On Ideology (Radical Thinkers)

good condition, very happy :D

This slim volume was first published more than twenty years ago under the name Essays on Ideology . The book exists mainly as an inexpensive way to get Althusser's most widely read work, the essay "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: Notes toward an Investigation." Apart from that, it includes a few other works, seemingly haphazardly assembled around that essay: the "Response to John Lewis," the essay "Freud and Lacan," and the brief "Letter on Art." All of these are interesting, and the essay on Lacan is actually quite illuminating and helpful for any student of psychoanalysis -- but the volume doesn't really cohere, nor does it provide any of the best of Althusser apart from his single most famous (and hence most misunderstood) essay. If anything, this book represents '80s British Althusserianism better than it represents what Althusser himself wrote or thought. There are better choices. The wider selection provided in the volume Lenin and Philosophy is a more useful and worthwhile single-book representation of Althusser's thought, and also contains the famous essay on ideology, while For Marx gives a much more complete picture of Althusser's contribution to Marxist thought. This book, by contrast, will serve most of its readers as a thin wrapper around a single essay. (Also, disturbingly, no translator is credited in this edition, though the translation appears to be Ben Brewster's from the earlier edition.)

At first blush this volume appears to duplicate other publications of Althusser’s work already available. This volume consists of four articles written by Althusser for Paris journals at the time. Some remained only as that — articles written for obscure political broadsheet — and others were further expanded by Althusser in larger works. This is accessible Althusser. Together these essays comprise a good introduction to this political philosophy and it comes highly recommended. “Ideology and the State.” This essay was originally published in 1970 in the journal La Pensee. Althusser later expanded the themes discussed in this essay in the better-known, but only recently translated work, On the Reproduction of Capitalism. Some passages were repeated verbatim in this latter piece. While On the Reproduction of Capital is a fine work, this essay, On Ideology, stands on its own merits and can be read as an introduction of the larger work. Reproduction of Capitalism is a towering work, and there is simply too much for the reader to grasp at one or two readings and still get a short idea of what Althusser thinks of the Structuralism. Ideology and the State is a good summary of the main points of his thinking. “Reply to John Lewis.” This essay was originally published in 1972 through 1973 in Marxism Today, a periodical. It is a polemical work. John Lewis is not the Civil Rights leader but a British Unitarian minister and Marxist philosopher. Lewis was a leading exponent of the Humanitarian Marxism. Althusser, of course, was a structuralist. Sometimes defensive, sometimes sarcastic, and other times downright humorous, this essay can be read as his statement for Structural Marxism. While predominately polemical, this essay does have its rewarding moments. “Freud and Lacan.” This essay was originally published in 1964 in La Nouvelle Critique. “A Letter on Art in Reply to Andre Daspre.” This essay was originally published in 1966 in La Nouvelle Critique. While this essay is somewhat polemical, it is noteworthy in that Althusser discusses the Ideological State Apparatus as it applies to family structures. Polemics aside, this is a good collection of essays. It is a keeper.

exact product

The book is interesting overall, and it starts making more sense around the halfway mark. However, the translation of the first chapter is really bad. It seems like a word-for-word translation from French, making the language difficult to read and sometimes nonsensical. The translation gets much better from the second chapter onward. I personally ditched the book few times before convincing myself to go beyond the first chapter. Unbelievably bad translation.

Came in on time and in perfect condition

Great text, poor quality. The book just falls apart as you read it. Don't buy it if you plan to read it more than once. I don't plan to read it more than once, so on second thought, it is ok. You just have to detach the read pages as you do on a tear-off calendar. No need for a bookmark either.

Nice

The texture of the paper used for this book is too hard that on my first reading of it some pages were already falling out.

Unfortunately i couldn't read this book because i was disappointed from the first page. That is because the author is examining the subject of ideology under the prism of the marxist worldview. This means that objectivity is thrown out of the window and the reader has to deal with terms and ideas that are not of interest to him and are impossible to comprehend. Unless if the reader is a marxist himself, i don't see why anyone would be interested in reading this book. I know that is not correct to review a book that i haven't actually read but as a consumer i paid money for a product that i cannot actually use and i have to give it my one-star. I think it would have been more appropriate if the title of the book was "A marxist stydy on ideology" or something similar..