The Future Lasts Forever: A Memoir

382 Pages·1995·33.42 MB·English

by  Louis Althusser

THE FUTURE LASTS
FOREVER
A MEMOIR
LOUIS ALTHUSSER
Edited by
Olivier Corpet and Yann Moulier Boutang
Translated by
Richard Veasey
The New Press
NHW YORK
Copyright © 1992 STOCK/IMEC
English translation copyright © 1993 by Richard Veasey
Introduction copyright © 1993 Douglas Johnson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced
in any form without written permission from the publisher
and author.
Published in the United States by The New Press, New York
Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.,
500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10no
Published in the United Kingdom in 1993 by
Chatto & Windus Limited, Random House, London.
Originally published in France in 1992 as L'avenir dure longtemps,
suivi de Les faits by Editions STOCK/IMEC.
ISBN 1-56584-087-9
LC 93-83621
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CONTENTS
Introduction, by Douglas Johnson vi
Editors' Foreword i
THE FUTURE LASTS FOREVER 11
THE FACTS 287
INTRODUCTION: LOUIS
ALTHUSSER 1918-1990
Louis Althusser was one of the most original and controversial of French
intellectuals: with Antonio Gramsci he was the most influential of western
thinkers on Marxism. His career as a philosopher had been spent entirely
at the prestigious institution of the Ecole normale superieure and his fame
was associated with the seminars that he held in that part of the University
of Paris. But after Sunday, November 16th 1980, his name became known
to a wider public in France. At eight or nine that morning he ran from
his rooms into the courtyard of the Ecole, wearing a dressing-gown
over his pyjamas. He was shouting dementedly: 'My wife is dead, my wife
is dead', he cried again and again and again. The resident doctor at the
Ecole normale, Doctor Etienne, was called and came immediately. He
found that she was indeed dead. But by then Althusser was shouting, 'I
killed my wife, I strangled her, I've killed her'. He was in a terrible state of
confusion and excitement, and as he wandered about his screams attracted
considerable attention, especially from students who stood around, bewil
dered, not knowing what they could, or should, do.
Doctor Etienne had known Althusser for many years and he, better
than anyone, knew that he had a long history of mental instability. He
went to the Director of the Ecole normale and told him that the police
would have to be called. It appears that the Director not only did this,
but that he also consulted various authorities as to what should be done.
As a result of these consultations it was decided that Althusser should be
taken immediately to the mental hospital of Sainte-Anne where he had
been a patient on several occasions. Thus when the police from the local
commissariat arrived, Althusser had already disappeared, the ambulance
taking him to the hospital having left some ten minutes earlier.
At first the police could find no trace of strangulation on the dead
woman's throat. Nor were there any signs of violence. It seemed possible
that Althusser, overwhelmed by this death, had, in his despair, imagined
that he was responsible. It was only the next day, after the post-mortem,
VI
Introduction
that it was discovered that Helene Althusser had, in fact, been strangled
and that her windpipe had been broken by force.
An examining magistrate was appointed. He went promptly on the
evening of November 17th to the hospital, Sainte-Anne, in order to inform
Althusser that he was accused of Voluntary homicide'. But there he was
told that Althusser was in a state of total mental collapse and that he
was incapable of understanding the legal procedure. He could not be
served with any warrant. The magistrate had no alternative but to appoint
a panel of three psychiatrists, who were to examine Althusser. After
receiving their reports, more than two months after the murder, the magis
trate declared that there would be no further proceedings. In French terms,
he declared a non-lieu (in English law the term non-suit, or 'no grounds'
is usually used), a refusal to order prosecution.
Althusser stayed in hospital until 1983. He then went tojiye, byjiimself,
in the north of Paris, well away from the Latin Quarter where the Ecole
normale is situated/He was regularly visited by a few loyal friends, who
helped him in many ways. They included his former pupil, Regis Debray,
who had fought with Che Guevara but who, by then, was adviser to
President Mitterrand. He gave a few interviews, usually about philosophy
and psychology. He wrote the occasional letter to the press, sometimes
protesting that his work had been misunderstood or that parts of it had
been published without his consent. He read books that were written
about him (his copy of Gregory Elliots study of his work, The Detour
of Theory, was copiously underlined and commented upon). Since he often
said that others were always ready to talk about him whilst he never had
the opportunity to talk about himself, he wrote these two versions of his
autobiography, Les Faits and UAvenir dure Longtemps> and told his life
story to his biographer Yann Moulier Boutang, in whom he had complete
confidence. From time to time, in his despair, he would walk in the streets
of northern Paris, a shabby, ageing figure, and would startle passers-by as
he shouted cJe SUIS le grand Althusser'. He was always in and out of
hospitals. It was in one of them, in the department of the Yvelines, that
he died of a heart attack on October 22nd 1990. He was 72.
