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→11. Louis Althusser to Jacques Lacan
=11. Louis Althusser to Jacques Lacan=
''[Paris], 11-7-66''<ref></ref>
Dear Lacan,
On the question that concerns you, and that concerns us, you will find a few very rudimentary and poorly elaborated elements, which are at most ''indicative'' of the problem, at least of its existence, in
(1) ''Lire "Le Capital"'' [''Reading "Capital"''] volume 1, preface.
I don't dare suggest that you read the entire preface. I attempted there to indicate the necessity of a theory of ''reading'' on the basis of the very particular reading Marx does of the texts of his predecessors (the classical economists), which I have called, precisely, a "symptomal reading," proposing a frightful neologism (I hesitated for a long time before that grammatical barbarism, which seemed theoretically necessary to me). See pp. 1–40.
This theory of symptomal reading indicates its conditions of possibility in the ''nature'' of the discourse underpinning its act of ''reading'': a theoretical discourse, whether it be palpably ideological (the economists) or ''already'' scientific (Marx). (This science-ideology distinction is to be handled with the greatest caution, but ''provisionally'', while waiting for a more serious analysis, on which I am presently working, it performs some objective services, whose effects, to be sure, will need to be rectified.) The ''nature'' of this discourse seems to me able to be fixed by the ''theoretical problematic'' sustaining it. Behind that theoretical problematic a ''reality'' that is its determined condition is outlined: the existing ''theoretical conjuncture'' and its (articulated) relations with the ''historical'' conjuncture in the broad sense. The concept of conjuncture refers in turn to the concept of ''history''.
On the concept of conjuncture and the concept of history, see ''Lire'' "''Le Capital''," preface (in truth, the entire end of the preface constantly alludes to it), and also volume 2 (''L'Objet du "Capital"'': 4, 5, 6, 9).
See as well the text by ''Balibar'' in volume 2: it is (in its entirety) of the very first importance. It is there that one can already see clearly enough in what ways the Marxist concept of structure can be distinguished without any possible confusion from the Lévi-Straussian concept of structure (and all the more from all the idealist aberrations of the "structuralists"), precisely because the Lévi-Straussian concept of structure is ''theoretically'' ambiguous. (It oscillates between a subjectivist conception and a Platonic conception of structure, between structure as intention and structure as ''eidos''. The locus of that ambiguity can be assigned in his case with precision: it is his completely aberrant conception of the ''unconscious''.) One should not make a mistake about the term ''subjectivist'' temptation (''intention'') in the Lévi-Straussian conception of structure: it is a matter of social subjectivity, social "intention." I am alluding to the fact that the unconscious of the structure for Lévi-Strauss is an "unconscious'' social intention (that is, an "unintentional" one, as Godelier says with marvelous naïveté), one that expresses the society's ''will to live''. I am using words that are so many metaphors, but you will understand me. Ultimately structure is unconscious in Lévi-Strauss, and it is a structure "''so that it'' (society) can live." It's in that "so that" of the telos (to live) of society that the temptation of conceiving of structure as ''intention'' and subjectivity is concealed (that is, revealed).
To be sure, one can criticize Lévi-Strauss on other scores, but it is there, at that precise point, from my point of view, that ''one cannot not take one's distance from him''. And it is, I believe, very important for analysis as well to be well aware that one cannot, properly speaking, speak of a social ''unconscious''; otherwise, all confusions are permitted (including those that may haunt, if not the texts of Freud you alluded to last night—since I don't know them, I can't speak of them—at least their reading).
It is at bottom for that reason of principle that I said to you that, seen from the outside, and, I admit, from a certain distance, your theoretical relations with Lévi-Strauss may today, ''to a certain extent'', be a problem for us if they are not clarified. Everyone (you know who) has an interest in confusing you, under the term of structuralism, with Lévi-Strauss. ''Not us''. And I believe that neither do you have any interest in letting that confusion occur, even independently of yourself, even at a great distance from yourself (and you are aware that it occurs as well in individuals who have ''declared themselves'' to be very close to you).
I am sending you under the same cover a very schematic and very crude talk that I gave two weeks ago at the Ecole.<ref>Reference is to the text "Conjoncture philosophique et recherche théorique marxiste,' which appeared posthumously in Ecrits philosophiques et politiques (Paris: Stock, 1994).</ref> Should you read it, consider it as no more than a "symptom," but a symptom that is … insofar as is possible, ''conscious''! (in which case it would no longer be ''only'' a symptom …)
I was happy to see you again. I offer you my fond best wishes for your vacation and for your work. For us, it is very important that you exist, that you are the theoretician that you are, and that you pursue your vanguard work. You are not alone. The front is vast, and there are, or there are beginning to be, many other combatants, even if they are not all fighting on the same line, at the same point, or under the same "flag" and even if you have reason to believe ''certain'' of them (I don't say all) at present far from you.
''I convey to you my intense and lucid friendship,''<BR>
''[Louis Althusser]''
=12. Jacques Lacan to Louis Althusser=
