Difference between revisions of "Althusser, Louis"

From No Subject - Encyclopedia of Psychoanalysis
Jump to: navigation, search
 
 
(2 intermediate revisions by the same user not shown)
Line 1: Line 1:
Louis Althusser, a French philosopher, was born in Birmandreïs, Algeria, on October 16, 1918, and died in Le Mesnil-Saint-Denis, Yvelines, France, on October 22, 1990. Born into a family of practicing Catholics, Althusser's secondary schooling took place at the Lycée Saint-Charles in Marseille. He prepared for the entrance competition to theÉcole Normale Supérieure (ENS) at the Lycée du Parc in Lyon, where he was a student of Jean Guitton, then of Jean Lacroix. He was accepted for admission in 1939 but was mobilized in September and became a prisoner of war. He
+
#redirect [[Louis Althusser]]
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
didn't begin his studies at the ENS until October 1945. It was in the prison camp that he learned about communism. Meetings at the ENS, primarily with Jean-Toussaint Desanti and Tran Duc Thao, gave him a better understanding of Marxist thought. Althusser taught philosophy at the ENS until 1980. There he met Jacques Lacan during the years when Lacan brought his seminar to the school.
 
Althusser is known as a chief theoretician of ideology. In <i>Reading "Capital"</i> (1979) he introduced a new reading of Marx, a "symptomal" reading, which, through a constructed discourse, is able to redefine the operating concepts and formal structure of his thought. This work led him to postulate a break between the works of the young Marx, where theoretical humanism is still present, and the mature works, which display a "theoretical antihumanism."
 
He criticized the spontaneous ideology that infiltrated so-called scientific discourse and set forth the foundations of a critical epistemology. One of his most important texts is "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" (2001). In it he demonstrates the doubling of the subject and the specular structure of every ideology. Althusser returned to Ludwig Feuerbach's theory of the specular relation, Hegel's theory of recognition, and a theory of guarantees whose origins can be traced back to Spinoza, but gave them a new interpretation. He also made use of psychoanalytic ideas: the question of identification and the Lacanian themes of the split (or barred) subject and alienation from the Big Other in the specular relation. Althusser used this theoretical approach to address psychoanalysis. In his work he also attempted to articulate psychic and social processes outside the conventional patterns of Freudian and Marxist thought.
 
In addition, Althusser had direct experience of psychotherapy with a psychoanalyst. Althusser suffered from serious psychiatric problems, which required his hospitalization on several occasions. In 1980, in a moment of dementia, he killed his wife, Hélène. In <i>The Future Lasts Forever</i> (1993), most of which was written in 1985, Althusser acknowledges his painful efforts at understanding carried out after this tragic event.
 
Althusser trained an entire generation of scholars to be rigorous and critical in their reading of philosophy. Throughout the 1970s his influence was considerable and international in scope.
 
 
 
==See Also==
 
* [[France]]
 
* [[Ideology]]
 
* [[Marxism and psychoanalysis]]
 
* [[Structuralism and psychoanalysis]]
 
 
 
==References==
 
<references/>
 
# Althusser, Louis. (1966). Freud and Lacan. In his Writings on psychoanalysis: Freud and Lacan (Jeffrey Mehlman, Trans.). New York: Columbia University Press. (Original work published 1964)
 
# ——. (1993). The future lasts forever: A memoir (Richard Veasey, trans.). New York: New Press.
 
# ——. (2001). Ideology and ideological state apparatuses. In his Lenin and philosophy and other essays. New York: Monthly Review Press. (Original work published 1970)
 
# ——, and Balibar,Étienne. (1979). Reading "Capital" (Ben Brewster, Trans.). New York: Schocken Books. (Original work published 1965)
 
 
 
[[Category:New]]
 

Latest revision as of 02:27, 28 August 2006

Redirect to: