Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-17T18:04:26.325Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Althusser and the Overdetermined Self*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Steven B. Smith
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this paper Althusser's concept of overdetermination is examined from two distinct but related perspectives. The first is the more empirical aspect. Althusser uses this concept to explain the relation between the Marxist “base” and “superstructure.” While Althusser has made a novel and perhaps even profound contribution to Marxist theory, his explanation stumbles on an unresolved tension between the twin principles of the determination “in the last instance” by the base and the “relative autonomy” of the superstructure. The second aspect is the more philosophical. If the concept of overdetermination is correct, it can only be so because the self has been dissolved into a set of social relationships in which there is no room for such traditional human attributes as free action, purposiveness and responsibility. The result renders meaningless the search for any permanent core of the self which is thought to define our common humanity. It is this second theme which makes Althusser one of the most powerful postmodern critics of the Western humanistic tradition.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 46 , Issue 4 , October 1984 , pp. 516 - 538
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1984

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich, Selected Works (Moscow: Foreign Language Publishing House, 1958), 1: 362–63.Google Scholar

2 For some recent statements of this view see Cohen, G. A., Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defense (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978);Google ScholarMcMurtry, John, The Structure of Marx's World-View (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978);Google ScholarShaw, William A., Marx's Theory of History (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1979).Google Scholar

3 Ollman, Bertell, Alienation: Marx's Conception of Man in Capitalist Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977);CrossRefGoogle ScholarWilliams, Raymond, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977);Google ScholarMcguire, John M., Marx's Theory of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978);Google ScholarRader, Melvin, Marx's Interpretation of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979).Google Scholar

4 Acton, H. B., The Illusion of an Epoch (London: Cohen and West, 1955), pp. 159–68;Google ScholarPlamenatz, John, Man and Society (New York: McGraw Hill, 1963), 2: 274–83.Google Scholar

5 The main texts consulted here are For Marx, trans. Brewster, Ben (London: The Penguin Press, 1969);Google Scholar with Balibar, Etienne, Reading Capital, trans. Brewster, Ben (London: New Left Books, 1970.);Google ScholarPolitics and History: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Hegel, and Marx, trans. Brewster, Ben (London: New Left Books, 1972);Google ScholarEssays in Self-Criticism, trans. Lock, Grahame (London: New Left Books, 1976):Google Scholar hereafter cited as FM, RC, PH, and ESC respectively.

6 For a sample of some of the works influenced by Althusser see Offe, Claus, “Structural Problems of the Capitalist State,” German Political Studies, 1 (1974), 31–56;Google ScholarPoulantzas, Nicos, Political Power and Social Classes, trans. O'Hagan, Timothy (London: New Left Books, 1973);Google ScholarFascism and Dictatorship, trans. White, Judith N. (London: New Left Books, 1974);Google ScholarSkocpol, Theda, States and Social Revolutions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Wrong, Dennis, “The Oversocialized Conception of Man in Modern Sociology,” American Sociological Review, 2 (1961), 183–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Marx, and Engels, , Selected Works, 2: 488–90;Google Scholar emphasis mine.

9 Ibid., p. 487.

10 Ibid., pp. 492, 494.

11 Ibid., p. 504.

12 Freud, Sigmund, The Interpretation of Dreams, trans. Strachey, James (New York: Avon Books, 1965), pp. 182–83, 327–30, 341–43.Google Scholar

13 Dodds, E. R., The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), pp. 30–31.Google Scholar

14 Evans-Pritchard, E. E., Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1937), p. 73.Google Scholar

15 Cited in Anderson, Perry, Arguments Within English Marxism (London: New Left Books, 1981), p. 10.Google Scholar

16 Parkin, Frank, “The Academicizing of Marxism,” Dissent, Spring (1980), pp. 172–80.Google Scholar

17 Hirschmann, Albert O., “The Search for Paradigms as a Hindrance to Understanding,” in Interpretive Social Science: A Reader, ed. Rabinow, Paul and Sullivan, William S. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), p. 179.Google Scholar

18 Garaudy, Roger, “A propos des Manuscrits de 1844,” Cahiers du Communisme, 3 (1963), 119;Google ScholarSchmidt, Alfred, “Der strukturalistische Angriff auf die Geschichte,” Beiträge zur marxistischen Erkenntnistheorie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1969), pp. 209, 265;Google ScholarGiddens, Anthony, Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), pp. 50–53, 111–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Marx, Karl, Capital (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1970), 1: 82 note.Google Scholar

20 The nonhistorical character of Althusser's thought has been well brought out by Thompson, E. P., The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1978).Google Scholar

21 Giddens, , Central Problems in Social Theory, p. 159.Google Scholar

22 Freud, Sigmund, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, trans. Strachey, James (New York: Norton, 1969), pp. 284–85.Google Scholar

23 Nair, K., “Marxisme ou structuralisme?” in Contre Althusser, ed. Vincent, J. M. (Paris: Union Generale d'Edition, 1974), p. 169:Google Scholar “With Sartre there is too much history, with Lévi-Strauss, Foucault, Althusser, and Lacan there is no longer any history; yesterday object and structure were dissolved into the subject; today subject and consciousness are buried in the object. The soul of the world was free and conscious choice, now the unconscious is king and the world has lost its soul.”

24 Marx, , Capital, p. 85.Google Scholar

25 Ibid., p. 152.

26 Wrong, , “The Oversocialized Conception of Man,” pp. 184–85;Google ScholarZetterbaum, Marvin, “Self and Political Order,” Interpretation, 2 (1971), 240”46.Google Scholar

27 On the meaningful character of action see Winch, Peter, The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976), pp. 45–53, 116–20;Google Scholar see also Giddens, Anthony, New Rules of Sociological Method: A Positive Critique of Interpretive Sociologies (New York: Basic Books, 1976).Google Scholar

28 Goffman, Erving, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (New York: Doubleday, 1959).Google Scholar

29 For a useful account of this movement see Dallmayr, Fred J., The Twilight of Subjectivity: Contributions to a Post-Individualist Theory of Politics (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1981), chap. 1;Google ScholarDescombes, Vincent, Modern French Philosophy, trans. Scott-Fox, L. and Harding, J. M. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980).Google Scholar

30 Deleuze, Gilles, Nietzsche et la philosophie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1962);Google ScholarKlossowski, Pierre, Nietzsche et le cercle vicieux (Paris: Mercure de France, 1969);Google ScholarDescombes, , Modern French Philosophy, pp. 180–86.Google Scholar

31 Aron, Raymond, D'une sainte famille à l'autre: Essais sur les marxismes imaginaires (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), p. 341.Google Scholar

32 Foucault, Michel, The Order of Things, trans. Smith, A. M. Sheridan (London: Tavistock, 1970), p. 385.Google Scholar

33 Ibid.

34 Ibid., p. 387.

35 LeoStrauss, , What Is Political Philosophy and Other Studies (New York: The Free Press, 1959), p. 38.Google Scholar

36 The modern origins of this critique arguably go back to Heidegger; for a stimulating comparison to Althusser see Glucksmann, André, “A Ventriloquist Structuralism,” New Left Review, 72 (1972), 88–92.Google Scholar

37 Arendt, Hannah, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 40.Google Scholar