Reading Althusser: An Essay on Structural Marxism

by Steven B. Smith

Genres: Philosophy

Hardcover

First published December 31, 1984

About the author

Steven B. Smith is the Alfred Cowles Professor of Political Science and Master of Branford College at Yale. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1981. At Yale he has served as the Director of Graduate Studies in Political Science, Director of the Undergraduate Program in Humanities, and Acting Chair of Judaic Studies. His research has been focused on the history of political philosophy and the role of statecraft in constitutional government. His recent publications include Spinoza, Liberalism, and Jewish Identity, Spinoza's Book of Life, and Reading Leo Strauss.

Reviews

[Niko Harkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly recommend reading the excerpt published on RedSails if not the full text: redsails.org/the-structural-science-o...

[Massimiliano · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book might, for some serve, as an interesting introduction to the work of Louis Althusser, but it can never be more than an introduction - and more importantly, it can and should never be the last. The book spends a great deal at sketching the context of Althusser, such as the rise of 'Humanism' in Marxism (Lukacs, Sartre), but sometimes this is out of proportion: looking at this book you might wonder whether it is really about Althusser (since it spends more on what happened around him) and perhaps a more suited title should be 'Reading around Althusser'.

The more problematic aspect is that his reading of Althusser himself is not special, occasionally wrong and often superficial. This book will not offer a groundbreaking reading of Althusser, but at most, as I mentioned before, just an introduction for those never heard about Althusser. There are however indeed some errors as well, ideas ascribed to Althuser which he would never accept. For example the reading of the 'theoretical antihumanism' really misses the whole point of it and the concluding chapter which somehow - out of the blue - ascribes some form of Nihilism to his work, once again, misses the point. One shouldn't forget the 'theoretical' aspect of the 'theoretical antihumanism', i.e. it is not about not liking humans, or a complete neglect of their own potentials, nor is it really about a denial of human agency at all. As in the case of Foucault, it is about problematizing man altogether: man isn't a premiss anymore, but a problem. The question is not: there is no agency, what now? But: why is there something that seems to be agency, and where does it come from?

And although the book clearly is written in 1984, there is no attention at all for the later work of Althusser (for example, his theory of ideology or interpellation, which are crucial in the theoretical antihumanism).

And to end with, the superficiality of the work is especially clear with the total lack of discussing the closest (French) traditions in which Althusser worked: hardly any attention for other Structuralist writings or psychoanalysis (Lacan), but especially no mention at all of the Spinoza influence nor of the French epistemologists (Bachelard, Canguilhem, Cavaillès). This makes the boring comparison with the work of Thomas Kuhn all the more frustrating; an analogy that can only spark any interest by the complete ignorance of French philosophy of science of which both Kuhn and Althusser are students.