Althusserian´s legacy: Some notes for a reflection about the links between ideology, subjectivity and politics in Laclau, Badiou and Žižek

Abstract

This essay has a double aim. First of all, it seeks to introduce a framework in which it would be possible to evaluate the potential productivity of the concepts that Laclau, Badiou and Žižek had built to reflect about the political and its forms of subjectivation. As we shall see, although the authors seem not to notice that, this framework results from the “althusserian problematic”, configured around the interpellation/ subjectivity, as a process in which political identities take their form through the sedimented significations, and the overdetermination, that allows to indicate the contingent dimension in which all political subjectivity gets its shape through intervention. The second aim of the article is to question some of the ways in which Althusser’s contributions have been read so far, and emphasize the current validity of Althusser´s thought when it comes to reflect about the links between subjectivity and politics.