A Marxist Education of the Encounter: Althusser, Interpellation, and the Seminar

Abstract

This essay traces out a new organization of Louis Althusser’s work that rests on his fundamental educational problematic: interpellation. There are three moments where Althusser discusses education in his writings: in the famous essay on schools as Ideological State Apparatuses, in his infamous essay on the university and the pedagogical function, and in a much more obscure reference to trade unions. In all three, Althusser is dealing with the problem of interpellation, yet none of these essays enable us to actually theorize what Althusser’s own practice of the seminar offers as educational logic—a practice that resulted in the student-teacher collaboration Reading Capital. In short, whereas the Institutional State Apparatus interpellates individuals and the trade union offers a counterinterpellation, the seminar is a form of disinterpellation that must be thought of as the educational unconscious of Althusser’s late writings on the encounter.