Yibing Zhang - Althusser Revisited. Problematic, Symptomatic Reading, ISA and History of Marxism: A Textological Reading

CANUT INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS

Istanbul Berlin London Santiago

Published in 2003 by Central Compilation and Translation Press

The English version is published in cooperation with China Renmin University Press.

Original Chinese Copyright 2003, First Chinese Edition

ISBN: 978-7-801-09646-3

Canut International Publishers

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Althusser is no stranger to Chinese academia. His Structural Marxism is researched under Marxist philosophy and Lenins philosophy, literature criticism, movie theories or aesthetic theories. The present European academia, which inhabits the post-modernist and post-Marxist era, increasingly appreciates Althussers theories. We Chinese researchers are perplexed by this phenomenon and all our doubts boil down to one question: Have we misread Althusser? And my answer is: Perhaps. There might be two reasons for this: an important historical change and the cloak of a turbulence theory.

Firstly, the important historical change occurs during the 1990s when a stack of posthumous books are published and Althusser once again becomes a major topic of discussion. The original consistent image is destroyed, leaving only a mist that gradually dissipates. As Lacan put it, with the shedding of its coverings, the original vacancy further revealed itself. This is another victory of the Other.

The precondition of exploring this mystery is to demonstrate Althussers complex, painful and obscure life and the mystery of his paradoxical thoughts. Before 1950, Althusser was a believer in the teachings of Catholicism. That is to say, Althusser I appeared first is a Christian, which is the real foundation of his thoughts. As such, the remnants of the divine can never be totally erased. In terms of theological logic, an individuals worldly being is a kind of Nothingness, and the absent but almighty God initiated the Critical Framework of Althusser I. It is of vital importance to remember this. The second theoretical position of the Young Althusser centres on Hegel. The path runs smoothly from the Hegelian logic, which negates the individual subject, to the structuralist theoretical framework without individual subject . Naturally, Althusser II would reject anything in humanistic form. At the beginning of the 1950s, Althusser decisively left Catholicism and turned to Marxism. This is the most dazzling scientific and Marxist Althusser III. What is interesting however is that Althusser, in his later years, suddenly returned to the aleatory materialism of ancient atomism when he made inquiries into the thoughts of Spinoza and Machiavelli. Thus people began to doubt the firmness of Althusser IVs Marxist position. This dense fog caused the different ruptures and separation of Althussers thoughts into four distinct characterizations, and it is still an unanswered mystery in the contemporary research into Althusser. Contemporary researchers only make a distinction between the four different Althussers, but they fail to find an integrated research logic.