholicism coexisted with his communist ideology, and some critics argued that his early Catholic introduction affected
31228-404: The history of philosophy. In 1954, he became secrétaire de l'école litteraire (secretary of the literary school), assuming responsibilities for management and direction of the school. Althusser was deeply influential at the ENS because of the lectures and conferences he organized with participation of leading French philosophers such as Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Lacan . He also influenced
31439-517: The hollow of flesh that borders the top of the sternum, and, applying force, I slowly reach, one thumb toward the right, one thumb toward the left at an angle, the firmer area below the ears. ... Hélène's face is immobile and serene, her open eyes are fixed on the ceiling. And suddenly I am struck with terror: her eyes are interminably fixed, and above all here is the tip of her tongue lying, unusually and peacefully, between her teeth and her lips. I had certainly seen corpses before, but I had never seen
31650-443: The humiliation of poverty and unemployment. This was still the era of traditional social family structure, where the man was expected to be the sole bread winner. Soup kitchens and charity groups made brave attempts to feed the many starving and destitute. The male suicide rate spiked in 1930 and it became clear that Australia had limits to the resources for dealing with the crisis. The depression's sudden and widespread unemployment hit
31861-436: The influence of ENS on his personality. Moulier-Boutang connected the depression not only with events in his personal life, but also with political disappointments. Althusser's earlier works include the influential volume Reading Capital (1965), which collects the work of Althusser and his students in an intensive philosophical rereading of Marx's Capital . The book reflects on the philosophical status of Marxist theory as
32072-402: The initial theoretical framework for Arena's editorial approach was developed by founding editor Geoff Sharp, with editors Nonie Sharp and Doug White. Key contributions on theoretical frameworks for analysing education, post-structuralism, feminism, nationalism, technology and subjectivity have been made by John Hinkson, Gerry Gill, Alison Caddick, Paul James , Simon Cooper and Guy Rundle. Since
32283-737: The journal La Nouvelle Critique , which greatly influenced the Freudo-Marxism thought. At the same time, he invited Lacan to a lecture on Baruch Spinoza and the fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis. The impact of the articles led Althusser to change his teaching style at the ENS, and he started to minister a series of seminars on the following topics: "On the Young Marx" (1961–1962), "The Origins of Structuralism" (1962–1963; it versed on Foucault's History of Madness , which Althusser highly appreciated ), "Lacan and Psychoanalysis" (1963–1964), and Reading Capital (1964–1965). These seminars aimed for
32494-801: The late 1960s the publications have been produced by a group of around a dozen to twenty members, many of whom have been part of the project for several decades. Over the years Arena's publications have featured work from a wide range of Australian and international contributors, including Dennis Altman , Judith Brett, Humphrey McQueen , Don Watson , John Pilger , Julie Stephens, Boris Frankel, Susan Hawthorne, Noam Chomsky , David Holmes, Verity Burgmann , Andrew Milner , Terry Eagleton , Fredric Jameson , Tom Nairn , Larissa Behrendt , Jürgen Habermas , Zygmunt Bauman , Christos Tsiolkas , Kevin Hart , Simon During, Noel Pearson , Raimond Gaita , John Frow , Naomi Klein , and Albert Langer . Arena has also published
32705-440: The logic of late capitalism, and on which basis the social might be understood anew. Though the quarterly Arena commenced as a New Left magazine with a commitment to extending Marxist approaches by developing an account of intellectual practices, its subsequent debates and theoretical work, and engagements with critical theory , media theory , post-structuralism and postmodernism , have led it to develop an approach known as
32916-401: The manner in which such technologies were harbingers of a wider cultural contradiction arising from the reconstruction of nature at the molecular biological level. The newly popular work of postmodernists and post-structuralists like Jean Baudrillard and Jacques Derrida , which argued the simulated and deferred nature of the sign and text, was critically analysed as, in fact, a description of
33127-463: The movement and he criticized the movement as an "ideological revolt of the mass", adopting the PCF official argument that an "infantile disorder" of anarchistic utopianism that had infiltrated the student movement. On the other hand, he called it "the most significant event in Western history since the Resistance and the victory over Nazism" and wanted to reconcile the students and the PCF. Nevertheless,
