Althusser (Louis) Archives

Althusserians Anonymous (the relapse)

February 26, 2016 • by McKenzie Wark

1. Old versus Young Marx I am a recovering Althusserian. For decades now I have been Althusser-free, for the most part, but we all have our lapses. The first step to becoming a recovering Althusserian is to recognize that you have no control and are unconsciously always a little bit Althusserian ...

Theory & Practice

Pasolini: Sexting the World

July 15, 2015 • by McKenzie Wark

His original and perceptive theory of neo-capitalism came from direct engagement with the problems of making a postwar, post-Fascist culture. His commitment to the Grand Old Cause of the people was both moral but also erotic, even carnal. He wanted – needed – to cock-suck the world. Such was his ...

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From Metaphyiscs to Meatphysics

June 10, 2015 • by McKenzie Wark

The mark of a major body of work is that it will support more than one interpretation, all of which are coherent and persuasive, and each of which is open-ended enough for further elaboration. So it is with Marx. But at least one possible path of interpretation and elaboration seems ...

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Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi

June 6, 2015 • by McKenzie Wark

Where Mario Tronti and Antonio Negri were born in the 30s, Berardi (1948) belongs with Paolo Virno (1952) and Silvia Federici (1942) to a second wave of Italian Marxist thinkers who grew out of the workerist current that struck out on its own path, diverging from the official Gramscian postures of the ...

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Cognitive Mapping

May 1, 2015 • by McKenzie Wark

I am inordinately fond of a crappy TV show called Leverage. Its about a little band of hackers, grifters and second-story artists who steal from the rich to give to the poor. Perhaps I like it because it reminds me of my favorite childhood TV show, The Adventures of Robin Hood. Made ...

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Laruelle’s Kinky Syntax

April 23, 2015 • by McKenzie Wark

Perhaps the most original and eccentric flavor of Marxism in these times is that of François Laruelle. Introduction to Non-Marxism, (Univocal, 2015) is a translation of a book from fifteen years ago, with a rather striking new last chapter. The world might now finally be ready for him. Here are some ...

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On Hito Steyerl

April 5, 2015 • by McKenzie Wark

Hito Steyerl is from that era when the politics of culture was all about representation. Sometimes the emphasis was on the question of who was represented; sometimes on the question of how. The latter question drove a series of inquiries and experiments in form. These experiments tended to focus fairly ...

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All Power to the {Historical} Imagination!

January 4, 2015 • by McKenzie Wark

Kojin Karatani’s The Structure of World History (Duke University Press, 2014) is an astonishing work of synthetic historical theory. Karatani views world history as a history of modes of exchange. He rejects the classical Marxist view of history though as modes of production, to which political, religious and cultural levels ...

All Power to the {Historical} Imagination!

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Notes on Zizek’s Absolute Recoil (2)

November 30, 2014 • by McKenzie Wark

When ever Marxists lift their attention from vulgar matters and start creating theories of the subject, it is always the bourgeois subject that seems to need theorizing. Perhaps there is no other kind. Althusser illustrates his theory of ideology with an anecdote about being hailed in the street by a cop: ...

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Spinoza on Speed

November 19, 2014 • by McKenzie Wark

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s, Empire (Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 2000) is a book I have always been ambivalent about. It is a kind of Spinozist-accelerationist epic. (As Benjamin Noys has usefully shown). Spinoza on speed. I admire the boldness with which it attempted to describe the situation that was ...

Theory & Practice

The Long Counter-Revolution

October 29, 2014 • by McKenzie Wark

I like to peek at what other people in coffee-shops are doing on their laptops. Sometimes it is spreadsheets. Very, vary rarely it is code. Practically everyone else is doing the sort of stuff that might get them labeled in today culture as 'creatives'. A 'creative' seems to mean anyone ...

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Althusserians Anonymous (4)

October 13, 2014 • by McKenzie Wark

This post has been revised here: https://publicseminar.org/2016/02/aa/ The real significance of Althusser is in the transition from a Marxism of the party to a Marxism of the academy. The means via which he got us from one to the other are now moot. It is rather like the fable of Captain Cook’s axe: ...