From: ReDionysus-AT-aol.com
Date: Mon, 15 Aug 94 02:01:58 EDT
Subject: Althusser


the outcome of this reliance on Lacan is the reproduction of the lack of
agency in Lacan's theory, because there's no escaping the symbolic there is
no escaping the phallic code. I.E. that history does not interven on the
symbolic social production, both on the level of content and gramar. This
seems to be carried over from Saussurian linguistic model under lacan in
which one begins from the langue instead of the language. I think of course
that Althusser brought us ahead a bit here, but we can only really integrate
psychology and ideology by revising, even with Lacan Hegelian method, an
inversion of the dialectic of signification, which here means returning to
the socio-historical prodution of language. So far as I can tell,
Bakhtin/Volosinov's *Marxism and the Philosophy of Language* is the best
model available for such an inversion. On the one hand, of course the
relation between interpellation, language and ideology now seems
indeispensible, but in Althusser's terms, it also is rendered ultimately
inescapable, and capital along with it.
Honestly, when some friends talked obliquely about Althussers rejection of
Hegel, I couldn't quite get what they were after, in as much as using Lacan
represented a return to Hegel.
On the question of Anarchism, both theoretically and in the current melieu of
Marxism in Chicago, I find that in many ways I have more in common with the
Autonomists, the Lumpens, etc than with the RCP (chairman Bob's a fuckin'
homophobe, for those that don't know) . It sucks having to constantly bring
up class in the middle of their rants, but when it comes to action, the
anarchists are much smarter and cunning and aware of the realities of this
historical moment as the basis for action. I think an anarchist practice can
realize communist ends, I really don't think anarchy is an end in itself or
constitutes a deep enough critique of society and the operation of the state.



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