On Sat, 7 Feb 2009 05:30:54 -0800 (PST) Mehmet Cagatay <mehmetcagatayay...@yahoo.com> writes: > > Mr. Dumain, would you please clarify why you regard Althusserian > anti-humanism as a kind of "epater les bourgeois"?
The whole debate seems peculiarly French to me. In France since the 19th century humanism was seen as something that was closely tied to the bourgeoisie. Even someone like Sartre struggled over whether he was a humanist or not. He eventually decided that his existentialism was a kind of humanism, but one that was different from the kinds of humanism that the bourgeoisie typically embraced. In Sartre's case, I think he identified conventional bourgeois humanism with essentialism. Those humanisms posited a human essence, whereas for Sartre, existence preceded essence. In the French debates over humanism in the 1960s and 1970s, structuralists and poststructuralists like Levi-Strauss, Louis Althusser, and Michel Foucault attempted to push the critique of humanism much further than Sartre had been willing to go. Sartre's existentialism, as he realized, was still a humanism. He placed free will at the center of his conception of man. People, regardless of the circumstances that they might find themselves in, still retained their freedom, if only the freedom to redefine their situation in alternative ways. The French anti-humanists questioned this view in light of such developments in the human sciences like structural linguistics (which Levi-Strauss to generalize into a complete anthropology), psychoanalysis (i.e. the work of Lacan which enjoyed great currency in this period), and of course, Marxism. Althusser, was of course, a Marxist and long time member of the PCF. Foucault, who had been a student of Althusser, was a member of the PCF for a brief period of time. By the 1950s, he had renounced Marxism in favor of Nietzscheanism, although his work was still very much influenced by Marxism. Levi-Strauss, I believed, identified himself at this time as a Marxist, although his work doesn't strike me as being particularly Marxist. There were certainly differences in viewpoints between these people. Althusser doesn't seem to have been particularly enamored with Levi-Strauss's work, and he didn't like being called a structuralist. However, all these people's work, whether drawing from Saussure, Freud, Marx, Nietzsche, or Heidegger, all had certain themes in common. They all rejected the Sartrean emphasis on human freedom, instead emphasizing the extent to which human behavior is determined by structures of various sorts, whether these be linguistic structures, kinship structures, structures of epistemology (Foucault in this *The Order of Things*), social structures as represented by the mode of production and associated superstructures (i.e. Althusser), and so forth. They all rejected the traditional humanist idea that their exists an unchanging human essence which provides the basis for freedom and equality and human rights. For the French antihumanists, this conception was rejected as being ideological and/or metaphysical, and they drew variously upon Marx, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, in their critiques of humanism. > > Thank you in advance, > > > > Mehmet Çagatay > http://weblogmca.blogspot.com/ > > > --- On Fri, 2/6/09, Ralph Dumain <rdum...@autodidactproject.org> > wrote: > > > Althusserian and French anti-humanism in general > > is bullshit, the French intellectual's way of, as > > they say, epater les bourgeois. If "humanism" > > alludes to something else, then that should be > > decoded. And I think Tedman is quite mistaken. > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Marxism-Thaxis mailing list > Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu > To change your options or unsubscribe go to: > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis > > ____________________________________________________________ Click now for easy qualification on auto loans even with bad credit! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/PnY6rw4DjCERYK5gSSDrHjS4uhluxNytJa9bOdnXQvteZtsjDX5AF/ _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
