ABSTRACT
The work of Louis Althusser espouses a materialism which is deeply collusive with the process of objectification it purports to criticize. It is thus significant that Althusser’s ideas, often filtered through the works of his pupil Michel Foucault, have become the decisive influence on postmodern critiques of ideology. In particular, the anti-Hegelian aspects of Althusser’s thought – his emphasis on the materiality of ideas, his opposition to ‘totalizing’ systems of thought, his attack on the subject – have won an appreciative audience, and spawned a vogue for vulgar materialism which is only now beginning to subside.
