robscis, camille, china in our heads. 74649782

7/30/2019 Robscis, Camille, China in Our Heads. 74649782

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Social Text 110 Vol. 30, No. 1 Spring 2012

DOI 10.1215/01642472-1468317 2012 Duke University Press

In a 1972 interview titled Pamphlet against the Sinophobes, the Ital-ian writer and Communist activist Maria-Antonietta Macciocchi, havingjust returned rom a trip to China, praised the Cultural Revolution asa model or the West. Instead o clinging to the ideal socialism o theSoviet Union, Macciocchi urged her readers to look toward the originalsocialism unolding in China. Only Mao Tse-Tung Thought had beenable to seize and dominate the contradictions o Marxist philosophyand politics. The Cultural Revolution, Macciocchi continued, is arst response to this historical set o questions and this is why I havespoken about China as an (illuminating) act or our history, in the aceo the workers movements crisis. Macciocchi, who was close to manyimportant French thinkers o the time, including Jean-Paul Sartre, MichelFoucault, Jacques Lacan, and Louis Althusser, concluded that the revo-lution ought to be pursued at the level o ideology and, citing Althusser,within the ideological state apparatuses.1 As various critics have pointedout, the China that seduced so many Maoist French intellectuals dur-ing the 1960s and 1970s had less to do with the reality o the Communistnation than with the French political, social, and cultural context o the

time. China operated as a projection screen or a French Revolution-ary tradition that, according to some like Richard Wolin, was exhaustingitsel, or, according to others like Kristin Ross, was reinvigorated in the1960s.2 China was also, as dierent scholars have suggested, an Orien-talism, a misreading, a dream, a utopia, a antasy, a weltanschauung, anepistemology through which French intellectuals could work out variouso the political and aesthetic questions that preoccupied them during

China in Our HeadsAlthusser, Maoism, and Structuralism

Camille Robcis


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those years.3 When the students o the Maoist organization la GaucheProltarienne (GP) reerred to the China in our heads, they seemedaware o this antasmatic construction in which the signier matteredmore than the signied. But their motto, China in our heads, couldalso be understood in light o Macciocchis quote, as a call or a revolu-tion in ideology, a revolution in our heads, the only revolution possiblegiven the historical crisis acing French Communism in the 1960s. Bytriggering China in our heads, the radical let would no longer ocus onacquiring the means o production; rather, it would start to think aboutrelations oreproduction.

The problem o reproduction was also central to much o Frenchphilosophy during those years. Thinkers as dierent as Jacques Lacan,Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Flix Guattari, andLuce Irigaray oregrounded the question o psychic subjection, or assu-

jetissement, in the sense o being subject to power but also constituted by

it. The philosophical contributions o these authors cannot, o course,be simply understood as documents, as symptoms o this particularFrench context, but it is undeniable that what Macciocchi reerred to as thehistorical crisis o the workers movement did infuence at least some othese gures. Deleuze and Guattari claimed, or instance, that theirAnti-Oedipus, published in 1972, was an attempt to wrestle with the questionslet unanswered by the aborted revolution o May 68. Our startingpoint, Guattari explained, was to consider how during these crucialperiods, something along the order o desire was maniested throughoutthe society as a whole, and then was repressed, liquidated, as much by the

government and police as by the parties and so-called workers unions and,to a certain extent, the letist organizations as well.4 The explanation orwhy workers systematically acted against their interests and sabotaged theirown potential emancipation had to lie somewhere else, namely at the levelo subjectivity. Subjects had been conditioned to think and act a certainway through a particularly insidious process Deleuze and Guattari cal ledOedipalization.5

Althussers 1970 essay Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses(ISA) was also concerned with the reproduction o the conditions o

production. As Althusser amously argued, ideology was the imaginaryrelationship o individuals to their real conditions o existence.6 Ideologywas the unconscious mechanism through which individuals were coerced,but also the way individuals were produced, interpellated as subjects.LikeAnti-Oedipus, Althussers text was deeply shaped by the crisis oFrench Marxism in the late 1960s. Ideology, in this sense, was Althussersway o introducing China in our heads. For i the ISA article engagedprimarily with Marx, it was also a conversation with Maoism, or morespecically with what circulated in France as la pense mao ts-toung.


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Indeed, throughout the 1960s, Althusser attentively read Maos writings,which were translated in our volumes published between 1962 and 1968.He also ollowed Chinese politics closely, especially during the CulturalRevolution, through the Chinese Communist Partys newsletters Pkininformation and Les cahiers de la Chine nouvelle, which he received regularly.7While Althusser never let the French Communist Party (PCF), which hehad joined in 1948, many o his most brilliant students in the late 1960sdeparted rom the PCF orthodoxy to orm a Maoist student group, theUnion des jeunesses communistes marxistes-lninistes, or UJC (ml).

In this art icle, I would like to consider Althussers writings on Chinain conjunction with his structural rereading o Marx, both o whichoccurred around the same time, during the 1960s. Althussers interestin Marxs philosophy began with his translation o Ludwig FeuerbachsPhilosophical Manifestos in 1960. In 1961 62, he conducted a seminar onthe young Marx at the request o his students at the cole Normale

Suprieure (ENS), one o Frances elite institutions o higher learning.During those years, his students included Pierre Macherey, Roger Estab-let, tienne Balibar, Christian Baudelot, Jacques Rancire, Rgis Debray,Jacques-Alain Miller, Alain Badiou, Robert Linhart, Jean-Claude Milner,Jacques Broyelle, and Benny Lvy. The ollowing year, rom 1962 to 1963,Althussers course on the origins o structuralism addressed the works oClaude Lvi-Strauss, Lacan, and Foucault. Although Althusser rejectedthe label o structuralism to describe his own work, his engagementwith structuralism, particularly with Lacan (who began teaching at theENS in 1963, thanks to Althusser), was absolutely crucial.8 Finally, rom

1963 to 1964, in the context o a seminar on Capital, Althusser developedsome o his most important theories on Marx, including the notions osymptomatic reading, epistemological break, overdetermination, structuralcausality, and science versus ideology. In 1965, Althusser published his twobest-known works, For Marx and Reading Capital(coauthored with Balibar,Establet, Macherey, and Rancire), which represented the culmination othese years o refection on Marxist theory.9

My intention here is not to suggest that Althussers analysis o Chinadetermined his theory o subjection, or vice versa, that his part icular read-

ing o Marx explains his Maoist sympathies. Rather than positioningthese two discourses China and structural Marxism in a causal rela-tionship, I am interested in exploring how they intersected throughout thisperiod, particularly on three points: the emphasis on contradictions, anti-humanism, and ideology. Ultimately, I would like to argue that AlthussersChina and his structuralist interpretation o Marx were both answers tothe specic theoretical and political impasses conronting French Marxismin the 1960s.10 More broadly, this essay is also an attempt to rethink Frenchtheory during the 1960s and 1970s rom a transnational perspective. My


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goal is neither to restore an authentic China at the origins o structural-ism nor to subsume Maoism within the overarching system o Europeanthought, but rather to consider the two dialogically, to write an intellectualhistory that attends, as Susan Buck-Morss has urged us, to the edges osystems, the limits o premises, the boundaries o our historical imagina-tion in order to trespass, trouble, and tear these boundaries down.11

The Context: Political and Theoretical Impasses

In the 1967 English preace to For Marx, Althusser stressed the act thathis collection o essays (which had all been published in Communistjournals between 1960 and 1964) was the product o a particular conjunc-ture: First, the theoretical and ideological conjuncture in France, moreparticularly the present conjuncture in the French Communist Party andin French philosophy. But as well as this pecul iarly French conjuncture,it is also the present ideological and theoretical conjuncture in the inter-national Communist movement.12 More specically, Althusser argued,this conjuncture was dominated by two great events: the critique o thecult o personality by the Twentieth Congress, and the rupture that hasoccurred between the Chinese Communist Party and the Soviet Com-munist Party.13 The Twentieth Congress o the Communist Party o theSoviet Union (CPSU) in February 1956 did indeed prooundly shake theCommunist world. In his amous secret speech to a closed session othe congress, Nikita Khrushchev, who had taken the partys directorshipater Stalins death in 1953, reerred to Stalins intolerance, brutality,

and abuse o power. Moreover, Khrushchev condemned the cult o per-sonality around the gure o Stalin, which had harmed, he contended,the interests o the party. Whereas many French intellectuals welcomedKhrushchevs speech as evidence o Communisms openness to critique,the PCF emphatically condemned it and denounced all subsequent eortsto de-Stalinize, whether in Poland or in Yugoslavia. In particular, it justi-ed the brutal repression o the Hungarian Revolution by Soviet troopsin November 1956 as a necessary prevention against the resurgence oHungarian ascism. The Hungarian Revolution marked a turning pointor many disillusioned French intellectuals who denitively abandonedthe party around this time.14

The Twentieth Congress was also the catalyst or the Sino-Sovietsplit, the second great event, according to Althusser. Khrushchevsattack on the cult o personality had obvious implications or Mao, andthe Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda was quick to emphasizethe dierences between the two leaders. Moreover, Khrushchevs behaviorstruck Beijing as particularly irresponsible, a verdict that was conrmedby the Hungarian Revolution and the deection o thousands o Commu-



nists rom parties in the West.15 The relationship between Mao and theSoviet leadership progressively deteriorated. In 1961, the CCP ormallydenounced the Revisionist Traitor Group o the Soviet Leadership. FromSeptember 1963 to July 1964, in a series o nine polemics, the Chinesecontinued to spell out their reasons or breaking with the CPSU. Thepolemics mentioned Stalin, the issues o peaceul coexistence and peace-ul transition to socialism, and Soviet revisionism. For many historianso this period, the ninth polemic, titled On Khrushchevs Phony Com-munism and Historical Lessons or the World, contained the just icationor what would turn out to be the Cultural Revolution.16 Once again, theSino-Soviet split highlighted the growing political and ideological ritbetween the PCF and many French intellectuals. The PCF remainedsuspicious, i not overtly critical, o Chinas deance o Moscow. Othersin France, however, interpreted Chinas bold oreign policy as evidencethat the eastern wind which would eventually prevail over the western

wind was arriving, not rom the Soviet Union but rom the Far East, andmore specically, rom the third world. I the working classes in the Westappeared to have lost their revolutionary spark, the Let needed to lookelsewhere: in Arica, in Latin America, and in Asia.

