Problematic, Symptomatic Reading and Ideology: A Textual Reading of Althusser

Author: Zhang Yibing
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-07-01
Features: This book is the first academic monograph in China to study the philosophical thought of the renowned Western Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser through the interpretive method of textual studies. The research primarily focuses on Althusser's three classic texts: The Defense of Marx, Reading Capital, and Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. The author meticulously reveals the long-overlooked implicit methodological framework in Althusser's research, which is primarily a problematics and symptomatic reading method within the context of the history of epistemology as a deep theoretical structure. Here, the author employs the theoretical "counterstrike" writing method for the first time, interweaving deconstructions and postmodern dissolutions of Althusser's logical core in the appendices. The long-concealed Althusserian epistemological research, as well as the most influential ideology theory in contemporary Western cultural critique, particularly the concept of ideological state apparatuses, are fully presented in the book. Additionally, the book offers a fresh interpretation of Althusser's historical reading of Marx, providing in-depth analyses of key concepts such as the "break" in Marx's philosophical development, his "theoretical rejection of humanism," and the idea that "history is a process without a subject."