Concrete Critical Theory: Althusser’s Marxism

HM and Haymarket welcome William Lewis and a panel of scholars for a launch of “Concrete Critical Theory: Althusser’s Marxism“ --------------------------------------------------------------------- This broadcast will discuss William Lewis’ new book Concrete Critical Theory: Althusser’s Marxism. Taking an analytic and historical approach, Lewis develops and defends Althusserian critical theory. This theory, it is argued, produces knowledge of how a particular class of people, in a particular time, in a particular place, is dominated, oppressed, or exploited. Moreover, without relying on a general notion of human emancipation, concrete critical theory can suggest political means for the alleviation of these conditions. Because it puts Althusser’s ideas in dialogue with contemporary social science and philosophy, the book as a whole makes contributions to Althusser studies, to Anglo-American political philosophy, and to current debates in the philosophy of the social sciences. --------------------------------------------------------------------- The discussants are: William Lewis: Professor of Philosophy at Skidmore College, New York. He has written extensively on Althusser and Marxist theory. Other books include Louis Althusser and the Traditions of French Marxism. (2005) and he is currently working editorially on W. A. Suchting Philosophical Papers I. 1953 – 1979, with Lawrence Dallman Juan Domingo Sanchez Estop: Currently linked with the Philosophy Center of the Université libre de Bruxelles and a senior translator at the Council of the European Union and is specialized in foreign policy matter. Author of Althusser et Spinoza : Détours et retours: Avec trois textes inédits de Louis Althusser sur Spinoza (2022) and La dominación liberal (2010). He is an advisory editor of the review Décalages (on Althusserian studies) Geoff Pfeiffer: Associate Professor of Philosophy and International and Global Studies , Worcester Polytechnic Institute. His most recent edited book is The Politics of Desire: Foucault, Deleuze, and Psychoanalysis (co-edited with Agustín Colombo and Edward McGushin). He is co-editor (with West Gurley) of Phenomenology and the Political (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016) and author of The New Materialism: Althusser, Badiou, and Zizek (Routledge, 2015). Co-editor (with Taine Duncan) of Philosophy in the Contemporary World: An International Journal and Book Reviews Editor for Human Studies: A Journal for Philosophy and Social Science Alejo Stark: Romance Languages and Literatures and Philosophy, University of Michigan Ann Arbor. He has written about Marx and the Latin American marxist tradition, early modern philosophy (Spinoza and Hobbes), and contemporary continental philosophy (Althusser, Deleuze and Derrida). In his previous life as an astrophysicist his research focused on modified theories of gravity, cosmology, and galaxy clusters. Chair: Panagiotis Sotiris (Hellenic Open University and Historical Materialism Editorial Board, author of ’A Philosophy for Communism: Rethinking Althusser’ )