Sartre, in his 1961 preace to Frantz Fanons Wretched of the Earth, hadpaved the way or this third-worldism by celebrating the part icular violencethat could emerge in a postcolonial context. His text appeared especiallyradical given that the PCF, which in 1956 had voted in avor o grantingthe French government special powers during the Algerian War, hadbeen remarkably slow in condemning French colonialism. In the Algerian

case, many in the PCF ound it dicult to identiy with a revolution thatwas not explicitly Marxist. Furthermore, the party did not wish to alienateits working-class electorate, which was largely against independence. In1963, Jacques Vergs, the anticolonialist lawyer who had deended manyo the members o the Front de Libration Nationale (FLN), ounded thethird-worldist journal Rvolution. Subtitled Africa, Latin America, Asia ,Rvolution celebrated Communist China and published texts by Liu Shaoqiin its inaugural issue.17 Many pro-Chinese texts could also be ound atFranois Masperos bookstore La Joie de Lire, which, rom 1956 to 1975,

served as meeting place or third-worldist and anticolonial activists. It wasMaspero who published Althussers For Marx and Reading Capitalaterthey were reused by the Communist Partys ocial editor, the ditionsSociales, and it was he who subsequently published many o Althussersstudents, including Rancire and Macherey.18 In 1961, Maspero oundedanother journal, Partisans, which opened with the ollowing statement:

[We] support, in particular, the Algerian Revolution. We support it in a

much vaster context, o which it is only one element: the emergence o the



third world. We think that our era, and probably all the second hal o the

twentieth century, will be dominated by the gigantic phenomenon brusquely

inaugurated by China: the accession o people o color to the political his-

tory o the world, and their growing participation in its economic, cultural,

and social history.19

For many gauchistes who considered themselves on the let o the Com-munist Party, China was denitely leading the way.

However, the eects o the Twentieth Congress and the Sino-Sovietsplit were not simply political. As Althusser indicated, insisting on the unityo theory and practice, this conjuncture had produced serious ideologi-cal and theoretical problems.20 It was thus the context that urged Althusserto call or a return to Marx; this was indispensable, he contended, iwe were to escape rom the theoretical impasse in which history had putus.21 The correct interpretation o Marxist theory could, according toAlthusser, determine the ate o the social ist revolution itsel. Among thetheoretical problems that had emerged rom the void let by Stalins death,Althusser targeted one in particular: humanism. On the one hand, this wasa polemic against Khrushchev who had, during the 1961 Twenty-SecondCongress o the CPSU, declared that the dictatorship o the proletariathad been superseded in the Soviet Union and that his country was nolonger a class state but a State o the Whole People. The constructiono Communism, according to the CPSU, would be guided by the human-ist slogan: Everything in the name o Man.22 As Althusser put it in his1963 essay Marxism and Humanism, the Soviet Union has proclaimed

the slogan: All or Man, and introduced new themes: the reedom o theindividual, respect or legality, the dignity o the person.23 Humanismcould justiy the new Soviet policies o peaceul coexistence (since theght between imperialism and Communism was no longer perceived asinevitable), and o a potentially peaceul transition to Communism (sinceclass warare was no longer a precondition).

But Althussers attack on humanism was also directed against FrenchMarxist philosophy and politics. It was a critique o the dominant postwarexistential/Hegelian Marxism that Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (indierent ways) exemplied. In addition, it was a denunciation o the PCFsembrace o humanism in the early 1960s as part o what some historianshave called its aggiornamento.24 Indeed, ater staunchly opposing Khrush-chevs reorms in 1956, the PCF had, by 1961, begun to endorse themand selectively adopt them in an attempt to adapt to the tide o history.Furthermore, in 1962, it had agreed to join a coalition o let-wing partiesin the hope o winning the 1965 presidential elections. Sharing a politicalplatorm with social democrats and let-leaning Catholics required thePCF to emphasize their commonalities. Humanism appeared to serve this


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unction well, especially in the context o openness and dialogue betweenCatholics and the Let inaugurated by Vatican II. As one o the leadingCommunist partisans Gilbert Mury put it at the time: Unity o actionwith Catholic workers is a necessary moment in our march towards, rst,democracy, and then socialism: it means that Christian humanism is notwholly alien to us . . . the unity o history . . . is that o a [humanist] project

that runs through it, and i Marxism is not the application o this projectin the age o the rise o the working class, what is it? 25 For Althusser,the PCFs turn to humanism was particularly despairing given its longhistory o anti-intellectualism, its so-called ouvririsme. In the preaceto For Marx, Althusser reerred to it as a French misery: the stubbornabsence o any real theoretical culture in the history o the French workersmovement.26

