Editing Louis Althusser (section)

==Legacy==
Since his death, the reassessment of Althusser's work and influence has been ongoing. The first wave of retrospective critiques and interventions ("drawing up a balance sheet") began outside of Althusser's own country, France, because, as Étienne Balibar pointed out in 1988, "there is an absolute taboo now suppressing the name of this man and the meaning of his writings."<ref name="AlthusserConference">{{cite book |last=Sprinker |first=Michael |author2=Kaplan, E. Ann |title=The Althusserian Legacy |url=https://archive.org/details/althusserianlega0000unse/page/1 |year=1993 |publisher=Verso |isbn=978-0-86091-594-2 |page=[https://archive.org/details/althusserianlega0000unse/page/1 1] }}</ref> Balibar's remarks were made at the "Althusserian Legacy" Conference organized at [[Stony Brook University]] by [[Michael Sprinker]]. The proceedings of this conference were published in September 1992 as the ''Althusserian Legacy'' and included contributions from Balibar, Alex Callinicos, Michele Barrett, Alain Lipietz, Warren Montag, and Gregory Elliott, among others. It also included an obituary and an extensive interview with Derrida.<ref name="AlthusserConference"/>

Eventually, a [[:wikt:colloquium|colloquium]] was organized in France at the University of Paris VIII by [[Sylvain Lazarus]] on 27 May 1992. The general title was ''Politique et philosophie dans l'oeuvre de Louis Althusser'', the proceedings of which were published in 1993.<ref>{{cite book |last=Badiou |first=Alain |title=Pocket Pantheon: Figures of Postwar Philosophy |date=July 2009 |publisher= Verso|isbn=978-1-84467-357-5 |page=192 |orig-year=21 }}</ref>

In retrospect, Althusser's continuing influence can be seen through his students.{{sfn|Lewis|2014}} A dramatic example of this points to the editors and contributors of the 1960s journal ''Cahiers pour l'Analyse'': "In many ways, the 'Cahiers' can be read as the critical development of Althusser's own intellectual itinerary when it was at its most robust."<ref>[http://www.web.mdx.ac.uk/cahiers/names/althusser.html Althusser Homepage at The Cahiers pour l'Analyse website] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100505175320/http://www.web.mdx.ac.uk/cahiers/names/althusser.html |date=5 May 2010 }}</ref> This influence continues to guide much philosophical work, as many of these same students became eminent intellectuals in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s: [[Alain Badiou]], Étienne Balibar and Jacques Rancière in philosophy, Pierre Macherey in [[literary criticism]] and [[Nicos Poulantzas]] in [[sociology]]. The prominent [[Guevarist]] Régis Debray also studied under Althusser, as did the aforementioned Derrida (with whom he at one time shared an office at the ENS), noted philosopher Michel Foucault, and the pre-eminent Lacanian psychoanalyst [[Jacques-Alain Miller]].{{sfn|Lewis|2014}}

Badiou has lectured and spoken on Althusser on several occasions in France, Brazil, and Austria since Althusser's death. Badiou has written many studies, including "Althusser: Subjectivity without a Subject", published in his book ''Metapolitics'' in 2005. Most recently, Althusser's work has been given prominence again through the interventions of [[Warren Montag]] and his circle; see for example the special issue of ''borderlands e-journal'' edited by David McInerney (''Althusser & Us'') and "Décalages: An Althusser Studies Journal", edited by Montag. (See "External links" below for access to both of these journals.)

In 2011 Althusser continued to spark controversy and debate with the publication in August of that year of Jacques Rancière's first book, ''Althusser's Lesson'' (1974). It marked the first time this groundbreaking work was to appear in its entirety in an English translation. In 2014, ''On the Reproduction of Capitalism'' was published, which is an English translation of the full text of the work from which the ISAs text was drawn.<ref name="thenewinquiry">{{cite web|url=http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/kill-the-philosopher-in-your-head/|title=Kill the Philosopher in Your Head|website=The New Inquiry|date=11 February 2014|access-date=9 January 2021}}</ref>

The publication of Althusser's posthumous memoir{{citation needed|date=October 2015}} cast some doubt on his own scholarly practices. For example, although he owned thousands of books, Althusser revealed that he knew very little about Kant, Spinoza, and Hegel. While he was familiar with Marx's early works, he had not read ''Capital'' when he wrote his own most important Marxist texts. Additionally, Althusser had "contrived to impress his first teacher, the Catholic theologian [[Jean Guitton]], with a paper whose guiding principles he had simply filched from Guitton's own corrections of a fellow student's essay," and "he concocted fake quotations in the thesis he wrote for another major contemporary philosopher, Gaston Bachelard."<ref name="Adair">{{cite web|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/getting-away-with-murder-its-the-talk-of-paris--how-louis-althusser-killed-his-wife-how-he-was-an-intellectual-fraud-its-all-in-his-posthumous-autobiographical-memoir-gilbert-adair-turns-the-pages-1530755.html|title=Getting Away with Murder|last=Adair|first=Gilbert|work=The Independent|date=23 October 2011|access-date=14 April 2014}}</ref>