33338-436: The nature of instrumental policies like multiculturalism, the 'no-borders' approach to refugee issues, or unreflective techno-utopianism that rose with the internet and spread of post-human technologies. In more recent years the Arena editors have been particularly concerned to position the environmental movement within a general critique of the neo-liberal trajectory. Arena Journal especially, with its more direct focus on
33549-474: The non-bureaucratic, non-party, mass organizations in which, in his opinion, the "Marxist principles regarding the nature of the ideological' were fully applied. Key events in the theoretical struggle took place in 1966. In January, there was a conference of communist philosophers in Choisy-le-Roi ; Althusser was absent but Roger Garaudy , the official philosopher of the party, read an indictment that opposed
33760-531: The north of Paris, where he remained confined most of his time, but he also received visits from some friends, such as philosopher and theologian Stanislas Breton , who had also been a prisoner in the German stalags ; from Guitton, who converted him into a "mystic monk" in Roudinesco's words; and from Mexican philosopher Fernanda Navarro during six months, starting from the winter of 1984. Althusser and Navarro exchanged letters until February 1987, and he also wrote
33971-482: The notion of "government party" and defended the notion of a revolutionary party "out of state". During the 1970s, Althusser's institutional roles at the ENS increased but he still edited and published his and other works in the series Théorie , with François Maspero. Among the essays published, there was "Response to John Lewis", a 1973 reply of an English Communist's defence of Marxist Humanism. Two years later, he concluded his Doctorat d'État (State doctorate) in
34182-744: The other hand, the collection of essays from which "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" is drawn contains other essays which confirm that Althusser's concept of ideology is broadly consistent with the classic Marxist theory of class struggle . Althusser's thought evolved during his lifetime. It has been the subject of argument and debate, especially within Marxism and specifically concerning his theory of knowledge (epistemology). Althusser argues that Marx's thought has been fundamentally misunderstood and underestimated. He fiercely condemns various interpretations of Marx's works— historicism , idealism and economism —on grounds that they fail to realize that with
34393-484: The party accused of being a double agent for the Gestapo , for " Trotskyist deviation" and "crimes", which probably referred to the execution of former Nazi collaborators . Although high-ranking party officials instructed him to sever relations with Rytmann, Althusser tried to restore her reputation in the PCF for a long time by making inquiries into her wartime activities. Although he did not succeed in reinserting her into
34604-577: The party and formed a left-wing splinter party officially known as the New South Wales Labor Party , commonly known as Lang Labor . The Minister for Public Works and Railways, Joseph Lyons , led a conservative faction, which believed in the deflationary approach of balanced budgets and cuts in spending and opposed defaulting on debt repayments. When the more radical Ted Theodore was reinstated as Treasurer by Scullin on 29 January, Joseph Lyons and James Fenton along with three others resigned from
34815-631: The party was still Stalinist Marxism, which was criticized both from Maoist and humanist groups. Althusser was initially careful not to identify with Maoism but progressively agreed with its critique of Stalinism. At the end of 1966, Althusser even published an unsigned article titled "On the Cultural Revolution", in which he considered the beginning of the Chinese Cultural Revolution as "a historical fact without precedent" and of "enormous theoretical interest". Althusser mainly praised
35026-424: The party, his relationship with Rytmann nonetheless deepened during this period. Their relationship "was traumatic from the outset, so Althusser claims", wrote Elliott. Among the reasons were his almost total inexperience with women and the fact she was eight years older than him. I had never embraced a woman, and above all I had never been embraced by a woman (at age thirty!). Desire mounted in me, we made love on
35237-575: The party. Still in 1966, Althusser published in the Cahiers pour l'Analyse the article "On the 'Social Contract'" ("Sur le 'Contrat Social'"), a course about Rousseau he had given at the ENS, and "Cremonini, Painter of the Abstract" ("Cremonini, peintre de l'abstrait") about Italian painter Leonardo Cremonini . In the following year, he wrote a long article titled "The Historical Task of Marxist Philosophy" ("La tâche historique de la philosophie marxiste") that