In 1960, the PCFs secretary general, Maurice Thorez, announcedthe creation o a Centre dtudes et de recherches marxistes (CERM)

headed by the philosopher Roger Garaudy, one o the most importanttheorists o this French Marxist humanism. Starting in 1961, Garaudyorganized the popular weeks o Marxist thought and contributed tovarious Communist publications, all in the hope o advancing Marxismas the humanism o our time.27 The kind o antihumanism deended inAlthussers work thus appeared completely at odds with the politics o thePCF. In 1962, Georges Cogniot, the director o the Communist journalLa Pense, organized a theoretical trial against Althusser or his articleContradiction and Overdetermination, rst published in this same jour-nal. Althusser was accused o being a letist revisionist, hence, Cogniot

contended, pro-Chinese.28 Chinese, in other words, was becoming acode word or antihumanist philosophy or structuralism. Throughout the1960s, the PCF relentlessly attacked Althussers thought. The PCFs intel-lectual coordinator, Roland Leroy, reerred to Althussers structuralismas a negation o history, a philosophy o despair that was incompatiblewith political action. Waldeck Rochet, Thorezs successor, insisted onthe idea that it was crucial or the PCF to champion humanism, sinceits ultimate goal was mans happiness, that is to say, mans liberation.Althussers response was not at all, our ult imate goal is to trigger a revolu-

tion that will put in place a socialist mode o production.29

Althusser wasaccused o navet, mysticism, o being out o touch with the real world.Throughout these debates, the PCF intellectuals emphasized Althussersreliance on Mao and Chinese thought.

For Althusser, however, there was much more at stake in Commu-nisms adoption o humanism than a simple game o electoral politics.Humanism was an ideologicalconcept, in Althussers denition o theterm.30 Marxism and Humanism, written in 1963, was one o Althussersrst attempts to theorize ideology and its opposite, science. When I say



that the concept o humanism is an ideological concept (not a scienticone), Althusser wrote, I mean that while it really does designate a set oexisting relations, unlike a scientic concept, it does not provide us with ameans o knowing them. In a part icular (ideological) mode, it designatessome existents, but it does not give us their essences.31 To clariy theseconcepts, Althusser turned to Marx and the amous periodization ohis work. The young Marx, closer to Kant and Fichte than to Hegel, stillclung to a philosophy o man and to Enlightenment principles. However,in a second stage, rom 1842 to 1845, Marx, disil lusioned by the Prussianstates ailures to reorm, no longer appealed to the reason o the State.Nonetheless, he was still unable to abandon the concepts o alienationand o human essence that would supposedly be ull led with the advento the revolution. Marxs epistemological break (a term borrowed byAlthusser rom the philosopher o science Gaston Bachelard) came in 1845as Marx was nally able to develop new concepts such as social orma-

tion, productive orces, relations o production, superstructure, ideologies,determination in the last instance by the economy, specic determinationo the other levels. Furthermore, he realized then that humanism wasan ideology.32 According to Althusser, Marxs radical antihumanism wasthe absolute condition or scientic knowledge and, consequently, or areal transormation o the politics. Recognizing ideology, however, wasalso recognizing its necessity: For the knowledge o this ideology, as theknowledge o its conditions o possibility, its structure, o its specic logicand its practical role, within a given society, is simultaneously knowledgeo the conditions o its necessity.33

Thus, or Khrushchev to proclaim the end o the revolution andto declare the Soviet Union a State o the Whole People was particu-larly treacherous since historical materialism [could not] conceive thateven a communist society could ever do without ideology, be it ethics, artor world outlook. 34 Althussers point here was not that the ideologicalstruggle was useless in act, it was essential but the belie that anysociety, including a communist one, could ree itsel rom ideology byturning to humanism was preposterous: Ideology is not an aberrationor a contingent excrescence o History: it is a structure essential to the

historical li e o societies. Further, only the existence and the recognitiono its necessity enable us to act on ideology and transorm ideology into aninstrument o deliberate action on history.35 Humanism in this contextwas an attempt to mask problems, real historical, economic, political, andideological problems intrinsic to socialism that Stalinism had simply keptin the shade.36 Humanism (with its ocus on the ree development o theindividual, respect or socialist legality, dignity o the person, etc.) was theideology o communism, just as liberalism was the ideology o the bour-geoisie. It was a prolongation o the Stalinist dogmatism. Even worse, it



was, as G. M. Goshgarian has put it, Stalinism with a humanist ace.37 Itwas in this context that Althusser turned to China, the unity-o-thought-and-practice: Mao Tse-Tung Thought (or Maoism) as an example oMarxist science that would be able to grasp the contradictions inherent inall societies. Similarly, Althusser embraced the Cultural Revolution as aneort to eradicate humanist ideology and to conduct a truly antihumaniststructuralist revolution.

