Louis althusser

Louis Pierre Althusser - Marxist theory

1. Louis Pierre Althusser

2. Louis Althusser Louis Pierre Althusser (1918 – 1990) was one of the most influential Marxist philosophers of the 20 th Century. During the 1960 Marxism became philosophically respectable and this is when Althusser advanced claims about the Marxist philosophy that was discussed and debated worldwide. However, due to the apparent reversals in his theoretical positions and historical fortunes of Marxism in the late 20 th Century, the intense interest in Althusser’s perspective on Marx died out in the 1970’s.Despite this, the theory of ideology Althusser developed within it has been widely deployed in the social sciences and humanities and has provided a foundation for “post-Marxist” philosophy.

3. Althusser’s take on Marxism Althusser saw Marxism as a science, very much aligned with the structuralism tradition of Marxism. One notable concept about Althusserian Marxism is the rejection of Marx’s Hegelian essentialism – reducing things to a simple principal or essence. Althusser rejected both economism (economic determinism) and humanism (in which social developments were seen as expressive of a pre-given human nature), two of the essentials in the original Marxism theory. Althusser instead saw ideology as a determining force that shapes consciousness. His work represents moving away from a preoccupation with economic determination.

4. Althusser’s Ideology For Althusser, Ideology ‘represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence’. Ideology transforms human beings into subjects, which leads them to believe that they are self-determining agents when they are actually shaped by ideological processes subconsciously. Tony Bennett noticed that since Althusser represents all ideological forms as contributing to the reproduction of the existing system, he comes ‘ dangerously close to functionalism’, representing capitalists society as monolithic and negating allowance for internal conflict. In Althusserian theory mass media texts ‘interpellate the subject’. This is contrasted by modern media theorists who argue that the subject projects meaning onto the media texts.

5. Critics To consider the notion of ‘struggle over meaning’, Voloshinov and Gramsci are essential critics to consider. Some critics, such as these two, hold Althusser’s accountable for influencing some of his followers into purely formalist reading of the signifying systems of mass media forms, neglecting their modes of production and reception. On the other hand, he is viewed as ‘the central conduit through which developments in structuralism and semiotics have both entered into and lastingly altered Marxist approaches to the media’