1. On this point Althusser owes a great deal to Spinoza's concept of experientia vaga . Althusser credits Spinoza with the "first theory of ideology ever thought out in terms of (1) its imaginary 'reality'; (2) its internal inversion; (3) its 'center', the illusion of the subject" (Althusser 1976, 135). [BACK]

2. Hirst 1979 criticizes Althusser for positing an impossible essence (the human individual) prior to the interpellated subject and for equating the concept of a social subject with a single human individual. With regard to the first point, Althusser's distinction between individuals and interpellated subjects is simply a heuristic device expressing the process by which human beings are constituted as social beings. Althusser has always insisted that the individual is always already a subject. What Hirst really objects to, and this is the thrust of his second point, is Althusser's claim that it is only human beings that are the locus of interpellations. Hirst rejects this "theoretical humanism" on Althusser's part and insists that economic enterprises are also socially constituted subjects, each having its own individual existence, rights, and powers. I would not wish to understate the reality or the power of corporations. However, I would argue that their social "subjectivity" is of secondary, not primary, significance: only human agents act. [BACK]

3. The literature on Lacan is immense. Useful introductions to Lacan are Lemaire 1977; Bevenuto and Kennedy 1986; and Macey 1988. One should also consult two major collections of articles by or about Lacan published in Yale French Studies , volumes 48 and 55-56 (1972, 1977). Of particular importance in the context of the present work are Jameson 1977; Coward and Ellis

Page 382

1977; and Badiou 1982. Althusser's own support for Lacan's project is recorded in "Freud and Lacan" (in Althusser 1971, 189-219). Althusser became progressively estranged from Lacan's posturing, however, and finally denounced him as a "magnificent, pathetic Harlequin" (see Clément 1983, 20, 206-7 n. 14). My summary of Lacan follows that of Lowe 1982. [BACK]

4. In The Dominant Ideology Thesis , Abercrombie, Hill, and Turner (1980) attack Althusser for this monolithic view of ideology. However, they completely miss Althusser's emphasis on the non-normative aspect of ideology, which opens the way to the subjection/qualification contradiction developed by Therborn. As for the dominant thesis of The Dominant Ideology Thesis —that ideology is not important, that it has never assimilated the exploited classes of any social formation, and that under capitalist modes of productions it is not even essential to the reproduction of the social relations of production (since capitalism encourages diversity and relies on economic compulsion to keep it within "safe" limits)—it is at least arguable that the valorization of the "free individual" by the book's authors (who see it as symptomatic of the decline of capitalism) is in actuality a manifestation of a dominant ideology rather than a refutation of its existence. For an extended critique of Abercrombie, Hill, and Turner, see Therborn 1984. For a careful elaboration of the dominant ideology of individualism and its contradictions within the present American context, see O'Conner 1984. [BACK]

5. Althusser himself concedes this point in a personal communication to Therborn in which he states that he is "no longer prepared to defend the theoretical necessity of the notion ideological State apparatus," maintaining only that "the crucial point is to grasp the intrinsic link between the ideological apparatuses and the State" (Althusser, cited in Therborn 1980, 85). [BACK]

6. For the New Philosophy, see A. Glucksmann 1980 and Levi 1982. See also the special issue of Chicago Review (volume 32, number 3 [1981]) devoted to the New Philosophy. For critiques to which I am especially indebted, see Dews 1985; Lecourt 1978; and Poulantzas 1978. It is important, I believe, to distinguish the gauchisme of Rancière from the neo-conservatism of the New Philosophers. While Rancière 1985 makes some cogent criticisms of Althusser's science/ideology distinction (as developed in the context of Althusser's essay "A propos de l'article de Michel Verret sur 'mai étudiant'" [1969a]), for the most part they are vitiated by Rancière's extreme voluntarism and irrationalism. Rancière rejects any attempt to defend the relative autonomy of scientific practice and instead collapses scientific practice wholly into ideology. Whereas Althusser attempts to distinguish between the technical and social divisions of labor within the university apparatuses—defending the value of the former while condemning the deformations of the latter—Rancière maintains that the university must be viewed as an oppressive unity, the object of class struggle, not as a contradictory apparatus internally divided by class struggle. While Althusser may or may not be guilty of understating the class bias of the university apparatus, there is no reason to follow Rancière and reduce science to ideology (to be replaced by what? proletarian science?). Rancière continues to privilege ideological struggle and working-class voluntarism in The Nights of Labor: The Workers' Dream in Nineteenth-Century France (Rancière 1989), a work interesting for its iconoclastic attack on predominant interpretations of

Page 383

working-class consciousness (its supposed desire to remake the world according to a working-class image rather than to change their lives in order to escape from a working-class existence); however, this effort—fully consistent with an Althusserian concept of ideology, by the way—is flawed by Rancière's unrepentant contempt for structural determination and scientific realism. [BACK]

7. The French Nietzscheans Deleuze, Foucault, and Lyotard are critically discussed in Descombes 1980 and Callinicos 1982 (my account of Deleuze is based on that of Callinicos). For Foucault's appreciation of Deleuze, see Foucault 1980a, 165-96. For Deleuze's appreciation of Foucault, see Deleuze 1972. Donzelot 1979, one of the best works inspired by Foucault, amply demonstrates the affinity of Foucault and Deleuze.

There is a vast literature on Foucault. The "authorized" commentary is Dreyfus and Rabinow 1983; another sympathetic and thorough account is that of Foucault's translator Alan Sheridan (1980). More critical is Merquior 1985, which, unlike Dreyfus and Rabinow, gives full attention to the neo-anarchist Nietzschean element of Foucault's work. Merquior also provides a useful survey of the controversies that have emerged over Foucault's scholarship. For the relationship between Foucault and the New Philosophers, see Dews 1979 and 1984; Lecourt 1978; and Poulantzas 1978. For my part, I am building on the arguments of Dews and Poulantzas regarding the ontologizing and demonization of Power in Foucault's works of the seventies; see also Merquior 1985. On Foucault's early period, see White 1978 (my summary of Foucault's The Order of Things follows White's) and Dominique Lecourt's chapter on Foucault in Lecourt 1975. For Foucault's later work, see White 1979 and Megill 1979. For the influence of Deleuze on Foucault, see Callinicos 1982. Megill 1985 situates Foucault in the tradition of Nietzsche and Heidegger but is insensitive to the uniqueness of the French neo-Nietzschean Left represented by Deleuze. Both Deleuze and Althusser are, characteristically, absent from the pages of Rabinow and Dreyfus. Indeed, Foucault's negative dependence on Althusserian concepts (see Lecourt 1975) is a well-kept secret among Foucault enthusiasts in the United States. Sheridan acknowledges the possibility of Althusser's influence but angrily (if feebly) rejects it by repeating Foucault's own disclaimers (see Sheridan 1980, 214). On the postmodern Left, the uncritical acceptance of Foucault advances furthest in Poster 1984, where Foucault is depicted as the discoverer of a "mode of information" that has allegedly replaced the mode of production as the relevant critical concept for contemporary social theory. Without denying the importance of the technological revolution in information processing and control, I fail to see why it vitiates the concept of a mode of production any more than did the steamship revolution or the telegraph revolution. For another post-Marxist, postmodern interpretation of Foucault, see Smart 1983. Finally, for Foucault's relation to the tradition from Sade to Bataille, see Stoekl 1985 and Lash 1985. [BACK]