Encountering Althusser: Politics and Materialism in Contemporary Radical Thought

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

Table of Contents:
Introduction / I. Aleatory Materialism and the Philosophy of the Encounter / 1. The Hazards of Aleatory Materialism in the Late Philosophy of Louis Althusser (André Tosel) / 2. Rethinking Aleatory Materialism (Panagiotis Sotiris) / 3. "An Immense Aspiration to Being:" The Causality and Temporality of the Aleatory (Giorgos Fourtounis) / 4. History as "Permanent Revocation of the Accomplished Fact:" Machiavelli in the Last Althusser (Vittorio Morfino) / 5. The Parallax Object of Althusser's Materialist Philosophy (Katja Kolšek) / 6. The Very Essence of the Object, the Soul of Marxism, and Other Singular Things: Spinoza in Althusser 1959-67 (G.M. Goshgarian) / II. Althusser's Non-Contemporaries 7. Althusser, Machiavelli and Us: Between Philosophy and Politics (Mikko Lahtinen) / 8. Conjuncture, Conflict, War: Machiavelli between Althusser and Foucault (1975-6) (Warren Montag) / 9. Althusser's Last Encounter: Gramsci (Peter D. Thomas) / 10. Althusser and Spinoza: Thinking the Enigma of Subjectivity without a Subject (Caroline Williams) / 11. Althusser with Deleuze: How to Think Spinoza's Immanent Cause? (Katja Diefenbach) / 12. Althusser and Tronti: The Autonomy of the Political versus the Primacy of Politics (Sara Farris) / III. Thinking Production and Reproduction / 13. Louis Althusser and the Concept of Economy (Ceren Özselçuk) / 14. Althusser and the Critique of Political Economy (Michele Cangiani) / 15. The Problem of Reproduction: Probing the Lacunae of Althusser's Theoretical Investigations of Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Frieder Otto Wolf) / 16. To Think the New in the Absence of its Conditions: Althusser and Negri and the Philosophy of Primitive Accumulation (Jason Read) / IV. The Materiality of Ideology, the Primacy of Politics / 17. The Impossible Break: Ideology in movement between Philosophy and Politics (Isabelle Garo) / 18. The Theory of Ideology and the Theory of the Unconscious (Pascale Gillot) / 19. Ideological Interpellation: Identification and Subjectivation (Rastko Mocnik) ./ 20. "Es kömmt drauf an:" Notes on Althusser's Critique of the Subject )Ozren Pupovac) / 21. Between the Tenth and Eleventh Theses on Feuerbach: Althusser's Return to New Materialism (Gal Kirn)