> Althusser's mental health problems really don't have much to do with
> the success or the lack of success of his political and philosophical
> projects. Frankly I don't see anything here that really deals with
> Althusser's project, which is a critical rereading of Marx that
> critiques a particular set of humanist readings of the same
> philosopher. I'm not sure what that has to do with the construction
> of a 'system of language' (although all analysis of ideology is
> necessarily going to have to deal with the question of the sign or of
> language.) I would suggest going back to the actual texts, but
> Spinoza's priviso at the end the introduction to the Theological
> Political Treatise comes to mind. robert wood
> >
> > What? In the specific case of Althusser? I'll put it bluntly. He
> > constructed
> > his own system of language and tried to apply it to reality which come
> > 1968
> > didn't comply. Then he went mental and finally published a wierd
> "dynamic"
> > approach to philosophy which no one paid any attention to.
> >
> > Anyone who submits language to such constrictions is pushing some
> > seriously
> > dogmatic agenda. A great critique of this use of language for dogmatic,
> > self-assertive purposes can be found in Chomsky's critique of the
> > behavioral
> > psychologist BF Skinner; its far more readable than most of the French
> > stuff
> > and it can be applied to Althusser's attempt to, how shall I put it, make
> > people speak his language...
> >
> > If, on the other hand, you're asking me to back up the assertion that
> > ethical purges often end in dogmatism I can only give examples.
> Althusser,
> > the above mentioned Skinner, Heidegger's strange connection with Nazism
> > comes to mind, comparing some of Wittgenstein's early work with his
> > religious assertions is also interesting.
> > ___________________________________
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> >
> >
>
>
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>
Okay, I'll try to stick to his critique of ideology simply for the reason that I don't think it can be divorced from the rest of his project. It can't be divorced simply because he believed that he could construct a "Marxist science" that would step outside the bounds of ideology. In order to do this he had to break with the "humanist" and also the "Hegelian" aspects of Marx. Coming at the problem from the structuralist tradition he did this through linguistically "purifying" the Marxian edifice. I'll leave this aside for the moment in order to try and show from a different perspective why I believe Althusser to be extremely dogmatic.
What is important here is Althusser's conception of ideology. In his main paper on this concept (Ideology and State Apparatuses) he portrays ideology as absolutely all-encompassing, absolutely inescapable. Society itself seems caught in a sort of perverse eternal return of the same ("there is no practice except by and in an ideology"). However, for some reason - presumably the absolute Truth to found in Marx - Althusser is able to break this chain and expose the impoverished and wholly "unscientific" aspects of ideology. Thus due to his access to "the Truth" (religious overtones, anyone?) he makes widely general statements such as:
"In fact, the State and its Apparatuses *only have meaning from the point of view of the class struggle*, as an apparatus of class struggle ensuring class oppression and guaranteeing the conditions of exploitation and its reproduction." (my emphasis)
The question that should be asked, and this is why I pointed to the deservedly famous Chomsky criticism of Skinner, the question is: what does this definition leave out? I would argue an awful lot. It means that, if I am to accept Althusser's argument about ideology and his "science of class-struggle" then I can only imbue many objects around me with meaning (media, the State, my university professor etc.) insofar as this meaning is related to the class-struggle. Now, I'm not saying that this aspect shouldn't be considered when approaching these objects, but to imbue them * strictly* with this meaning is... I would argue... completely dogmatic. Althusser's entire edifice, his pronunciations on humanism and historicism etc etc, are all based around this extremely strict and exacting dogmatic framework.
If you want to relate this to Spinoza, and I don't think you be far off, the ideology which is all-encompassing seems similar to Spinoza's pantheistic God and the strict meaning (class struggle) which Althusser applies to these apparatuses seems akin to some sort of "true knowledge" of this God.
On another note and from a different angle, in one of his lecture courses (Society Must be Defended) Foucault shows quite clearly that the discourse of class-struggle probably was born out of the discourse of what he calls "race struggle". This would seem to historcise Marx's notion of class-struggle and not allow for the absolute "epistemological break" (i.e. completely new way of looking at things) which Marx supposedly underwent. It also calls into question the whole notion that the history of ideas can be looked at ahistorical or synchronically/structurally as a series of definitive "breaks"...