• Taking an analytic and historical approach, this work develops and defends Althusserian critical theory. This theory, it is argued, produces knowledge of how a particular class of people, in a particular time, in a particular place, is dominated, oppressed, or exploited. Moreover, without relying on a general notion of human emancipation, concrete critical theory can suggest political means for the alleviation of these conditions. Because it puts Althusser's ideas in dialogue with contemporary s…Read more
  •  23
    Harry Smith's Filmwork and the Possibility of a Universal Symbology
    American Journal of Semiotics 17 (3): 217-232. 2001.
  •  253
    Cette note devait introduire à un public anglophone la traduction de la « Lettre de Louis Althusser datée du 18 mars 1966 et adressée au Comité central du PCF », elle est ici enrichie dans une version livrée au public français. Elle apporte le contexte historique et théorique nécessaire à la compréhension des interventions « anti-humanistes » de Louis Althusser qui questionne les choix politiques opérés par le PCF au cours des années 1960. Nulle part ailleurs, dans les écrits publiés d’Althusser…Read more
  •  26
    Taking an analytic and historical approach, this work develops and defends Althusserian critical theory. This theory, it is argued, produces knowledge of how a particular class of people, in a particular time, in a particular place, is dominated, oppressed, or exploited. Moreover, without relying on a general notion of human emancipation, concrete critical theory can suggest political means for the alleviation of these conditions. Because it puts Althusser’s ideas in dialogue with contemporary s…Read more
  •  42
    Disjecta Membra: Althusser’s Aestethics Reconsidered
    with Bargu Banu
    Filozofski Vestnik 1 (41): 7-59. 2021.
    This essay takes a synthetic and critical approach to the scattered pieces of art criticism and aesthetic theory authored by Louis Althusser. Connecting these texts to his larger philosophical and political project, we argue that these reflections make an independent contribution to its worth and that they offer different perspectives on lingering theoretical problems. We piece together the insights that form the core of the Althusserian approach to aesthetics and show how these are formulated (…Read more
  •  6
    Concrete Analysis and Pragmatic Social Theory (Notes Towards an Althusserian Critical Theory)
    International Studies in Philosophy 39 (2): 97-116. 2007.
  •  277
    “But didn’t he kill his wife?”
    Verso Books Blog. 2019.
    If there is one thing that everyone knows about Louis Althusser, it is that he killed his wife - the sociologist and résistante Hélène Rytmann-Légotien. In this article, William S. Lewis asks how should this fact effect the reception of Althusser's work, and how should those who find Althusser's reconceptualisation of Marx and Marxism usefully respond?
  •  12
    In a careful exposition of French Marxism, William Lewis places Althusser and his thought alongside the pre- and post-war French communist intellectual climate: the result is an excellent and unique work. Part theoretical treatise on some of Althusser's more complicated and less explored ideas, part intellectual history, Louis Althusser and the Traditions of French Marxism is, in total, an important text for philosophy, French and francophone studies, political thought, cultural studies, marxist…Read more
  •  24
    Louis Althusser
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2010.
  •  1
    Louis Althusser and the Traditions of French Marxism
    Science and Society 71 (4): 490-493. 2007.
  •  68
    As an accompaniment to the translation into English of Louis Althusser's 'Letter to the Central Committee of the PCF, March 18th, 1966', this note provides the historical and theoretical context necessary to understand Althusser's 'anti-humanist' interventions into French Communist Party policy decisions during the mid-1960s. Because nowhere else in Althusser's published writings do we see as clearly the political stakes involved in his philosophical project, nor the way in which this project ev…Read more
  •  66
    War, manipulation of consent, and deliberative democracy
    Journal of Speculative Philosophy 22 (4). 2008.
    Adding to the literature on the feasibility of deliberative democracy, this article catalogs the practices, institutions, and psychological proclivities that have been cited as obstacles to the realization of a deliberative democratic politics. It then makes the case that one of the irremediable obstacles, ideology, is also the the necessary starting point for actual deliberation.
  •  1314
    Althusser’s Scientism and Aleatory Materialism
    Décalages 2 (1): 1-72. 2016.
    This paper argues that the reading of Althusser which finds a pronounced continuity in his conception of the relations among science, philosophy, and politics is the correct one, this essay will begin with an examination of Althusser’s “scientism.” The meaning of this term (one that differs slightly from contemporary usages) will be specified before showing how and in what way Althusser’s political philosophy between 1960 and 1980 can be described as “scientistic.” The next section details the i…Read more
  •  59
    Evolutionary psychology in the service of moral philosophy: A possible future for ethics?
    Journal of Speculative Philosophy 25 (1): 48-63. 2011.
    The question this essay takes up is that of whether Ethics as a discipline has something to learn from the literature in evolutionary moral psychology and if this mode of explanation should be part of its future. Its primary thesis is that Ethics does have much to learn because the sciences that study the evolutionary mechanisms by which ethical judgments are produced will allow us, in a naturalist and pragmatist fashion, to better understand the possibilities for achieving our ethical goals. Th…Read more
  •  352
    Art or propaganda? Dewey and Adorno on the relationship between politics and art
    Journal of Speculative Philosophy 19 (1): 42-54. 2005.
    This paper articulates the similarities and differences between Adorno's and Dewey's aesthetics, showing the way in which these theories juxtapose real art against other forms of cultural expression which, in their duplication and strengthening of existing modes of culture, may be seen as progressively closing off the possibilities for the realization of true democracy or (what may be the same thing) the end of alienation. The paper distinguishes between art and propaganda and argues that, despi…Read more
  •  22
    Of Bonding and Bondage
    International Studies in Philosophy 30 (2): 109-115. 1998.
  • Through tracing the articulation, rise and eventual fall of Marxist theory in France, I seek in my dissertation to show the difficulties of wedding Marxist theory to ameliorative political practices.Specifically, I follow the development of French Marxism between 1920--1965 in order to demonstrate how the thought of Althusser is a reaction to and correction of both the crude materialist philosophy of the French Communist Party and of the more sophisticated humanist Marxism of such intellectuals …Read more