New Left Review I/176, July-August 1989

Joseph McCarney

For and Against Althusser

Gregory Elliott’s book appears at a time when the reputation of its subject seems near to total eclipse. [1] Gregory Elliott, Althusser: The Detour of Theory, Verso, London 1987, pp. 359. In Althusser’s own country he is, as Elliott reports, practically a ‘dead dog’, buried beneath ‘the settled anti-Marxist consensus among the majority of the French intelligentsia’. [2] Ibid., pp. 1–2. In Britain he is ‘largely absent from current Marxist debate, the high ground of which is occupied by an Analytical current that has declined a critical engagement with him’. [3] Ibid., p. 6. For Elliott this consignment to oblivion affords an opportunity, ‘the resurrection of Althusser’s intellectual and political career as history’. It makes possible a ‘reassessment’ of his work, a ‘more equitable presentation and appraisal’ of it than has hitherto been available. Elliott believes that such a ‘return to and reconsideration of’ Althusser would have a large significance. In particular, it ‘may aid a fuller appreciation’ of ‘some of the background to the present acute crisis of Marxism’. [4] Ibid., p. 7. It seems obvious that Elliott has set himself an ambitious and important undertaking. It promises a balanced view of a thinker who has been subjected to irrational extremes of abuse and adulation. Moreover, it offers the prospect of shedding a general light on pressing issues of contemporary intellectual life on the Left.

’My institution subscribes to NLR, why can't I access this article?’