The Structuralization of China

As Communist leaders in the Soviet Union and in Western Europe wereturning to humanism to cope with the eects o de-Stalinization andthe Hungarian Revolution, Mao delivered his speech, On the CorrectHandling o Contradictions among the People, in 1957. Maos text wasmeant to provide a philosophical and political guideline or the CCP,which, ater seven years o relative success, was beginning to encounterthe rst serious domestic and international hurdles. Given Althussersobjections to the Soviet embrace o humanism, it is easy to understandwhy Althusser would be attracted to Maos analysis. In this essay, Maoamously distinguished two types o contradictions: antagonistic onesbetween the people and its enemy, and nonantagonistic ones within theranks o the people. While the ormer entail drawing a clear distinctionbetween ourselves and the enemy, . . . the latter entail drawing a clear dis-tinction between right and wrong.38 The existence o these antagonisticcontradictions was proo that the doctrines o peaceul transition and o

peaceul coexistence advanced by the CPSU and the PCF were simplywrong: Class struggle is by no means over, Mao wrote. Thereore,Marxism must continue to develop through struggle.39 Nonantagonisticcontradictions, however, could be resolved nonviolently, through ideologi-cal work: Ideological struggle diers rom other orms o struggle, sincethe only method is painstaking reasoning, and not crude coercion. Today,socialism is in an advantageous position in the ideological struggle.40

Althussers notes on Mao ocused on the questions o contradiction,humanism, and ideology. On the Correct Handling o Contradictions,Althusser wrote, emphasized the unity o the masses and the act thatwe need to resolve contradictions within a people non-violently becausethey are not antagonistic, even though they can appear to be so, but onlymomentarily i.e. Hungary.41 Althusser also turned to Maos older texts,including the 1937 On Practice, which provided, he claimed, an excel-lent denition o Maos philosophy by emphasizing class, recognizingthat dialectical materialism served the proletariat; but also by retaininga practical character.42 Maos thought, Althusser argued, taught us thatone divides into two, which he took to mean that, according toMarxism-



Leninism, nothing was absolutely pure, everything was divisible: Divisionin the revolutionary sense is thus a good and not a bad thing. It helps toelevate mans ideological conscience, it reinorces the unity o revolutionar-ies, it avors the development o the proletariats revolutionary cause andit makes society progress.43 Similarly, Althusser in his remarks on Maostheory o dialectics stressed Maos emphasis on critique, division, andincompleteness: The equilibrium and stability o the unity is temporary,apparent. The immobility o phenomena appears as a view o the spirit(but necessary to the ormation o the concept) which should always bequestioned. An absolute with a single pole, a single kernel, does not exist(metaphysics). It is the source o all errors.44 Althussers Mao was, inother words, an early deconstructionist o metaphysics, o wholeness.Furthermore, he had understood the undamental structural division othe subject, a division that Althusser stressed again and again, particularlyin his ISA text. The mechanism o subjection responsible or the split but

also or the construction o the subject was called ideology. As Althusserput it, in one o his index cards on Maos thought: Mao identies powerand ideology. More specically: system = power = ideology.45

In his reading o Mao as a structuralist avant la lettre, Althusseralso underscored his antihumanism. This is especially visible in a 1967issue o the newsletter Cahiers de la Chine Nouvelle that Althusser studiedand extensively underlined. In particular, he highlighted the ollowingsentences:

The renmin ribao reutes the bourgeois humanitarianism preached by the

Soviet revisionists. . . . For the Soviet revisionists, communism is the veryincarnation o real humanitarianism. . . . This is one o the most vile slan-

ders against the communist ideological system. Revisionist sirs, you should

rather say that the communist ideological system is the ideological system

most opposed to humanitarianism because it is the mostincompatible with

the humanitarianism o the land-owning classes and the bourgeoisie. . . .

As president Mao has taught us, there is only a concrete human nature and

not an abstract human nature. In a class society, the only human nature that

exists is one based on class. . . . The kernel o the communist ideological

system is the collective concept [by which] we understand the interest o

the proletariat, the revolutionary people, the proletarian revolution. . . . Thekernel o humanitarianism is egoism. . . . Humanitarianism was invented in

the Renaissance (14th/16th centuries) and although it played an active and

enlightening role in the struggle o reedom against the yokes o scholasti-

cism, clericalism, and eudalism, it was hypocritical rom the beginning. To

ght against egoism means to ght against the concepts o private property

and o personal interest. They are at the ideological origin o the maniesta-

tion and development o revisionism in our country. The great cultural revo-

lution targets rst and oremost the ew party ocials who have taken the

road o capitalism. At the same time, it must resolve the question o mans



world conception, eliminate bourgeois ideas and eradicate revisionism. . . .

Today, we rely primarily on ideological work.46

Although the term used in the Chinese publication was humanitarianism,Althusser wrote in the margins humanism. It is unclear whether thiscan be attributed to a translation issue, but what is ascinating is Althus-

sers explicit insertion o Mao in the humanist/nonhumanist Soviet andEuropean debates, which as we have seen had been, by 1967, preoccupy-ing him or a number o years.