35448-399: The plan for a white paper on full employment. This white paper served a variety of roles; to establish the priority of full employment; to ensure the depression would not recur; and to propose ways to make these objectives possible. Dr H C 'Nugget' Coombs as director-general of the Reconstruction Ministry had major input into this policy. The economic theories proposed by J M Keynes in 1936 were
35659-509: The positive side of non-Lacanian psychoanalysis; although sometimes tried to ridicule Diatkine giving him lessons in Lacanianism, by July 1966, he considered the treatment was producing "spectacular results". In 1976, Althusser estimated that he had spent fifteen of the previous thirty years in hospitals and psychiatric clinics. Althusser analysed the prerequisites of his illness with the help of psychoanalysis and found them in complex relationships with his family (he devoted to this topic half of
35870-583: The race to arrive first at the place of employment (the first person to turn up was usually hired.) This is depicted in the Australian film Caddie . Many Australians campaigned at a community level through organisations such as the Unemployed Workers Movement to demand improved welfare and relief. Authorities often attempted to repress protest through the use of repressive laws including bans on street marches and free speech. These in turn were resisted by campaigns of civil resistance, with Melbourne social realist artist Noel Counihan famously speaking from inside
36081-503: The sexual abuse victim of a family doctor who, in addition to the abuse, instructed her to give her terminally ill parents a dose of morphine . However, this story could have been invented by Althusser, who admitted to incorporating "imagined memories" into his "traumabiography." According to Roudinesco, she embodied for Althusser his "displaced conscience", "pitiless superego", "damned part", "black animality". Althusser considered that Rytmann gave him "a world of solidarity and struggle,
36292-406: The sociologist Hélène Rytmann , by strangling her. He was declared unfit to stand trial due to insanity and committed to a psychiatric hospital for three years. He did little further academic work, dying in 1990. Althusser was born in French Algeria in the town of Birmendreïs , near Algiers , to a pied-noir petit-bourgeois family from Alsace , France. His father, Charles-Joseph Althusser,
36503-441: The soldiers who had just returned from war the hardest as they were in their mid-thirties and still suffering the trauma of their wartime experiences. At night many slept covered in newspapers at Sydney’s Domain or at Salvation Army refugees. The limited jobs that did arise were viciously fought for. The job vacancies were advertised in the daily newspaper, which formed massive queues to search for any job available. This then caused
36714-437: The spectre of another depression in their campaign rhetoric, utilised emergency wartime powers to introduce a command economy in Australia based on Keynesian principles. Unemployment was virtually eliminated in this period, being reduced to a record low of 1.1%. In 1942, income tax became federally controlled with the states conceding that the war effort needed a centrally controlled financial basis. In 1944, Curtin announced
36925-415: The spread of post-human and post-natural technologies, from birth technologies to medication to GM foods; the rise of 'military humanitarianism' in the NATO Balkans interventions in the 1990s and its continuation and expansion in Iraq; and in the 'mandatory detention' regime imposed on refugees in the 2000s. Importantly, many of these debates problematised elements of progressive/radical discourse, for example,
37136-408: The structure of his theory is unlike anything posited by his predecessors. Althusser believes that Marx's work is fundamentally incompatible with its antecedents because it is built on a groundbreaking epistemology (theory of knowledge) that rejects the distinction between subject and object . In opposition to empiricism, Althusser claims that Marx's philosophy, dialectical materialism , counters
37347-402: The support of the Nationalist Party of Australia . Lyons quit the ALP to become parliamentary leader of the newly established United Australia Party, with John Latham, Nationalist Leader of the Opposition, becoming the new party's deputy leader. In November 1931, Lang Labor dissidents chose to challenge the Scullin Labor government and align with the United Australia Party Opposition to pass
37558-428: The suspect was in a state of dementia at the time of the action". The report said Althusser killed Rytmann in the course of an acute crisis of melancholy, without even realizing it, and that the "wife-murder by manual strangulation was committed without any additional violence, in the course of [an] iatrogenic hallucinatory episode complicated by melancholic depression." As a result, he lost his civil rights, entrusted to
