"W. Kiernan" wrote:
> I volunteer to do no chapters whatsoever. Obviously I'm going to have
> to dig into Althusser myself as preparation, and by my glance at one of
> his books in the bookstore, he's pretty scary himself.
>
Althusser, Louis (1918-1990)
French social philosopher. In Pour Marx (For Marx) (1965) and Lire le Capital (Reading Capital) (1970), Althusser offered a structuralist re-interpretation of the later work of Marx. According to Althusser, social organization is determined wholly by ideological consequences expressed in economic and political power, and the differential roles to which individuals are assigned in a society are clearly signified by the presence and absence of particular notions in its cultural paradigms. (http://people.delphi.com/gkemerling/dy/ix1.htm#a)
Not being an economist and having large gaps in my education, I have never read Butler before, but I think now I will. I read the posted paragraph three times, each time it became clearer. I think there is a big difference between "difficult" and "meaningless." Stilll, Butler could have done her ideas more good by being less obscure.
Henry C.K. Liu