Louis Althusser

by Montag, Warren

• ISBN13: 9780333918982
• ISBN10: 0333918983
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-02-08
• Publisher: Red Globe Pr

Summary

This introductory guide to Louis Althusser provides the first major overview of his work since the publication in French of thousands of pages of essays, books, and letters unknown before 1990. Focusing on Althusser's writing on art, theater, and literature, Warren Montag traces the contradictory development of Althusser's thought from the early 60s to his autobiography, The Future Lasts Forever . Montag also explores how Althusser's reflections on reading can shed new light on well-known texts such as Heart of Darkness and Robinson Crusoe .

Author Biography

Warren Montag is Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Occidental College, Los Angeles.

Table of Contents

General Editor's Preface	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction	1	(15)
Towards a New Reading of Althusser	16	(56)
First encounters: art against ideology	16	(21)
Towards a theory of the materiality of art	37	(12)
Macherey's intervention	49	(12)
Rethinking the concept of ideology	61	(11)
Some Concepts	72	(14)
The concept of history from Hegel to structuralism	72	(2)
Humanism	74	(3)
Ideology	77	(3)
Creation/production	80	(2)
Symptomatic reading	82	(2)
Philosophy as intervention	84	(2)
Readings	86	(46)
Wild crowds, savage movements: Heart of Darkness and the rise of International Socialism	86	(16)
Robinson Crusoe and the drama of interpellation	102	(15)
The Future Lasts Forever: Althusser after Althusser	117	(15)
Conclusion	132	(4)
Appendix: Louis Althusser ``On Brecht and Marx''	136	(14)
A political theater	137	(3)
Smothering the voice of politics	140	(2)
The party position	142	(2)
The end of identification	144	(2)
Theater and the risk of fire	146	(4)
Annotated Bibliography	150	(15)
References	165	(5)
Index	170