37769-444: The tenth book of the Jeunesse de l'Église (the youth wing of Church), an article on the historic situation of Catholicism in response to the question: "Is the good news preached to the men today?" In it, he wrote about the relationship between the Catholic Church and the labour movement, advocating at the same time for social emancipation and the Church "religious reconquest". There was mutual hostility between these two organizations—in
37980-448: The themes the Arena group has explored over the decades relate to those raised by writers like Slavoj Žižek , Zygmunt Bauman and Richard Sennett , and, to some degree, writers associated with the Frankfurt School. However, Arena' s critique also suggests that many of these authors stop short of a full critique of the ungrounding of contemporary social life by current global/ technological/ media processes. The quarterly journal Arena
38191-452: The theory is significantly different. However, more fundamental to Marx's "break" is a rejection of homo economicus , or the idea held by the classical economists that the needs of individuals can be treated as a fact or "given" independent of any economic organization. For the classical economists, individual needs can serve as a premise for a theory explaining the character of a mode of production and as an independent starting point for
38402-428: The theory of knowledge as vision with a theory of knowledge as production. On the empiricist view, a knowing subject encounters a real object and uncovers its essence by means of abstraction. On the assumption that thought has a direct engagement with reality, or an unmediated vision of a "real" object, the empiricist believes that the truth of knowledge lies in the correspondence of a subject's thought to an object that
38613-417: The title of "What Must Change in the Party". Published between 25 and 28 April, they were expanded and reprinted in May 1978 by François Maspero as the book Ce qui ne peut plus durer dans le parti communiste . Between 1977 and 1978, Althusser mainly elaborated texts criticizing Eurocommunism and the PCF. "Marx in his Limits" ("Marx dans ses limits"), an abandoned manuscript written in 1978, argued that there
38824-460: The turn from the 1960s to the 1970s, Althusser's major works were translated into English— For Marx , in 1969, and Reading Capital in 1970—disseminating his ideas among the English-speaking Marxists. In the early 1970s, the PCF was, as most of European Communist parties, in a period of internal conflicts on strategic orientation that occurred against the backdrop of the emergence of Eurocommunism . In this context, Althusserian structuralist Marxism
39035-410: The twice-yearly theoretical, academically refereed publication, Arena Journal . Drawing on a wide variety of writers, and acting as a more pluralist space for debates within critical streams of Australian thought and politics, Arena's editors took part in most of the key debates in Australian political and cultural life over the last fifteen years. These found their most directly engaged expression in
39246-408: The wages that workers wanted. The result was a series of strikes in many sectors of the economy in the late 1920s. Coal miners' strikes in the winter of 1929 brought much of the economy to its knees. A riot at a picket line in the Hunter Region mining town of Rothbury saw police shoot one teenage coal miner dead. The conservative Prime Minister of Australia , Stanley Bruce , wished to dismantle
39457-411: The way he interpreted Karl Marx . After a two-year period of preparation ( Khâgne ) under Jean Guitton at the Lycée du Parc, Althusser was admitted into the ENS in July 1939. But his attendance was deferred by many years because he was drafted into the French Army in September of that year in the run-up to World War II and, like most French soldiers following the Fall of France , was captured by
39668-435: The École Normale, and also, "if possible," suppress Hélène herself while I still could. After the surgery, in May, he was hospitalized for most of the summer in a Parisian clinic. His condition did not improve, but in early October he was sent home. Upon returning, he wanted to get away from ENS and even proposed to buy Roudinesco's house. He and Rytmann were also convinced about the "human decline", and so he tried to talk to
39879-408: Was "On Content in the Thought of G. W. F. Hegel" ("Du contenu dans la pensée de G. W. F. Hegel", 1947). Based on The Phenomenology of Spirit , and under Gaston Bachelard 's supervision, Althusser wrote a dissertation on how Marx's philosophy refused to withdraw from the Hegelian master–slave dialectic . According to the researcher Gregory Elliott, Althusser was a Hegelian at that time but only for
40090-577: Was a crime of mystical love". Debray compared it to an altruistic suicide : "He suffocated her under a pillow to save her from the anguish that was suffocating him. A beautiful proof of love ... that one can save one's skin while sacrificing oneself for the other, only to take upon oneself all the pain of living". In his autobiography, written to be the public explanation he could not provide in court, Althusser stated that "she matter-of-factly asked me to kill her myself, and this word, unthinkable and intolerable in its horror, caused my whole body to tremble for
