Althusser and His Contemporaries

Althusser and His Contemporaries alters and expands understanding of Louis Althusser and French philosophy of the 1960s and 1970s. Thousands of pages of previously unpublished work from different periods of Althusser's career have been made available in French since his death in 1990. Based on meticulous study of the philosopher's posthumous publications, as well as his unpublished manuscripts, lecture notes, letters, and marginalia, Warren Montag provides a thoroughgoing reevaluation of Althusser's philosophical project. Montag shows that the theorist was intensely engaged with the work of his contemporaries, particularly Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, and Lacan. Examining Althusser's philosophy as a series of encounters with his peers' thought, Montag contends that Althusser's major philosophical confrontations revolved around three themes: structure, subject, and beginnings and endings. Reading Althusser reading his contemporaries, Montag sheds new light on structuralism, poststructuralism, and the extraordinary moment of French thought in the 1960s and 1970s.

"Like no one else can, Warren Montag brings to life in this wonderful book the adventure of Althusser's thought in all its excitement and brilliance."—Michael Hardt, coauthor of Declaration, "Warren Montag's reconstruction of the Althusserian journey into the hazardous territories of politics and philosophy gives us a fascinating account of the Marxist philosopher's trajectory, while illuminating his interactions with the major works of 'French theory.' There is no equivalent to Montag's interpretation, which rectifies many conventional notions and combines empathy with absolute mastery of the archive and the conceptual problems at stake. But Althusser and His Contemporaries is also a philosophical creation in its own right, delineating what I am tempted to call a negative eschatology: no doubt one of Althusser's most exciting 'aleatory' heritages."—Étienne Balibar, coauthor of Reading Capital, “Beg, steal, borrow, or even buy Warren Montag's book on Althusser, it is very good. While he suggests that there can be no last word on Althusser, Montag's work provides an impressive overview which is a delight to read.” , “...this will be a required resource on Althusser for the next generation of readers. Essential.” , "[T]his is a much-needed book. It extricates Althusser from the ‘gnawing criticism of mice’ and paves the way for a renewed interest in his work, one that takes into account the unpublished materials that emerged after his death – not only to make possible an analysis of the ‘late’ Althusser (the Althusser of the aleatory materialism explicitly elaborated in the 1980s), but also for a reconsideration of the Althusser of the 1960s and 1970s.”

Warren Montag is the Brown Family Professor in Literature, English and Comparative Literary Studies at Occidental College in Los Angeles. He is the author of Louis Althusser; Bodies, Masses, Power: Spinoza and His Contemporaries; and The Unthinkable Swift. He is editor of Décalages: A Journal of Althusser Studies.