A Study Of Althusser 's Radical Political Discourse

This objective of this dissertation is to rethink of Althusser’s theory, which is aimed to clarify the system of Althusser’s theory and its consideration of the politics, furthermore indicate its influence on the discourse of contemporary radical politics. As is known to all, Althusser’s theory was derived from the crisis of Marxism, as a Marxist, Altusser made Marxism escaped from the influence of humanism ideology by by rereading Marx, through which Marxism regained its radical feature. Meanwhile, such rereading, which is mingled with contemporary perspectives and rethinking of the reality, made Marxism break away from dogmatism and thus dialogue with social sciences. Althusser displaced the traditional discourse of Marxism by such dialogue, and it inextricably bound to the project of contemporary radical politics. The theme of this dissertation therefore is to reveal that how Althusser developed the genealogy of Marxism and influenced the discourse of contemporary radical politics.This dissertation is based on three parts of Althusser’s theory:theory of ideology, radicalization of the discourse of dialectics, and aleatory materialism, being committed to make clear the importance of Althusser’s theory by the comparison with the contemporary radical politics.From the perspective of classical Marxist theory, ideology cannot exist alone but attach itself to the analytical model of economic-class. It means that the theory of ideology is located in the margin of Marxist theory, which obviously correlates with the social reality. The failure of the event of1968illuminates Althusser as well as contemporary radical politics mainly in two aspects:first of all, the logic of humanism cannot work; secondly, there must be a new approach to social reality must be found beyond the analytical model of economic-class. Althusser’s Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus published precisely in such context, which provided a new perspective and discourse for Marxist theory to analyze contemporary capitalism. I call it the emergence of the new political logic. Foucault published his work Discipline and Punish in the same time with Althusser, both of them provided the theoretical precondition for contemporary radical theory, which contributed to the analysis of the institution and structure of capitalism. And the rejection to the identity of economic and the focus on political analysis of contemporary radical were inspired by them to a certain degree. Besides, there is a kind of complex relationship between Post-Marxism’s discussion about the practice of hegemonic articulation and Althusser’s theory of ideology.The radicalization of dialectics discourse in Althusser’s theory derived from the victory of humanism and its misread about Marxist theory. In order to clarify it, Althusser tried to break up with Hegel’s philosophy, whose key theme is dialectics structure. From the perspective of Athusser’s theory, the logic of humanism is philosophy of subjectivity and history, whose discussion on Marxist theory is full of(out of) the ideology of bourgeoisie and historical determinism, which undoubtedly wipes out the revolutionary and radical nature of Marxism. In this sense, Althusser made the discourse of dialectics radical, and introduced structure and element, unevenness and difference, structural causality and overdetermination into Marxist dialectics, which reconstruct dialectics by new paradigm. In the process of radicalization, Althusser emphasized on the structure and the metaphor of topography and criticized the historical determinism, which was called the prelude of spatialization of French Marxism by Soja. In addition, Althusser combined ideological critique with overdetermination, which directly influenced Manuel Castells’s research on urban question.Aleatory materialism in later Althusser’s theory grew out of the comparison between Marxism theory and Post-Structuralism. In communication with Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze and Badiou, later Althusser paid more attention to Post-Structuralism, which however was serviced to his theoretical practice, just as he paid attention to structuralism early. Later Althusser’s critique not only focused on Hegel, but also on the tradition of idealism. It meant that later Althusser continued his critique of ideology and humanism.The aim of aleatory materialism is to make his theory more radical, which displaces origin, necessary, essence with void, swerve, encounter, event and conjuncture. And Post-Marxism’s studies on void, articulation and Badiou’s politics of event are all related with Althusser’s aleatory materialism.Above all, the objective of this dissertation is to relocate Althusser’s theory in Marxism, Western-Marxism and contemporary radical politics. Althusser’s theory was the result of the crisis of Marxism, which delegated the difficult choice of Marxist in the social rupture. The difficult choice meant that Marxism theory should reconstruct itself, and seek a new approach to social reality. Althusser’s theory and his life implied the immanent importance of the reconstruction.