Althusser and his contemporaries: philosophy’s perpetual war

Abstract

Combining the idea of ​​philosophy as a battlefield (kampfplatz) and Louis Althusser's understanding of theoretical practice as an intervention in a given situation, Warren Montag proposes to reread the latter's work based not only on his writings, but relating them to the theoretical situation at the time. The book is divided into three parts: “structure”, “subject” and “origin/end”. To introduce the part about structure, in the first chapter, Montag seeks to avoid two extremes: first, positioning Althusser within structuralism, relying on the detection of the pure and simple use of terms and predicates linked to the “structural” motif; second, identify him simply as a theorist of “encounter”. Alternatively, it proposes examining textual documents that destabilize the very definition of the “field of structuralism” (p.22).