File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1997/97-04-15.135, message 125


From: "R.Pearson" <R.Pearson-AT-art.derby.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 14 Apr 1997 11:09:46 +0100
Subject: M-TH: Althusser, Limits and Nostalgia


The Buffalo Soldiers write:

> The reformist left, it seems, improvises as it goes on.

Indeed they do, but because soem reformists are humanists, does it follow
that all humanists are reformists?

They futher write:

 "Humanism" (as in the laughable (because un-informed) and un-informed
(because of the depth
> of anti-intellectualism of this left which lives on rumors and anecdotes)
> does not mean that "science" or "philosophy" or... is done by the
"humans"
> and therefore it is "humanist". 
 
OK, but why then cite the old Catholic scoundrel M. Althusser?

>Humanist in Althusser means that view of
> history that because it places such human limits (as "subjectivity", for
> example) at the center of its inquiries makes those inquiries become
> anthropomorphic, ahistorical (in the context of the distinction that he
> makes between "historical" and "historicist")... 

Ah I see: use Althusser's risible definition as given!

"Humanist", to repeat,
> does not mean by humans, but limited by human "values" which are treated
> as pre-given, transhistorical.  

Now note here the use of limits. To cite the human is to cite
limits...interesting...

>The question of "agency" for Althusser is
> simply an extension of Marx's own "Men make their own history but they do
> not make it just as they please".  Class struggle is not simply an
> enactment of human agency (if that were the case Marxism would have been
a
> form of bourgeois voluntarism)--it is human agency in the movement of
> history (i.e. workings and unfolding of forces and relations of
> PRODUCTION).  There is no agency outside production.


So then, we have a humanist view which is reformist, subjectivist and
limited. On the other hand we have Althusser's Science which is grounded in
production.
Now the Buffalos state that "There is no agency outside of production" Is
this reversable into "There is no production outside of agency"? Jacques
Ranciere thought so. Excluded from the English translations of the
collective work with Althusser and Ballibar, not because of reformist
humanism (he was ultra-left at the time), but because he rightly identifies
his colleague's attempt to defend Stalinism, he pointed out that
Althusser's theory turns us into automata. 

The problem with Althusser was that in rejecting Hegel he also rejected any
dialectical understanding of agency and production. In doing so he placed
ahistorical limits on human agency. As Lukacs pointed out in the 1950's, to
celebrate the agency is to succumb to the voluntarism of the reformists, to
celebrate the production is to succumb to iron laws of history (or perhaps
the iron web of power/knowledge that Althusser's mate Foucault revels in).
A genuinely materialist critique needs to articulate the two
simultaneously. Althusser could not do this, because agency, forever absent
>from his theory, could only enter his consciousness as weakly heard cries
entering his hospital bedroom in May '68. Hence the addition to his crass
theory of ideology, when after '68, he has to admit that ideology is
ultimately the result of class struggle not ISA's. 
Thankfully, Theory has moved on since then and the 'Althussrian reactor'
has suffered 'meltdown' (Jameson). Still, it's nice to indulge in some
nostalgia.

Best Wishes,


Russell Pearson.












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