C R I S I S & C R I T I Q CRISISU & E / Volume 2 / CRISIS & CRITIQUEIssue 2 CRITIQUE READING CAPITAL: 50 YEARS LATER CRISIS & CRITIQUE Volume 2/Issue 2, 2015 Dialectical Materialism Collective 1ISSN 2311-5475The Concept of Structural Causality in Althusser C 86 C R R I Vittorio Morfino, The Concept of I S Structural Causality in Althusser S I I S S 108 & Natalia Romé: What Colour is & Theoreticism? Faust Reading C C R Althusser R I 124 I T T I Geoff Pfeifer, On Althusser on I Q Science, Ideology, and the New, or WhyQ CRISISU & We Should Continue to Read ReadingU E E Capital / / 143 Volume 2 / Volume 2 / Issue 2 William Lewis, Is There Less BullshitIssue in 2 For Marx than in Reading Capital? 166 Panagiotis Sotiris, Althusserianism and Value-form Theory: Rancière, Althusser and the Question of Fetishism 195 CRISIS & CRITIQUETed Stolze, Althusser and the Problem of Historical Individuality 217 4 Adrian Johnston, Humanity, A. Hamza & F. Ruda, Introduction That Sickness: Louis Althusser and The Helplessness of Psychoanalysis 8 Étienne Balibar, Althusser and 262 “Communism” Agon Hamza, Fidelity that is not Interpellation: Reading Althusser’s 24 Misreadings Robert Pfaller, Althusser’s Best Tricks 292 Roger Establet, On Althusser Reading Capital: 50 years later EDITORIAL BOARD: CRITIQUESlavoj Žižek 46 CRISIS & CRITIQUE Étienne Balibar Fernanda Navarro, Celebrating 296 Volume 2/Issue 2, 2015 Joan Copjec ISSN 2311-5475 Adrian Johnston Althusser’s Legacy Interview: Pierre Macherey with Ted Stolze Agon Hamza and Frank Ruda Robert Pfaller 62 EDITORS Gabriel Tupinambá Agon Hamza Sead Zimeri Jacques Bidet, The Interpellated 306 Frank Ruda Catherine Malabou Subject: Beyond Althusser and Butler Notes on Contributers Domenico Losurdo Jelica Šumič Roland Boer Yuan Yao 3 The Concept of Structural Causality in Althusser Srdjan Cvjetićanin With this issue of Crisis and Critique, we want to celebrate the fiftieth birthday of the publication of Louis Althusser’s Reading Capital and For Marx. The publication of these books marked something close to what Introduction one may call an event, both within the French philosophical scene, as well as Marxist thought, or more specifically in Marxist philosophy in general. Setting new standards for the very reading of Marx, they established, maybe for the first time in Europe, what one may call a Marxist philosophy that marked a break with the past (as much with former orthodox ways of reading Marx as well as with the traditional Marxist orthodoxy). Opening up entirely new horizons of how to think and, materially speaking, of how to read Marx’s work, by inventing an entirely new way reading, Althusser’s project and with it the 1960’s in France can legitimately be given the name of an epoch, maybe that of the Althusserian years in Marxism, in philoso- phy and in the thought of emancipatory politics. This ambitious project embodied both in Reading Capital and For Marx had a decisive as well as divisive effect in and on the history of politi- cal thinking because it proposed one single answer to what appeared to be two separate problems, one being of a political and the other of a philosophical nature. The political problem concerned communist mili- tant practice and its two deviations, sectarianism and dogmatism - the philosophical problem was linked to the theoretico-philosophical stag- nation of Marxism, equally entrenched in existential subjectivism on the one hand and a methodological reapplications of a worn down objectivist matrix onto new contents that at the same time had no influence on this very matrix, on the other. In order to simultaneously deal with these two issues, and in bringing together a renewal of the theory of ideology, able to conceive of the limitations of any practice that relies on identifications (of the subject of revolutionary change, for example), and a new presen- tation of Marx’s dialectics as the first theory of history (that remained fundamentally determined by contingency), Althusser and his students did not simply attempt to offer yet another reading of Capital, but placed their very own access to this work under the conditions of the historically specific impasses of political agendas, parties and movements and of the philosophical and scientific novelties of their time. The philosophi- cal, political and scientific conjuncture in France, which determined the publication of these two books is profoundly complicated to oversee. Post-War French philosophy was dominated by phenomenology, reaction- ary appropriations of Hegel, humanism, yet also by rationalist epistemol- ogy, the emergence of Lacanian psychoanalysis, and so on. Politically, it was a decade of great and profound political experiments, revolutions, riots, national-liberation-movements and anti-colonial struggles, partially C sustain an institutional framework (a society, a school and the field). With C R R inspired by the spirit of Maoism. It is under these conditions that Read- I Althusser, given the very nature of his project and intervention (interven- I