Althusser and Contingency

The notion of contingency plays a central role in Althusser s attempt to recast Marxist philosophy and to free the Marxist conception of history from notions such as teleology, necessity and origin. Drawing on a wealth of published and unpublished material, Stefano Pippa discusses how Althusser s unfaltering commitment to contingency should encourage us to revisit our understanding of his conceptions of structural change, ideology, politics and materialism. As grounded on contingency, Althusser s so-called Structural Marxism originates in fact a logic of interruption and a notion of structurally under-determined becoming; just like his theory of ideology is radically reinterpreted on the basis of his notion of overinterpellation . Though constant, Althusser s relationship with contingency has not been monolithic throughout his career. As observed by Pippa, it is possible to distinguish a political and a philosophical moment in Althusser s late materialism of contingency. Perhaps, as this volume suggests, the problematic coexistence of these two aspects might account for the unstable character of Althusser s late philosophical project.