Alain Badiou’s “The Althusserian Definition of Theory” lecture is available as an audio recording here.

Althusser seeks to destroy the opposition between theory and practice and seeks to replace the Real of production with practice. By destroying the dialectical relationship between theory and practice, Althusser develops a new form of materialism of production, not one based on social relations. For Althusser, theory is the result of practices. It is the abstract result of practices. Thus, the Althusserian discovery of theory is an immanent discovery of truth within the field of theoretical processes.

This lecture was given at Princeton University on December 6th, 2013. The conference was dedicated to the 50 year anniversary of the publication, “Reading Capital” by Louis Althusser.