The Chinese Cultural Revolution beginning in 1966 representedor Althusser the possibility o applying Maos thought, o putting it intopractice. It constituted an epistemological break akin to Marxs 1845discovery o the structure o capital. Through the Cultural Revolution,Maoism could become a science: The correct attitude is scientic: weneed to analyze the roots o everything. We must only consider external

maniestations as an avenue leading to a threshold that we will have totrespass to really seize the root o the problem. It is the only certain andscientic method o analyzing phenomena.47 As a science, the CulturalRevolution sought to recognize ideology and to resolve the nonantagonisticcontradictions within Chinese society. Althusser developed this analysis othe Cultural Revolution in a 1966 text published in the Cahiers marxistes-lninistes, a journal edited by Althussers Maoist students and publishedby Maspero. Although the article was anonymous, Althusser eventuallyrecognized it as his.48 As he saw it, the Cultural Revolution was Maosanswer to the problem o the two roads acing all socialist countries.

This was a choice between the revolutionary road, which led beyond[audel] the obtained results, towards the consolidation and development osocialism, and then towards the transition to communism, and the roado regression: which brings us below [en dea] the obtained results, towardsneutralization and political use, and then the domination and the economicdigestion o a socialist country by imperialism: the road o regressiontowards capitalism. 49 To avoid this regression, Mao had opted or amassive ideological revolution designed to supplement the political and eco-nomic revolutions: Its ultimate goal is to transorm the masses ideology,

to replace eudal ideology, by a new ideology o the masses, proletarian, andsocialist thus, to give to the socialist economic inrastructure and politi-cal superstructure, a corresponding ideological superstructure.50 Theuture, Althusser argued, depended on the ideological. It is throughthe ideological class warare that the ate (progression or regression) o asocialist country will be played out.51

As such, Althusser continued, the Cultural Revolution was neitheran exaltation o the masses blind spontaneism, nor a political adventure.It was a measured decision rom the Party which relied on a scientic



analysis o the situation, and hence on Marxist principles and practice.52In the remainder o his essay, Althusser developed a denition o ideol-ogy that in many ways pregured the 1969 ISA essay. In particular, heinsisted on the issue o subjection: The ideological is that which, in asociety, distinguishes and cements, whether it be technical distinctions orclass distinctions. The ideological is an objective reality indispensible to

the existence o all societies.53 Even though ideology corresponded to thelived relations o individuals, it was neither individual nor subjective innature: it corresponded to objective social acts. China, in other words,represented or Althusser a case study, a practical platorm to rene thetheory o ideology that he had been perecting since For Marx. Althussersstructuralist analysis o social and subjective ormations was, I wouldargue, undamentally linked to his refection on Maoism.

Practical Applications: The UJC (ml) and the Gauche Proltarienne

Despite his attraction to Mao and China, Althusser was never ociallya Maoist in the sense that he never let the PCF. Much has been writ-ten about his unyielding commitment to the party that several o hisstudents criticized and that is certainly paradoxical given the PCFs waragainst his writings.54 However, many o Althussers students showedno hesitation in calling themselves Maoists. For these students, Mao-ism was an escape rom the rigidity, the anti-intellectualism, and theEurocentrism o the PCF. China oered them a orum in which theycould test Althussers theories on contradictions, science, ideology, and

antihumanism. As Althusser put it, his students turned his concepts intobrochures. Until the 1960s, the main communist student group was theUnion des tudiants Communistes (UEC), created by the PCF ater thewar. Even though the students were given a certain degree o autonomy,the organization was essentially subordinated to the PCF. From 1950to 1966, the tension between the UEC and the PCF grew as the stu-dents demanded more independence. They disagreed with the PCF onAlgeria, Hungary, and de-Stalinization, and they criticized the partysmoralism, especially on sexual issues. In their ocial newspaper, Clart,they discussed controversial themes such as abortion, contraception, andpromiscuity, none o which were on the PCFs agenda. In 1966, a groupo students, many o whom were disciples o Althusser rom the ENS,decided to split rom the UEC to orm the Union des jeunesses commu-nistes (marxistes-lninistes), or UJC (ml). It was in the UJC (ml)s ocialjournal, the Cahiers marxistes-lninistes, ounded in 1964, that Althusserstext on the Cultural Revolution cited above was published. Ater its dis-solution in 1968, many o the members o the UCJ (ml) split between thenewly ormed GP and Vive la rvolution (VLR).55 All o these groupsconsidered themselves Maoist.



According to Foucault, the PCFs motto throughout the 1960s wasnot here, not now, not you. For Althussers students, Maoism oered thepossibility o being here and now, o participating in the great histori-cal revolution, o having China in our heads. Overall, the UJC (ml)sinterest in China was similar to Althussers. The students ought Sovietrevisionism. They were seduced by Maos analysis o contradictions,by his antihumanism, and by the Cultural Revolutions ideological war.Their goal was to lead an intransigent ideological ght against bourgeoisideology and its revisionist accomplice, against the petit-bourgeois ide-ology, particularly pacist, humanist, and spiritualist ideology.56 Therevolution, they claimed, depended on Mao Tse-Tung Thought. Asthey put it in one o their rst meetings, economic victory was insucient:The superstructure can greatly infuence the inrastructure. On thisquestion, President Mao has developed a Marxist-Leninist philosophy.Beore him, Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin showed that the social being

determined conscience and that the inrastructure determined the super-structure. Mao Tse-Tung has shown with bril liance the reverse action othe superstructure.57

