LRB on AS

[Jim heartfield]

In message <005801bdc3a0$7cfd4a40$1fcee380 at default>, christian a.
gregory <driver at nervm.nerdc.ufl.edu> writes
>well, my friend, language is never -not- in translation--ie between one
>lexicon to another. so mathematicians and scientists aren't the arbiters of
>our language--thank heaven. if you didn't like reading althusser, fine--you
>wouldn't be alone. but attributing that to althusser's epistemological and
>linguistic bad faith or infidelity or insufficient work ethic or whatever is
>a crock. just as it would be if you made those complaints about einstein's
>general theory or pynchon's -gravity's rainbow-.

I'm non-plussed that anyne should fail to notice that Althusser's arcane
language is largely a mask for his dishonest and often feeble thinking.
There is a world of difference between Einstein's General Theory and
Reading Capital - the one is right, and the other wrong. Althusser's
cranky preoccupation with categories is a consequence of his own
formalism. It seems entirely unsurprising that somebody should pick up
on the fact. And since Althusser admitted in his autobiography to being
an ill-read fraud, I don't really understand why anyone should want to
leap to his defence.

(And incidentally, it is also patently clear from The Future Lasts a
Long Time, that Althusser killed his wife because he could not bear the
fact that she knew that he had betrayed the students and workers in May
68 and would not let him forget about it. So quite why it should be the
case that Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont should be denounced as
reactionaries for attacking Althusser beats me.)
-- 
Jim heartfield