COML 6485

The Althusserian Legacy

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2023-2024. Courses of Study 2024-2025 is scheduled to publish mid-June.

The work of Louis Althusser remains a central and canonical reference for contemporary theory, but also a historical reference of major importance for its intellectual history. Althusser not only taught or mentored an extraordinary range of intellectual figures in France (Badiou, Balibar, Derrida, Foucault, Macherey, Ranciere, etc), his basic concepts circulated through crucial social debates in Asia, Africa, and Latin America (humanism and anti-humanism, the articulation of modes of production, societies structured in domination). In his later years, Althusser's thought acknowledged surprisingly divergent filiations (Heidegger, Derrida) from the expected Marxian and psychoanalytic references, and his legacy became central to the foundations of Cultural Studies. This seminar will examine a wide range of developments and destinies for the theoretical legacies of Althusser and his close collaborators.

When Offered Fall.

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