40301-403: Was a lieutenant in the French army and a bank clerk, while his mother, Lucienne Marthe Berger, a devout Catholic , worked as a schoolteacher. According to his own memoirs, his Algerian childhood was prosperous; historian Martin Jay said that Althusser, along with Albert Camus and Jacques Derrida , was "a product of the French colonial culture in Northern Africa." In 1930, his family moved to
40512-400: Was absent from the Latin Quarter . Many of his students participated in the events, and Régis Debray in particular became an international celebrity revolutionary. Althusser's initial silence was met with criticism by the protesters, who wrote on walls: "Of what use is Althusser?" ("A quoi sert Althusser?"). Later, Althusser was ambivalent about it; on the one hand, he was not supportive of
40723-427: Was affected badly during the period of the Great Depression of the 1930s. The Depression began with the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and rapidly spread worldwide. As in other nations, Australia had years of high unemployment, poverty, low profits, deflation , plunging incomes, and lost opportunities for economic growth and personal advancement. The Australian economy and foreign policy largely rested upon its place as
40934-643: Was also when he "truly discovered" Machiavelli. Between 1961 and 1965, they exchanged letters and telephone calls, and they also went on trips together, in which they talked about the current events, politics, and theory, as well as made confidences on the happiness and unhappiness of daily life. However, Madonia had an explosive reaction when Althusser tried to make her Rytmann's friend, and seek to bring Mino into their meetings. They nevertheless continued to exchange letters until 1973; these were published in 1998 into an 800-page book Lettres à Franca . Althusser underwent psychiatric hospitalisations throughout his life,
41145-425: Was available. Single unemployed men had to make do in illegal camps or makeshift hostels in disused buildings, such as the old Redfern Fish Market . Shacks were built on the outskirts of large cities to house some who lost their homes, for example near the beach at Garie in the Royal National Park south of Sydney. There has been anecdotal evidence of families resorting to living in caves with authorities turning
41356-429: Was engaged with Lucienne's sister, Juliette. Both families followed the old custom of the levirate , which obliged an older, still unmarried, brother to wed the widow of a deceased younger brother. Lucienne then married Charles, and the son was named after the deceased Louis. In Althusser's memoirs, this marriage was "madness", not so much because of the tradition itself, but because of the excessive submission, as Charles
41567-403: Was founded in Melbourne, Australia in 1963, at a time of crisis for the Old Left and the emergence of the New Left. Although the publication covered a wide variety of topics, one was of key practical and theoretical importance: the transformation of post-World War II industrial society by the mobilisation of knowledge production as a core productive activity, the nature of intellectual practice, and
41778-407: Was held to be based on a widespread erroneous assumption that the elements of social life – identity stability, meaning, co-operative solidarity – could be 'taken-for-granted' and would survive intact through any process of technological development. A re-radicalised emancipatory Left would thus be one in which society had a reflexive relationship to different levels of abstraction, maintaining all in
41989-437: Was in a relationship until he killed her by strangulation in 1980. That same year, he started a close friendly relationship with Jacques Martin, a translator of G. W. F. Hegel and Herman Hesse . Martin, to whom Althusser dedicated his first book, would later commit suicide. Martin was influential on Althusser's interest on reading the bibliography of Jean Cavaillès , Georges Canguilhem and Hegel. Although Althusser remained
42200-568: Was in this magical setting ... that Louis Althusser fell in love with Franca, discovering through her everything he had missed in his own childhood and that he lacked in Paris: a real family, an art of living, a new manner of thinking, speaking, desiring". She influenced him to appreciate modern theatre ( Luigi Pirandello , Bertolt Brecht , Samuel Beckett ), and, Roudinesco wrote, also on his detachment of Stalinism and "his finest texts ( For Marx especially) but also his most important concepts". In her company in Italy in 1961, as Elliott affirmed,
