Marxism and Psychoanalysis. The Impossible Encounter (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Westem Marxist Concept of Ideology Critique
Louis Althusser's essay, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses", which appeared English in 1971 as a chapter in his book entitled Lenin and Philosophy, reinvigorated Marxist literary criticism in the West. Before Althusser's essay was published, most Western critics held the. Hegelian view that ideas (including those expressed in literature) drive historical change. Traditional Marxist criticism presented the opposing view. Following the Marxist understanding of base and superstructure, it was assumed that the economic conditions and relations of production (base) were simply refl ected in cultural phenomena such as literature (superstructure). Literature, in this view, was inevitably an expression of ideological "false consciousness" supporting oppressive political and economic relations. But Marx himself suggested that the simple "reflection" role was not adequate. If the Greek tragedies of Sophocles were simple reflections of the economic conditions of ancient Greece, he asked, why were they still popular? Building on Marx's materialist account of language and consciousness, Althusser makes two significant advances over the traditional understanding of ideology. First, he rejects as an oversimplification the concept of ideology as merely false consciousness. For Althusser, there is no unmediated access to truth; all consciousness is constituted by and necessarily inscnbed within ideology. Second, for Althusser, there is no clear dividing line between base and superstructure. Ideology effectively "produces" social subjectivities and mediates the subject's experience of reality. On the one hand, this theory points to openings for revolutionary change. Since it is a corruptible material phenomenon, the superstructure can never perfectly reflect the base. On the other hand, since language and consciousness are material products, phenomena such as literature have real material effects. Ideology can be a "soft" insidious extension of the power of a repressive state apparatus. Constant, vigilant critique of ideology is required in order to resist reactionary tendencies and promote emancipatory revolution.
Underdetermined post-Marxism: insights of Althusser's quest
To what extent, if at all, does Louis Althusser’s innovative use of Freud’s concept of ‘overdetermination’ contribute both to the reworking of Marxist political theory, and to the development of a viable materialist analysis of the social and political world? This paper elaborates and evaluates the theoretical writings of Althusser and Laclau and Mouffe, set within a critical contextualization and appraisal of Marx, Hegel, and Freud and Lacan’s development of psychoanalytical theory. Through a subtle and detailed account of Althusser’s “deconstruction” and reworking of the materialist dialectic, this paper shows that Althusser’s objectives were both to separate Marx’s understanding of the dialectic from Hegel’s and to criticize economistic and mechanistic variants of historical materialism. Yet, paradoxically, his efforts were unsuccessful in seeking to conserve the basic assumptions and parameters of the Marxist paradigm. Nonetheless, the concept of “overdetermination” as developed in For Marx makes possible a richer and more flexible kind of materialist social and political analysis.
The Uncertain Future of Ideology: Rereading Marx
The Sociological Quarterly, 1994
Throughoput its history, "ideology" (the concept and theory) served as social science's foil, an opposing standard against which it defined its own knowledge-as-truth. As social science since mid-century has undergone changes in its idea of itself and its methods of inquiry, the theory of ideology has served as register, visably recording these changes. Works by the structuralists and poststructuralists, especially Althusser and Foucault, forced upon social theorists a profound rethinking of power and its operations and moved "ideology" away from the theory of false consciousness towards a view of ideology as cultural practice. For some, ideology theory is obsolete (due to its classical roots as "false consciousness") or redundant (due to its links to "culture"). Despite the merits of these arguments, a provisional argument on behalf of ideology theory is offered.
Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society, 2023
Can deconstruction be accomplished not through the close reading of just one discourse, but through its combination with another? This paper aims at exploring this second way of performing deconstruction through a particular case study: Marxism and psychoanalysis. In the body of the essay, the history of Freudo-Marxism is divided into two parts, depending on which psychoanalyst stands as point of reference: Freud or Lacan. We proceed by studying the four main strategies by virtue of which a genuine combination between Marxism and psychoanalysis has been historically attempted: separation (Reich), domination (Marcuse), contradiction (Althusser) and, finally, deconstruction (Laclau).
Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses
LOUIS ALTHUSSER builds on the work of Jacques Lacan to understand the way ideology functions in society. He thus moves away from the earlier Marxist understanding of ideology. In the earlier model, ideology was believed to create what was termed "false consciousness," a false understanding of the way the world functioned (for example, the suppression of the fact that the products we purchase on the open market are, in fact, the result of the exploitation of laborers). Althusser explains that for Marx "Ideology is [...] thought as an imaginary construction whose status is exactly like the theoretical status of the dream among writers before Freud. For those writers, the dream was the purely imaginary, i.e. null, result of the 'day's residues'" (Lenin 108). Althusser, by contrast, approximates ideology to Lacan's understanding of "reality," the world we construct around us after our entrance into the symbolic order. (See the Lacan module on the structure of the psyche.) For Althusser, as for Lacan, it is impossible to access the "Real conditions of existence" due to our reliance on language; however, through a rigorous"scientific" approach to society, economics, and history, we can come close to perceiving if not those "Real conditions" at least the ways that we are inscribed in ideology by complex processes of recognition.
Ideology, False Consciousness, and Beyond: The Marxian Critique of Ideation
Marxism & Sciences, 2023
This article explores Marx and Engels’ infamous theory of ideology, which I argue is best understood as a critique of ideation. The piece explores what the pair did and did not say about ideology and similar concepts, focusing on six key terms: alienation, mystification, commodity fetishism, social consciousness, ideology, and false consciousness. I read across the Marxian corpus, from The 1844 Manuscripts and The German Ideology to the three volumes of Capital and Engels’ late writings. Along the way, the article advances two fundamental claims: 1) Marx and Engels’ views on ideation are more multifaceted than is often assumed; 2) the two authors provide a broad lexicon for the critique of ideation, one that allows for the construction of a dynamic portrait of consciousness within the social totality of capitalism. Ultimately, the account is not designed as a master theory meant to replace all other forms of analysis, Marxist or not. As a result, the critique of ideation operates in tandem with their other intellectual contributions (to economics, history, and the like). Further, it is compatible with perspectives from aesthetics, the natural sciences, and a range of other disciplines. Even so, it offers potent resources for analyzing forms of thought under capitalism, supplementing larger discussions within Marxism and without.
Psychoanalysis and Marxist psychology
New Ideas in Psychology, 1986
The deceptively trendy title of this book conceals a thoroughly unfashionable topic, the relation between the theories of Freud and Marx. Just mentioning this topic in "progressive" circles today is enough to raise cries of disbelief and groans of boredom. Everyone seems to be satisfied that it is either exhausted, or not worth raising. Those who think the former usually do so because they are content with Frankfurt-style syntheses, or with a Lacanian "reading" of Freud. Those who think the topic not worth raising tend to dismiss Freud -especially if they have been reading Foucault, Donzelot or Caste1 -as merely a social technician.
Ideology and Unconsciousness: Reich, Freud and Marx
Telos, 1982
A second sort of difference between contemporary American and West German cultural structures, overlooked by an exclusively "derivative" approach, is suggested more implicitly by Hirsch's discussion. The ideological topography of political debate seems to shine through his account. Aside from the conservatives and reformists of the established parties, two significant positions appear locked in confrontation: the socialist leftists, accused of academic bourgeoisification and accusing their opponents of quietism or tacit conservatism, while these opponents-at least in Hirsch's narrative-express their position with repeated reference to Foucault. Thus, integrated Marxists, tied to the state ideologically and professionally, are counterposed to the decentered groupings where political analyses foreground the positivism of power. Clearly the West German Foucault reception is considerably more political than the American, while German academic Marxism is probably much less structuralist than here. "French theory" plays a different role in the American scholarly (especially literary critical) establishment then it does in the European social movements. Hirsch s account does not address ideological issues extensively, although the competition between Marxism and a post-structuralist tendency functions as a hidden agenda to his discussion of new political conflicts.