> 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.)
>
> Carrol
Althusser was manic depressive. Throughout his live he has had periods of euphoria and megalomania, followed by periods of great insecurity and despair. He was also permanently under heavy medicamentation.
He never said he hadn't read 'Capital'. But he did made some very severe and auto punitive remarks on his auto-biographical essay 'L'Avenir dure longtemps' (Stock/IMEC, 1992). He wrote that has been chronically under prepared and lived all his intellectual career under the constant terror of being unmasked as a fraud.
This essay is an extremely poignant document. It has been written, of course, after the murder of his wife and in the intellectual and moral limbo he was relegated to until his death. The manuscript had as scratched subtitle: "brief history of a murderer". It has a good deal of dilaceration and self hate on it.
The most authoritative critics and biographers tend to disclaim his assertions of having been ill prepared intellectually. Of course, his long time adversaries took these confessions triumphantly and, from mouth to ear, enlarged it a good deal. And so the legend was formed that Althusser (the universally acclaimed author of 'Reading Capital') acknowledged of never having actually read 'Capital'...
Sic transit gloria mundi.
João Paulo Monteiro