42411-412: Was no Marxist theory of the state; it was only published in 1994 in the Écrits philosophiques et politiques I . The Italian Communist newspaper Il manifesto allowed Althusser to develop new ideas on a conference held in Venice about "Power and Opposition in Post-Revolutionary Societies" in 1977. His speeches resulted into the articles "The Crisis of Marxism " ("La crisi del marxismo") and "Marxism as
42622-578: Was not forced to marry Lucienne since his younger brother had not yet married her. As a result, Althusser concluded, his mother did not love him, but loved the long-dead Louis. The philosopher described his mother as a " castrating mother " (a term from psychoanalysis), who, under the influence of her phobias, established a strict regime of social and sexual "hygiene" for Althusser and his sister Georgette. His "feeling of fathomless solitude" could only be mitigated by communicating with his mother's parents who lived in Morvan . His relationship with his mother and
42833-456: Was one of the more or less defined strategic lines. Althusser participated in various public events of the PCF, most notably the public debate "Communists, Intellectuals and Culture" ("Les communistes, les intellectuels et la culture") in 1973. He and his supporters contested the party's leadership over its decision to abandon the notion of the " dictatorship of the proletariat " during its twenty-second congress in 1976. The PCF considered that in
43044-411: Was only released in 1995 as Sur la reproduction ("On the Reproduction"). However, from these early manuscripts, he developed " Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses ", which was published in the journal La Pensée in 1970, and became very influential on ideology discussions. In the same year, Althusser wrote "Marxism and Class Struggle" ("Marxisme et lutte de classe") that would be the foreword to
43255-569: Was published in 2016. Several of Althusser's theoretical positions have remained influential in Marxist philosophy . His essay "On the Materialist Dialectic" proposes a great " epistemological break " between Marx's early writings (1840–44) and his later, properly Marxist texts, borrowing a term from the philosopher of science Gaston Bachelard . His essay "Marxism and Humanism" is a strong statement of anti-humanism in Marxist theory, condemning ideas like "human potential" and " species-being ", which are often put forth by Marxists, as outgrowths of
43466-536: Was rejected. These studies were nonetheless valuable because Althusser later used them to write his book about Montesquieu 's philosophy and an essay on Rousseau's The Social Contract . Indeed, his first and the only book-length study published during his lifetime was Montesquieu, la politique et l'histoire ("Montesquieu: Politics and History") in 1959. He also lectured on Rousseau from 1950 to 1955, and changed his focus to philosophy of history, also studying Voltaire , Condorcet , and Helvétius , which resulted in
43677-411: Was submitted to the Soviet journal Voprossi Filosofii ; it was not accepted but was published a year later in a Hungarian journal. In 1967–1968, Althusser and his students organized an ENS course titled "Philosophy Course for Scientists" ("Cours de philosophie pour scientifiques") that would be interrupted by May 1968 events . Some of the material of the course was reused in his 1974 book Philosophy and
43888-407: Was such a homebody that biographer William S. Lewis affirmed, "Althusser had known only home, school, and P.O.W. camp" by the time he met his future wife. In contrast, when he first met Rytmann in 1946, she was a former member of the French resistance and a Communist activist. After fighting along with Jean Beaufret in the group "Service Périclès", she joined the PCF. However, she was expelled from
44099-437: Was the moment of reproduction and constituted the important role of the superstructure. An analysis understood in terms of interdependent practices helps people to conceive of how society is organized, but also permits them to comprehend social change and thus provides a theory of history. Althusser explains the reproduction of the relations of production by reference to aspects of ideological and political practice; conversely,
44310-441: Was unconstitutional. The government unsuccessfully appealed the decision in the Privy Council . In 1949, the combined perceived threats of international and domestic communism and industrial unrest along with the public's waning support for extended rationing and intervention following the close of the War saw the return of Menzies to the prime ministership. Though Menzies was a conservative, his sixteen subsequent years in power saw
44521-401: Was unsettled by the requested criticism he received by Jacques Nassif and Roudinesco, and then, by December, he wrote a new essay, "On Marx and Freud". He could not attend the event in 1979 and asked Chertok to replace the texts, but Chertok published the first without his consent. This would become a public "affair" in 1984 when Althusser finally noticed it by the time Chertok republished it in
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