Althusser usually aroused strong feelings. The circumstances of his
wife's death added scandal to polemics. There were those who claimed
that he should have beenj^rrjes^iiyi November 16th. Itjgas suggeste^that
ip
an ol3-boy network was functioning lrTTavouF of a criminal. For a lone
- •**• -.. .^....._ ..,.^^-"-** . —«•--'•'j^s'"w-'*'-^^^u*^^ °
v 1 I J
time it was expected that there would be a trial, and some newspapers had
looked forward with relish to a court scene where the most controversial
of philosophers would call, as a witness for the defence, the most contro-
Vll
Introduction
versial of French psychiatrists, Jacques Lacan. When this did not happen
and the non-lieu was announced, disappointment gave rise to further
complaints. It was pointed out that Althusser was a communist and that
his major contribution to intellectual life had been his re-statement of
Marxism. The government in power was in no way left-wing (it was some
months later that the socialists were elected^ Jhiitit wjg ajlefledthat
all French governments were soft on mtellectuaTs, particularly....Left-wing
intellectuals. After all General de Gaulle himself had given the ojder that
Jean-Paul Sartre should not be troubled by the police when he was ^jting
w
provocatively In public demonstrations ('one does not arrest Voltaire', the
Gejneraj js_ supposed to have said). Similarly it was murmured that smart
Parisians liked to talk about Althusser and his theories, as if they under
stood them. It was because he was an intellectual, a fashionable^Marxist
zndj^normalien with powerful connections, that he had been able xo kill
hisjyife and get away with it. There were reports that even when he was
in hospital and undergoing treatment, he had been allowed to go out and
to walk the streets of Paris. There were those who were more sympath
etic to the unfortunate victim than to the man who had killed her and
who was, after all, alive and living in Paris, even if admittedly, he was far
from well. This resentment surfaced again, both in England and France,
when he died.
The Ecole normale superieure has produced some of the greatest figures
of French intellectual, scientific and political life. Entrance is by competi
tive examination and once the students are there they prepare for another,
particularly arduous competitive examination, the aQreoation. The title of
agrege gives many privileges to those who hold it, especially to school
and university teachers, and it can serve as a passport to many desirable
positions. In July 1939 Althusser, then aged twenty, succeeded in passing
the entrance examination. He was placed sixth in the order of admission,
having particularly distinguished himself in Latin. But he had to do his
military service, and he got caught up in the war, and then in the defeat
of France. As he describes in his autobiography, in June 1940 he was
captured by the Germans, in Brittany, and transferred to a prisoner-of-
war camp in Schleswig-Holstein. He was there for more than four and a
half years. Only after the liberation, in 1945, was he able to begin his
university career and to start working for the agregation in philosophy.
It was in the autumn of 1947 that I met Althusser. On my first evening
as a student at the Ecole normale I sat next to him, by chance, at dinner.
He was particularly pleasant to me, a British student of history who knew
no one in Paris, and the next day he suggested that I should continue to
Vlll
Introduction
have lunch and dinner at the table for eight which he shared with other
philosophers. I therefore saw him regularly. I learned that his room was
in the sanatorium (or Infirmerie) and I was told that this was because he
was fatigue, still suffering from his experience as a prisoner-of-war. Our
relationship became closer when I too moved to the Infirmerie. I stayed
as long as I could (since there I had a room to myself and was not obliged
to share), and for some time Althusser and I were the only students
present. It was then that I met Helene Legotien, or Rytman, who became
his companion and later his wife.
In 1948 Althusser passed the agregation in philosophy. He was immedi
ately made tutor at the Ecole and given certain administrative functions.
From then onwards I saw less of him, especially when I returned to
England, but we continued to meet in Paris. From him directly, particularly
when I gave a course of lectures at the Ecole, and from friends, I learned
about three important elements in his life. The first was that he had joined
the Communist Party and had embarked upon a major re-interpretation
of Marx. This surprised me, because in 1947 and 1948 he had, in conver
sations, shown little interest in either politics or Marxism.
It so happened that I had been planning to go to Prague about the time
that the Communist coup took place in 1948. Jacques Le Goff, now a
distinguished French historian, had been in Prague and he came to see me
in the Infirmerie. He gave a fascinating account of what was happening
there, but Althusser, who was in my room at the time, was in no way
concerned. He grew impatient and said that he would be late for lunch.
He had often told me that he intended to write his thesis on the Scottish
philosopher David Hume, and had embarrassed me by asking my advice
on this project. There was no mention of Marx.
He subsequently embarked on a study of French classical philosophy
(which produced a short but perceptive book on Montesquieu). However,
I learned that his articles, at first unnoticed, and then misunderstood,
were becoming important and were seen to be challenging some of the
orthodoxies then reigning in the French Communist Party. As is well
known, this work culminated in the famous seminars and in the publication
of such works as Pour Marx and Lire 'Le Capital'. Written in collaboration
with two or three colleagues, and appearing in 1965, these were regarded
as a fundamental renewal of Marx's thought.
