Query on Althusser

[Jim heartfield]

In message <199806010148.UAA31394 at rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu>, Carrol Cox
<cbcox at rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu> writes
>I remember very vaguely about an announcement by Althusser near the end of
>his life to the effect that he had never read *Capital*. I assume my
>memory is at least partly false, but I wondered if anyone on this list
>happens to have knowledge of anything like this.
>
>(I'm reading a critique of Althusser, parts of which suggest that if he
>did read *Capital* he didn't really pay much attention to it.)

'...in the autumn of 1965. I was in a state of euphoria, having just
published _Pour Marx_ and _Lire 'Le Capital'_ in October. But then I
became obsessed with the terrifying thought that these textst would
expose me completely to the public as I really was, namely a trickster
and a deceiver and nothing more than a philosopher who knew almost
nothing about the history of philosophy or about Marx (though I had
certainly made a close study of his early work, I had only seriously
studied Book 1 of Capital in 1964 when I took a seminar which resulted
in _Lire 'le Capital'_)'

L Althusser, The Future lasts a long time, p 148

'I was never able to penetrate a single text by Freud ... He remains a
closed book to me.' p189-9

'I had thousands of books though I had only read a few hundred of them,
having put off reading the others (as I imagined) until the right
moment.'

p270

The other, rather depressing discovery to be made in Althuser's
biography is that he almost certainly killed his wife because the was
attacking him for selling out the goal of revolution.

Helene's barbs hurt Althusser, when he was already being attacked by his
former colleague become Maoist Jacques Ranciere

'...only Helene asked we what the hell I was doing in a party which had
"betrayed" the working class in '68 and she was quite right...'

p235

Althusser did finally leave the party, but not because it had betrayed
the workers in 1968, but because he wanted to save it the shame of his
murder of Helene:

'For a long time Helene had been right when she claimed the party, if
not directly then indirectly, had "betrayed the working class" which it
claimed to serve. I have not renewed my membership since Helene's murder
in 1980. During that whole painful period the Party and L'Humanite
treated me very decently. ... I did not want to burden the Party with a
dangerous "murderer", which some would certainly have criticised it
for.'

pp 240-1


Althusser set up a project to study social movements (a substitute for
organising them, p 246) but it did not fend of his own mental collapse
in the face of the palpable truth of Helene's criticisms. He began to
project his hatred onto Helene. A year or so before the killng he
records that he 'wanted not only to destroy myself physically [which
would not have excised his own sense of shame] but also to destroy all
traces of my existence: in particular by destroying every one of my
books [the shame of being exposed as an ill-read charlatan], by burning
down the ecole as well and "if possible", while I was at it, by getting
rid of Helene herself.'(p250)

Perhaps sensing Althusser's murderous intent, or just fed up with his
self-pity, Helene resolved to leave him, but according to A. 'Deep down
I knew she could not actually leave me' (p251)

A. projects his own murderous fantasies onto H. sying that she was
suicidal and wanted to die at his hands: 'she simply asked me to kill
her myself, and the very idea was both unthinkable and unbearably awful'
(p252). But not so unthinkable, of course. 

I 'found myself standing at the foot of the bed, in a dressing gown,
with Helene stretched out before me, and with me continuing to massage
her neck and feeling intense pain in my forearms, obviously due to the
massage. Then I realised without knowing why, other than her motionless
eyes and the pitiful tip of her tongue showing between her teeth and
lips, that she was dead. .... My fate was sealed.' p254

Not her fate, notice, his fate was sealed. But in fact his fate was
sealed when he voted to expel Helene from the party on charges of
collaboration with the Nazis that he knew were trumped up:

'and to my own shame and astonishment, my own hand went up. I had known
it for a long time: I was indeed a coward.' p 203

Althusser developed a theory of the death of the subject and played it
out three times in his own life. First he helped kill the revolutionary
subject of the French working classes by working to save the party from
defections and criticism post 68. Then he killed his most stalwart
critic, his wife Helene. Finally he killed his own subjectivity,
avoiding responsibility for his actions by having himself declared
inculpable by virtue of insanity, thereby surrendering all legal rights.

To his analyst A said:

'I remember putting forward the following hypothesis: Helene's murder
was "suicide via a third party". He listened to me neither agreeing nor
disagreeing with what I said'.

p267
-- 
Jim heartfield