ing Capital and For Marx emerged and must be situated. Furthermore, S ing philosophically and politically in particular philosophical and political S I I his project precisely therefore presented an on-going struggle between S conjunctures), formalization looks almost impossible. Also an institu- S philosophy and its conditions, that at the same time made this very philo- tional framework of “Althusserian Studies” or “Althusserian Society” is & & sophical thinking possible - it constantly and paradoxically struggled with equally unimaginable – one only has to think of ‘overdetermination’ and C C its own conditions of possibility (that thereby were also its conditions of R such a school would immediately be dissolved. Here we encounter the R impossibility). I second invariant of his project: as a communist, he was an inventor of a I T T Clearly, the philosophical, political and scientific conjuncture today I new methodology of philosophical thinking, as probably the literally first I changed drastically after Althusser, one may just think of all the revolu- Q (in both senses of the term) collective philosopher. This methodology, no Q U U tionary attempts and experiments that led to failures or, at least, have E matter how naïve and simplistic it may sound at certain points, is none- E become saturated. So, why do we still read Reading Capital? Why might theless properly and practically communist. / / one nonetheless claim that there is a persistent actuality to this book Having all this in mind, every attempt which proposed to return to Read- Volume 2 / Volume 2 / such that it seems to persist in the contemporary debates in philosophy, Issue 2 ing Capital and For Marx today, fifty years after, implies, first of all, that we Issue 2 politics, economy, etcetera, transcending the immediate philosophical answer the very Althusserian questions anew from the proper historical and political conjunctures in which it was unfolded and by which it was and conjunctural perspective of the contemporary situation: what are the determined? political and scientific impasses and novelties conditioning our return (to Reading Capital is the first truly collective enterprise in the history of phi- emancipatory thinking and thus - ultimately - to Marx)? And, finally, in the losophy (of course there have been author couples before and after, fa- face of such novelties, what remains new in Marx’s magnum opus today? mously Marx and Engels, Deleuze and Guattari, Adorno and Horkheimer, The present issue of Crisis and Critique gathers philosophers who work and others). Yet, the structure of this very book gives a clear idea of what on the “Althusserian Field”, in the “Althusserian country” of thought – his one may call the Althusserian methodology (that may not be limited to the students, co-authors of Reading Capital, thinkers and scholars who work historico-socio-politico-scientific circumstances in which it emerged). through and with Althusser’s work. The aim is to think of the legacy and This is why there may be fundamental (and good) reasons for remaining contemporary importance of his two monumental books. We are very faithful to this very methodology, and thereby maybe even to Althusser proud to have these authors in the present issue. Although every philoso- himself, working continuously on and elaborating further the philosophi- pher has a different take on the relevance and legacy of his work, they all cal horizon rendered possible by his books. And is this not how Althusser agree on one fundamental point: on the contemporaneity of Althusser’s himself understood Marx? Not as a finished stable project, hindering all opus. And that the question of how to determine his contemporaneity alteration, a canon to which we dogmatically stick and which only ena- may create further divisions, ultimately proves his actuality even further. bles us to mechanically repeat his theses. For Althusser, on the contrary, being a Marxist in philosopher equals advancing further the “continent Agon Hamza/Frank Ruda opened up by Marx.” The future of Althusser and his legacy depends on Prishtina/Berlin, November 2015 the work that remains to be done on this continent of thought. Althusser’s philosophical project will live on only if this continent will also include an “Althusserian field or country” rather than an orthodox and scientific, philological department of “Althusserian studies”. Having said this, we should bear in mind that there was never such a thing as an “Althus- serian school,” and most likely there will never be one. This is where, for example, his difference with Lacan resides: Lacan was very interested in formalizing his thought such that it could constitute and immanently 6 The Concept of Structural Causality in Althusser 7 The Concept of Structural Causality in Althusser C Abstract: C R R I This paper aims at examining the relation of Althusser to communism, its I S levels and instances, as well as the transformations of his thought with S I I Althusser and S regard to the communism.