Louis Althusser: Contradiction and overdetermination



When: 4:30pm, Thursday 11th February 2016
Where: LHRI Seminar Room 1, 29–31 Clarendon Place (map)
Main Text: Althusser (1969) Contradiction and overdetermination (download)
Supplementary Text: Sparks (1996) Stuart Hall, cultural studies and Marxism (download)

The Quilting Points reading group is back for the second half of our Reading Stuart Hall series. Last semester we read Hall's own work, and this time we will read those who influenced him, starting with a chapter by Louis Althusser. Althusser's brand of Marxism was an important theoretical foundation of early cultural studies (see Sparks 1996), and we intend to follow the theoretical journey from those early structuralist leanings through to Hall's later encounters with Gramsci, Foucault, and others. The supplementary text by Colin Sparks offers an interesting and insightful history of the relationship between cultural studies and Marxism. As ever, Quilting Points is an inter- multi- cross- and counter-disciplinary reading group, and everyone is welcome to attend.

We look forward to seeing you there.

QP

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