Void for a Subject: Althusser’s Machiavelli and the Concept of “Political Interpellation”

Abstract

This essay argues that Louis Althusser, in his posthumously published Machiavelli and Us, put forth a new concept of interpellation that significantly innovated on his previous theory of the interpellated subject as presented in the famous 1970 essay “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.” This new concept, which I will call “political interpellation,” is best understood against the background of two strands in Althusser’s philosophy: first, his engagement in the early 1960s with the notions of “contingency,” “beginning,” and “novelty” via Machiavelli; and second, his reflections on philosophy as a form of discourse, in the wake of his reflections on a theory of discourses dating from 1966.

Key Words:

• Louis Althusser
• Ideology
• Interpellation
• Niccolò Machiavelli
• Void

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Robyn Marasco, Banu Bargu, and the anonymous reviewer for their insightful comments on the early drafts of this article.

Notes

1 For recent attempts to investigate this problem, see, for instance, Ichida (2005) or (for the opposite view, which is developed through a reading of Machiavelli) Morfino (2013). Balibar (2015) offers a reading of Althusser’s theory of interpellation that fruitfully utilizes Althusser’s writings on theater. While indebted in various ways to their readings, my essay insists on the centrality of Althusser’s reading of Machiavelli for the development of a notion of the “political subject,” which is linked to his previous concept of interpellation. This dimension is also central (albeit in a different way) to Fourtounis (2013)—who also insists on the idea of an interpellation that comes from a “void”—and to Oulc’hen (2015).

2 Not long ago, Badiou (2011, 58–67) indicated that the subject, for Althusser, is always a function of the state.

3 The first manuscript of what would become Machiavelli and Us dates from 1972. The first substantial revision occurred in 1975–6 and primarily concerned the first chapter, on which we will focus mostly here.

4 The most interesting readings of the early course are certainly by Negri (1993, 1997) and Del Lucchese (2014).

5 In many other unpublished notes, Althusser (n.d.) insists on the same crucial point, stressing that Machiavelli “pense un fait non-accompli.”

6 This insistence that “fait à accomplir” and “beginning” are one and the same problem is what distinguishes, in my view, Althusser’s reading of Machiavelli from Negri’s (and Gramsci’s).

7 On the “void” in Althusser, in addition to the seminal work by Matheron (1998) see also Montag (2013); Fourtounis (2013), who also focuses on the void in Machiavelli and Us; and Kolsek (2013, 74), for whom the “void” is the “object par excellence of Althusser’s philosophy.”

8 Cf., also, Althusser (1993, 104).

9 In almost every note he took on Machiavelli between the 1970s and 1980s, Althusser stressed the rejection of the “origin” and its replacement with a “beginning,” as what can and cannot happen—in other words, as a contingent event. See Althusser (1993, 105).

10 Although I agree with Fourtounis on this, I am less convinced by his insistence that this subject is “an aspiring being aspiring to be,” a being “struggling for its existence,” as this seems to reintroduce a certain teleology.

11 Cf., among others, Althusser (1999, 22, 24, 26, 80).

12 “Determinate” because Machiavelli outlines very precise protocols for the new prince: how he should behave, what he should do, etc. But an “absence” because, in the discourse itself, politics is a blank.

13 According to Althusser (2003, 49; translation modified): “The ideological subject participates in person, is present in person in the ideological discourse, as is itself a signifier of that discourse.”

14 This has led some to read Machiavelli and Us from a Gramscian point of view, and they thus miss, in my opinion, the specific originality of Althusser’s reading. See, for instance, Lahtinen’s (2009, 136–9) reading of Althusser’s remarks on the utopian character of Machiavelli’s text, and see Fourtounis (2013, 54, 60n80).

15 Cf., Althusser (1999, 27–8) for the passage in which he refers to this part of Gramsci's argument.

16 Morfino (2013, 69) has stressed that Althusser’s reading of Machiavelli is directly opposed to Gramsci’s because of a radically different philosophy of history (as developed in particular in “The Underground Current of the Materialism of the Encounter” dating from 1982).

17 “Aleatory” is a late addendum (but does not change the meaning of the phrase).

18 Oulc’hen (2015) makes a similar point: “La notion d’interpellation prend alors un tout autre sens que celui que nous avons évoqué à propos des AIE: en effet, Machiavel ‘nous interpelle à partir d’un lieu qu’il nous appelle à occuper comme ‘sujets’ (agents) possibles d’une pratique politique possible.’ Cette interpellation n’indexe pas les individus sur des formes-sujets pré-esquissées dans la matérialité imaginaire immanente aux rapports sociaux; elle fait signe vers une forme-sujet qui reste entièrement à inventer.” I had not read this essay when I first wrote the original version of this paper in 2015, and I discovered it only recently. The (at least partial, in my view) convergence of our reflections on the notion of interpellation starting from Machiavelli cannot but signal that the problem is objectively present in Althusser and needs to be thought through. Furthermore, it seems to me that Oulc’hen’s essay opens a very interesting path for a reconsideration of the notion of “virtue,” which—I will admit—always remained a problem for me in my reading of Althusser’s Machiavelli.

19 See Althusser’s (n.d.) unpublished note.

20 “For Machiavelli, hazard or chance is always objective” (Althusser 1999, 107n21). Note that the text reads “Marx” instead of “Machiavelli,” obviously a mistake.

21 On this point, one could argue that Althusser encounters Gramsci again, but on a different level—i.e., on the level of the constitution of a collective subject. The specific (possible) functioning of “political interpellation” at the collective level of subject formation is a problem that remains to be explored. I thank Robyn Marasco and Banu Bargu for drawing my attention to this point with their precious observations on an earlier draft.