Ideology and Therapeutic Analysis of Language: Althusser and Wittgenstein”

KARCZMARCZYK, PEDRO

Rethinking Marxism. A journal of economics, culture & society

Routledge-Association for Economic and Social Analysis (AESA), University of Massachusetts-Amhers

Lugar: Washington; Año: 2011

0893-5696

This paper deals with a convergence between the positions of Wittgenstein and Althusser. The discussion on the political implications of Wittgenstein’s thought has been centered around the possibility (or impossibility) of constituting critical standpoints on the state of the social, its legitimacy, its scope and force. However, likening Wittgenstein to a materialistic position in an Althusserian sense leads to an understanding of criticism that is not related to the soundness of its grounds (of their warranty as a point of view), but to the effects of deconstructing the philosophical discourse which seeks to unify and to arrange hierarchically the evidences (certainties) constitutive of the different language games in which the social is displayed. As a conclusion we will make some remarks on a distinction -borrowing both from Wittgenstein and Althusser- between philosophy as ideological theoretical practice and as critical theoretical practice that follows from our analysis.