Category Archives: Louis Althusser

Books written by French professors while prisoners of war in World War II, and the Université de Captivité in Oflag XVII-A

There are many famous books written in prison, from Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy to Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks. Socrates’ final words in prison are dramatized by Plato in the Crito. The Marquis de Sade wrote some of his books in prison, and Miguel … Continue reading

Posted in Antonio Gramsci, Antonio Negri, Étienne Wolff, Emmanuel Levinas, Fernand Braudel, François Ellenberger, Georges Canguilhem, Hannah Arendt, Jean Cavaillès, Jean Wahl, Jean-Paul Sartre, Louis Althusser, Raymond Ruyer, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized, Walter Benjamin | 10 Comments

Hegel 13/13 – Columbia University Centre for Contemporary Critical Thought series

The seminars at the Columbia University Centre for Contemporary Critical Thought organised by Bernard Harcourt continue with Hegel 13/13. I was able to go to several of the Marx 13/13 series earlier this year, and the larger events are usually … Continue reading

Posted in Bernard E. Harcourt, Friedrich Nietzsche, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Henri Lefebvre, Jean-Paul Sartre, Judith Butler, Karl Marx, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Alexandre Kojève, Henri Lefebvre and the translation of Hegel’s Phenomenology

This is a revised, expanded and more fully referenced version of a post from March 2024. There is a Spanish translation of the earlier version here. Alexandre Kojève’s seminars on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, given at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in … Continue reading

Posted in Alexandre Kojève, Alexandre Koyré, Emmanuel Levinas, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Georges Bataille, Georges Canguilhem, Georges Dumézil, Hannah Arendt, Henri Lefebvre, Immanuel Kant, Jacques Lacan, Jean Hyppolite, Jean Wahl, Jean-Paul Sartre, Louis Althusser, Maurice Blanchot, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault, Stefanos Geroulanos, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Louis Althusser’s 1967-68 course on ‘philosophy for scientists’ – the resulting publications and the archive of its lectures

Louis Althusser’s seminars at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) are of course best known for the famous Reading Capital volume, which developed from his 1964-65 seminar. He ran seminars on the young Marx in 1961-62 and Lacan and psychoanalysis in 1963-64. I’ve … Continue reading

Posted in Alain Badiou, Etienne Balibar, Georges Canguilhem, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Pierre Macherey, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Giacomo Clemente, Knowledge, Ideology, Reproduction: The Scholastic Apparatus in Louis Althusser and the Althusserian School, trans. Fabio Gironi, Brill, July 2025

Giacomo Clemente, Knowledge, Ideology, Reproduction: The Scholastic Apparatus in Louis Althusser and the Althusserian School, trans. Fabio Gironi, Brill, July 2025 Knowledge, Ideology, Reproduction is the first book-length examination of the theses developed by Louis Althusser and his collaborators on the … Continue reading

Posted in Louis Althusser | 1 Comment

Samuel Mercer, The Ideology of Work: Theoretical Humanism, Work and Labour – Brill, 2024

Samuel Mercer, The Ideology of Work: Theoretical Humanism, Work and Labour – Brill, 2024 Expensive hardback and e-book only at present, but as with other volumes in the Historical Materialism series, to follow 12 months later as a paperback with … Continue reading

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“Foucault and Structuralism” – a book chapter for Daniele Lorenzini’s collection The Foucauldian Mind

I recently wrote a book chapter on “Foucault and Structuralism” for The Foucauldian Mind, edited by my friend and former Warwick colleague Daniele Lorenzini. It’s been an interesting diversion from the other work. Contrary to my usual practice, where I … Continue reading

Posted in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Georges Canguilhem, Georges Dumézil, Jacques Lacan, Jean Hyppolite, Louis Althusser, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Foucault, The Early Foucault, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Alexandre Kojève, Henri Lefebvre and the translation of Hegel’s Phenomenology

A revised and expanded version of this post is here as part of the Sunday histories series. Alexandre Kojève’s seminars on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, given at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in the years before the Second World War, … Continue reading

Posted in Alexandre Kojève, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Georges Canguilhem, Henri Lefebvre, Jean Hyppolite, Louis Althusser, Stefanos Geroulanos, Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Books received – Renou, Althusser, Safransky, Zumwalt, Woodard

Mainly bought second-hand for the Indo-European project, along with Sara Safransky, The City after Property: Abandonment and Repair in Postindustrial Detroit, sent by Duke University Press. The Rosemary LévyZumwalt book is the first part Franz Boas: The Emergence of the Anthropologist … Continue reading

Posted in Friedrich Nietzsche, Louis Althusser, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Uncategorized, urban/urbanisation | Leave a comment

Books received – Calvino, Malpas & White, Balibar, Villamizar, González and Astudillo, Saussure, Cheng

Some books bought or sent recently – Italo Calvino’s Six Memos for the Next Millennium, Jeff Malpas and Kenneth White, The Fundamental Field, Étienne Balibar’s Écrits pour Althusser, Carlos Salamanca Villamizar, Gabriela González and Francisco Astudillo (eds.), Estudios sobre la espacialización … Continue reading

Posted in Bartolus of Sassoferrato, Etienne Balibar, Italo Calvino, Jeff Malpas, Louis Althusser, My Publications, Neil Brenner, Uncategorized | 1 Comment