Theoretical Acupunctures: From Althusser to the Post-Althusserian Marxism of Robert Linhart

Abstract

Departing from an epistemological investigation into the limitations of the conjoined Althusserian problematic of concrete analysis and aleatory materialism, this essay aims to circumscribe the original features and possible present contributions of Robert Linhart's Marxism, arguing that, thanks to an enriched “philosophical conception of productive labor” preoccupied with a materialist understanding of the categories of finitude and normativity, Linhart's texts of the late 1970s and early 1980s offer fresh insights into the question of how subjective experiences, singularly aleatory cases, and properly experimental setups should be articulated. The essay claims that Linhart's Marxism displays the characteristics of an original post-Althusserian enterprise whose ultimate relevance lies in its interest in the adequate extension, operationalization, and rectification of concepts involved in Marxian social research.