More than Althusser, however, the UJC (ml) and especially the GPsought to reach the people, the creative masses. Some led investigationsin actories and in the countryside to gain a better scientic understand-ing o the people. Others let school or took time o to work in actories.Robert Linhart, one o Althussers students, recounted his experience asa worker in the Citron car actory in his 1978 book, Ltabli. Similarly, intheir meetings, the UJC (ml) and the GP discussed contemporary Chi-

nese art, literature, lm, and opera, which they saw as examples o theideological work that Mao was cal ling or. For example, they praised therestructuring o the Beijing opera, which proved that no art is beyondclass and no art can constitute itsel as an independent kingdom. In oneopera, The Harbor, the dockworkers o the Shanghai harbor worked touphold the anti-imperialist ght o the people in Asia, Arica, and LatinAmerica. The actors lived with the dockworkers or our months, andthe opera was submitted to the dockworkers ater it was nished so thatthey could evaluate it. This, the students argued, proved the reactionary

character o all conceptions o art as nished. Similarly, the studentsanalyzed the Chinese lm From Victory to Victory, which, they suggested,was widely acclaimed by Chinese audiences: We nd in [the spectators]neither pacism nor humanism because they know how to distinguish ajust war rom an unjust war, and because they know how to draw a cleardemarcation between the class riend and the class enemy.58

Toward the late 1960s, the French Maoist students split between amore ascetic version o Maoism that argued or guerrilla violence (andeven firted with terrorism) and a more libertarian vein. While the or-



mer ocused on Maos theses on war and imperialism, the latter saw inChina a model o social and sexual liberation. In a tract titled We Holdthe Power: Lets Change Lie, the Gauche Proltarienne emphasizedthe nonauthoritarian nature o student-teacher relations in China: unlikeFrance, there isnt on one side a proessor who talks and students wholisten on the other. Now students and proessors can mutually instructeach other. China, they claimed, had no private cars: people used bicyclesand public transportation. Also, prior to the Cultural Revolution, it wasorbidden to smoke in actories because o the re hazard. This, however,was a repressive measure against smokers, not an ideological method.The Cultural Revolution changed this: workers built special rooms wherethey could smoke. Today, these oppressive regulations have been sweptaway. Similarly, the students contended, abortion and contraceptionwere legal in China: There is no parental authority like there is here.Children can either take their athers or the mothers name. In marriage,

the woman does not necessarily take on her husbands last name, she doeswhat she wants.59 Whether or not these claims were true, they were clearlyresponses to a series o specical ly French problems that concerned manystudents around the time o May 1968: car culture, education, smoking,eminism, and authority more generally. Ater May 1968, the reerencesto China began to decline as most Maoist groups and publications ocusedprimarily on France. China had been a crucial detour to rethink Frenchpolitics and society. It had unctioned as a fexible signier to addresssome o the most contentious issues or French Marxism: culture, gender,and colonialism.

De-Maoization and the Turn to Human Rights

According to Althusser, ideology had no history. By this, Althusser didnot mean to suggest that ideology was transcendent to all (temporal) his-tory but that it was omnipresent, trans-historical and thereore immu-table in orm throughout the extent o history.60 Like the unconscious,ideology was a structural phenomenon, coexistent with subjectivity. Buti ideology had no history, Althussers concept did have a history, a his-tory that passed through China. More specically, as I have argued, theproblem o humanism was at the crux o Althussers critique o ideology,a critique that he elaborated through, or at least with, China. Many histo-rians and political theorists have insisted on the importance o the colo-nial context or the development o European liberalism and capitalism.The genealogy I have traced here suggests that the intellectual historyo structuralism and o Western Marxism is equally porous and equallyglobal.61 Still, the question remains why China specically emerged asthis fexible signier during this particular period o French history. Why



would China, usually imagined as ahistorical in the conventional Ori-entalist vision, serve as the privileged catalyst or French history, as thevehicle or the critique o traditional Marxism? To what extent did thisenthusiasm or China unction as a defection o the main issue o Frenchcolonialism? What does this history tell us about the role o China as aFrench political antasy?

To conclude, I would like to consider, very schematically, how thisparticular articulation o ideology, humanism, and China might also helpus rethink the history o de-Maoization in France. Indeed, the mysteri-ous disappearance o Maos chosen successor, Lin Bao, in 1971, the bittersuccession crisis beore Maos death in 1976, and the increasingly numer-ous and detailed accounts o the violence propagated by the Red Guardsconvinced many ormer Maoists to publicly and loudly renounce Chinain the late 1970s and 1980s. But just as the French ervor or Maoism hadultimately more to do with France than with China, its rejection was also

a complicated product o the French political and intellectual contexto that time. The vehement denunciations o Maoism (or conversionnarratives, as Guy Hocquenghem described them62) were a symptomo antitotalitarianism, the new philosophy that many ormer letist intel-lectuals came to embrace in response to the PCFs political decisions, tothe controversial and much-discussed publication o Aleksandr Solzhenit-syns Gulag Archipelago in 1974, and to the general collapse o third-worldrevolutionary utopias.63