The second thing I learned concerned his health. I had not known that
before I met him, in 1947, he had received electric-shock treatment at
Sainte-Anne and that he had come near to postponing his third year.
From the 1950s onwards he was under constant medical attention and
IX
Introduction
undergoing analysis. It is true that his illness sometimes involved^ the
element of the practical he stopped students in the corrj^oj;
and asked..themt who he was,^ana tol'cTtEern tKat he had forgotten his
name, it. seemed toman^Jtlut he was; playIhg a game wjth them. He
wante3 to see how they would react. BmTih'eTe Vames were r^oEab,lya
means of dealing with j^he^jrealit^ jof his alarming lapses of memory: afjej^
having edited and translated a number of Teuerbach's writings (published
in i960) he claimed that he hadtotally foreott^eja Jxajdog-.doil^ this. His
dependence on psychiatry was enhanced by his interest in Freud, and as
he embarked on his textual examination of Marx he was struck by its
similarity to the work that Jacques Lacan was carrying out on Freud. The
renowned seminars that the two men held emphasised this parallelism.
The third fact that I learned about Althusser over this period was the
overwhelming importance to him of Helene Legotien, whose real name
was Helene Rytman. She was his companion from 1946, although he only
married her thirty years later. Helene, who was eight years older and
who was of Lithuanian origin although she was born in France, was the
dominating influence. Apart from his mother and sister, she was the most
important woman in his life. He was totally dependent on her, whether
in terms of his health, his teaching, his publications, his friends. I once
asked one of the philosophers who had shared our table at meals whether
we should call on Althusser. 'Oh no/ he replied, 'that woman who holds
him would not allow it', ('cette femme qui le tient' was the phrase he
used). She revised his writings, sometimes adding to them and sometimes,
at the last moment, removing whole sections, although Althusser denied
this. Critics (and enemies, needless to say) claimed that there was an
element of affectation in this relationship. Although there were times when
Althusser despised and detested Sartre, it was said that he was jealous of
him. So he too would have his Simone de Beauvoir, an intellectual com
panion who vetted as well as promoted. But I thought that there was little
pretence in his dependence on her, especially after he stayed with me in
London in the late 1970s. Helene was then in the south of France. |He
would telephone her at least twice a day. Before speaking to my seminar
he asked for a recording machine, so that he could send her the tape of
his talks. He constantly evoked the necessity of consulting her. Why then
did he kill her?)
What was the nature of their long relationship? Readers of the autobiog
raphy must judge for themselves. Was it that she brought to him a past
of revolutionary action (however controversial), and that he was for her
the potential revolutionary hero that she had always dreamed of (however
Introduction
unstable)? It was a relationship of mutual possessiveness, of shared fragilit
ies, of implacable suspicions. But why then did he kill her?
For some there is no mystery. Althusser_ had suffered from mental
instability all his life. He was a manic depressive who was getting progress
ively worse, and some sort of dramatic climax was inevitable. His auto
biography shows how he suffered as a child and as a young man. He
portrays himself constantly as the victim and this work is his escape from
his 'tombstone of the non-lieu, of silence and public death'.
Sometimes he himself was responsible for the silence. When we were
students I rememher^ tilling him that there was a good deal of interest
surrounding^Michel Foucaulj^Ahen in his second year, who had begun his
study of how madness was treated by visiting the Sainte-Anne hospital
and questioning doctors and patients. He was then contemptuous of Fou-
cault. 'Thevjshould keep him x\\ere.\ he said. Therejyj^nojnejitjon o£his.
having been there rnmself^nly.^fe^^mootlu^arl[er, whejnMKe had been
J
seriously ill.
Electric shock treatment, different methods of analysis, constant medi
cation, none of these could prevent the depressions from progressing and
getting worse. There were times when he would turn up to a meeting
and dominate it. On a celebrated occasion in 1961 he orchestrated a
debate with Sartre, and to the delight of his students, he devastated him.
But thej$£ j ^^ hyperactivity were inevitably followed by periods
of depression, inactivity and isolation. Each article was written, each sem-
jnar_was.CQn4uQ.ted, with the thought that everything had to be done
before the ne^t Qns}^ He set out to write" a book with a
colleague, but had to withdraw, and the colleague, and pupil, Etienne
Balibar, had to complete the work on his own. It's significant that many
of his contributions take the form of short articles or interviews. As he
grew older his pessimism increased. People who visited him at the Ecole
normale found that his room was always in disorder, but then they saw
that it was a disorder that did not change. The papers lying on the floor,
and gradually turning yellow, had been there for a long time. He was not
renewing himself and he was aware of this. He passed the summer of 1980
in hospital. On November 3rd, overcome by depression, he arranged to
have a month's leave. There followed the tragic events of November 16th.
In an amateurish way, which can claim the rights of common sense, one
can say that something had to snap. And it did.
But can we consider the fate of the Althussers without reflecting on the
type of philosophy that made Louis Ahhusser famous? Did its impersonal
nature have its effect on his behaviour?
XI