How to Make Lasting Encounters: Althusser and Political Subjectivity

One criticism of Louis Althusser is that his theory of ideology and his conception of history as a process without a subject together underestimate the question of the subject and undermine any attempt toward a critical subjectivity. Althusser's work, however, from his emphasis on the conjuncture as a singular condensation of overdetermined contradictions to his later writings on lasting encounters, brings forward the open question of political agency. This article stresses the complexity of Althusser's theorization of political practices. It also attempts to criticize recent arguments favoring a return to the theorization of critical subjectivity. Finally, it discusses the possibility of a militant and critical nonsubjectivist conception of political agency and mass intellectuality based on the Althusserian tradition, on Lenin's, Gramsci's, and Mao's conception of the political party as a collective process of knowledge production, and on the democratization of knowledge within social movements.