Abstract
The problem of the beginning, both as a concept and as an act, is always perplexing and anxious. The difficulty with it is that it confronts one with the most difficult question: where does one begin? Every beginning requires an assumption, and yet the idea of a beginning is that it does not include an assumption, that it is prior to any assumption. One has to ask, where does and how does one begin from? This question gets a further complicated twist when it is directed to Louis Althusser—a philosopher who always struggled with the problem of the beginning as such. He constantly confronts this problem, and in a certain instance, the beginning presents a serious obstacle in his work. He always spends a great deal of effort in working on either explaining what he means by the beginning or justifying the new beginnings in his work. This chapter takes as its point of departure the question of new beginnings in the work of Louis Althusser and his specific understanding of them.
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- 1.
Althusser’s scholars try to avoid this term because of its negative historical connections with Hirst, Hindess, and so on.
- 2.
Katja Diefenbach et al. 2013, xiii.
- 3.
This holds true especially for the 1960s in France. It can be seen especially in the texts published in Cahiers pour l’analyse. See Hallward and Peden 2012.
- 4.
Callinicos 1993, pp. 39–50.
- 5.
Balibar 1993, p. 1.
- 6.
Kavanagh and Lewis 1982, p. 46.
- 7.
Matheron 2008, p. 503.
- 8.
Althusser 1975.
- 9.
Althusser 2003, p. 17.
- 10.
However, it should be noted that Althusser’s approach toward Hegel in the last phase of his writings takes a more positive dimension.
- 11.
Knox Peden was partly right to write that the “scandal of Althusserianism was precisely to produce a Marxism decoupled from Hegelian metaphysics and its humanist avatars” (Peden 2012, p. 12). Indeed, the main weakness of Althusser’s thought is his rebuttal of Marx’s Hegelianism, or his Marx devoid of Hegelian inclinations. At the same time, Althusser’s fight against humanism, as a part of “theoretical deviations within Marxism,” is worth rethinking.
- 12.
For an interesting critique of Althusser’s anti-Hegelianism, see Žižek, 1993.
- 13.
Louis Althusser, On Ideology (London: Verso, 2008), p. 94.
- 14.
Slavoj Žižek, “Philosophy: Spinoza, Kant, Hegel and… Badiou!” available online at http://www.lacan.com/zizphilosophy1.htm
- 15.
Goshgarian 2005, p. xvi.
- 16.
Althusser 1997, pp. 241–267.
- 17.
Goshgarian, Introduction, xvi.
- 18.
Macherey 2011.
- 19.
Montag (manuscript). Montag is right to point out that there is no systematic or sustained work on Spinoza by Althusser and his collaborators.
- 20.
Montag 1998, p. xi.
- 21.
Balibar 1993, p. 53.
- 22.
Althusser 2006, p. 256.
- 23.
Ibid.
- 24.
Althusser 2005, p. 34.
- 25.
As Balibar argues, “it seems to me that in reality it is instead an original concept which Althusser introduced between 1960 and 1965, a concept which, it is true, owes ‘something’ to Bachelard and which does indeed rest on certain common philosophical presuppositions but which in fact has a quite other object and opens a quite other field of investigations” (Balibar 1978, p. 208).
- 26.
I am following Slavoj Žižek’s reading of Hegel.
- 27.
For more on this, see the chap. 2 of Pfeifer 2015.
- 28.
Badiou & Balmès 1976, p. 11.
- 29.
Ibid., p. 17.
- 30.
Rancière 2011.
- 31.
Ibid, p. xix.
- 32.
Balibar 1991.
- 33.
In this chapter, I will leave aside the infamous The Case of Althusser by John Lewis.
- 34.
Elliott 2006, p. xvi.
- 35.
Thompson 1978, p. 374.
- 36.
Ibid., p. 233.
- 37.
Elliott 2006, p. xvi. However, it is interesting to note that although Althusser found Thompson’s book “interesting,” he refused the invitation of the New Left Review in 1979.
- 38.
Ferry & Renaut 1985, p. 200.
- 39.
The bitter paradox is that Bernard-Henri Lévy wrote the introduction to Louis Althusser’s, Louis Althusser 2011.
- 40.
Although this sentence has been actualized and extensively quoted by Slavoj Žižek, I intend to use it in a different mode.
- 41.
Balibar 1996, p. 109.
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Hamza, A. (2016). Contextualization. In: Althusser and Pasolini. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56652-2_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56652-2_2
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