Title: Althusser’s Dramaturgy and the Critique of Ideology
Abstract: An important part of the new interest for the work of Louis Althusser (1918–1990) has focused on his interpretation of “materialist theater,” as proposed in a famous essay from 1962. This is, in fact, hardly separable from discussing again the “pragmatic” reading of his theory of subjection and subjectivation in terms of interpellation and counterinterpellation offered by Judith Butler as early as 1997. In this essay, “performative” dimensions of Althusser’s critique of ideology are presented as a singular moment of crystallization within an open trajectory, leading from the discussion of theater as politics to the conceptualization of politics as theater. In the middle lies an enigmatic possibility of actively dislodging the voice of power from its concealed place of enunciation.