Date: Sat, 18 Sep 1999 15:21:40 -0400
Subject: Re: Structural Marxism




Stuart,

    Thanks for encouraging a dialog on the question of Foucault's relationship
to Althusser. I am sorry that I did not clarify my question. I meant to ask you
about the ties or similarities of Althusser and Foucault because you said that
Foucault is sharply critical of Althusser. To pursue this line of questioning
about these similarities, let me know what you think of these overlaps or
connections.

In Althusser's later work (after Reading Capital) he argues that during a
discourse's historical evolution it develops a continuing opposition between its
later scientific or disciplinary forms and its early prescientific forms. In
this way economics, history, philosophy, mathematics, and other disciplines and
discourses establish their own "problematics," with their "inward" criteria of
validity and their own legitimate objects and distinct "knowledge-effects." This
revised account of the science/ideology opposition describes the diverse
epistemologies or "problematic" of a discourse's established methods or schools.
Although Althusser's student and colleague Michel Foucault repudiates the
science/ideology opposition and describes a discourse's historical divisions and
changes, Althusser's revised account of a discourse's institutional reproduction
approximates Foucault's accounts of a discourse's effects of power and
knowledge. In both Althusser and Foucault, institutional power ensures the
reproduction and development of forms of knowledge. That's why both have been
condemned as functionalist. Moreover, Althusser and Foucault both assume that
ideology or discourse imposes conformity but resists ruling class purposes, and
they both reject humanist notions of universal truth.
How about those similarities?

Philip Goldstein
Stuart Elden wrote:

> Hi Phillip,
>
> Welcome out of the shadows. I am slightly puzzled by your mail - what
> exactly is the question? I find Althusser almost intolerable to read - I
> know others don't. But I do read him. I think Foucault is very critical of
> Althusser, but I never disputed that there are links between them - though I
> didn't say that there were either. The example from the Introduction to AK
> is a good one, but it comes in the context of a general discussion of trends
> in the history of ideas.
>
> So when you say
>     >No doubt Foucault disagrees with Althusser on many points, yet
> >Foucault, ALthusser's student and colleague, also accepts many of
> >Althusser's views. For example, what about the introduction to
> >Archaeology, where, to explain the assumptions of discontinuous >history,
> Foucault cites Althusser's For Marx, especially his notion of
> >epistemological break (derived from Canguilhem and Bachelaard -- >see p. 5,
> English translation)?
>     I find nothing essentially to disagree with. But I still lack a
> question. Perhaps I can throw it back to you: what are the 'many views' of
> Althusser that F accepts? Perhaps a detailed list would help us in the
> broader question of Foucault's relationship to structural Marxism. Various
> other people (including myself) can then critique, dispute, add to, etc.
> this list.
>
>     Best wishes
>
>     Stuart

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