Whether this move rom revolution to ethics proved the ailureor the success o 1968 radicalism, the concept o the human made an

important return rom the late 1970s on, through the new discourse onhuman rights.64 In this context, many ormer Maoists who in the 1960shad embraced antihumanism in their critiques o ideology became uncon-ditional champions o humanism, the common denominator among allmen. In conjunct ion, many o these ex-Maoists argued or the importanceo the rule o law (tat de droit), the necessary condition or the existenceo human rights.65 Rony Brauman, or instance, who presided over thehumanitarian nonprot organization Mdecins sans rontires (MSF)rom 1982 to 1994, was involved with the GP in 1969. Ater volunteer-

ing as a doctor in southeast Asia and witnessing the humanitarian crisisbrought about by the Khmer Rouge regime, Brauman joined MSF, whichwas ounded in 1971 by several doctors, many o whom, like BernardKouchner, had been active ingauchiste politics. As Brauman put it in 1986,the success o MSF coincided with the decline o ideologies, the aban-donment o redemptive Messianisms. It was during these hollow years(annes orphelines) that human rights reemerged as a vision o the worldin which man becomes again the nality o every action.66 As PhilippeSollers, the ounder oTel Queland one o the most important China



enthusiasts during the 1960s, claimed, Maoism had been a necessary stepin the rediscovery o human rights.

Jacques Broyelle, one o Althussers students and one o the ormerleaders o the UJC (ml), titled his 1980 mea culpaApocalypse Mao. Com-paring the Chinese regime to the Soviet regime, Broyelle decried the workcamps, the spread o amine, and the lack o political reedom. Along

with Kouchner, Broyelle helped launch the operation known as A Boator Vietnam in 1979, a widely publicized initiative designed to help theVietnamese boat people reugees, which managed to bring together intel-lectuals such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Raymond Aron who had occupiedopposite political camps or years. Human rights, it seemed, could suddenlyprovide the kind o consensus that France had been missing. They were, inthis sense, a last utopia that ollowed, as Samuel Moyn has persuasivelyshown, the collapse o alternative internationalisms, among which we caninclude third-worldism.67 I China had served as a vector in the develop-

ment o an antihumanist philosophy and in the critique o ideology in the1960s, it continued to occupy a central place in French intellectual l ie othe 1970s and 1980s as that which needed to be rejected or human rights,democracy, and the rule o law to fourish again.

Notes

All t ranslations are mine unless otherwise indicated.

This essay is primarily based on the Maoist archives at the Bibliothque de Docu-mentation Internationale Contemporaine (Fonds: Gauche Proltarienne) and on

Louis Althussers papers on China at the Institut Mmoires de ldition Contempo-raine.I am grateul to Cornell Universitys Society or the Humanities or undingthese research trips. I would also like to thank David Eng, Jason Frank, Ben Kaka,Frdrique Matonti, Teemu Ruskola, Shuang Shen, Judith Surkis, Caterina Toscano,and Claudia Verhoeven or their valuable criticism on this article.

1. Maria-Antonietta Macciocchi, Pamphlet contre les sinophobes, in Poli-tique Hebdo, February 24, 1972, 25. Macciocchi was engaged, by then, in an exten-sive correspondence with Althusser. Their letters had been published as a book in1969 and were translated into English in 1973 under the title Letters from Inside theItalian Communist Party to Louis Althusser. Macciocchis 1971 book Daily Life inRevolutionary China circulated widely within the French intellectual scene. She was

also responsible or organizing the 1974 trip to China o various Tel Quelmembersincluding Julia Kristeva, Philippe Sollers, Roland Barthes, Marcelin Pleynet, and theSeuil publishing house editor Franois Wahl.

2. Kristin Ross, May 68 and Its Afterlives (Chicago: University o ChicagoPress, 2002); Richard Wolin, The Wind from the East: French Intellectuals, the CulturalRevolution, and the Legacy of the 1960s (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,2010).

3. For dierent approaches to this question, see Julian Bourg, The RedGuards o Paris: French Student Maoism o the 1960s, History of European Ideas 31(2004): 472 90; Rey Chow, Writing Diaspora: Tactics of Intervention in Contemporary



Cultural Studies (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991); Eric Hayot, ChineseDreams: Pound, Brecht, Tel Quel(Ann Arbor: University o Michigan Press, 2004);Lisa Lowe, Critical Terrains: French and British Orientalisms (Ithaca, NY: CornellUniversity Press, 1991); Peter Starr, Logics of Failed Revolt: French Theory after May68(Stanord: Stanord University Press, 1995).

4. Quoted inGilles Deleuze, Desert Islands and Other Texts, 1953 1974 (LosAngeles: Semiotext(e), 2004), 216.

5. I am relying here on Michel Fehers excellent analysis o post-68 thoughtdeveloped in Mai 68 dans la pense, in Histoire des gauches en France, vol. 2, ed.Jean-Jacques Becker and Gilles Candar (Paris: La Dcouverte, 2004).

6. Louis Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, in Lenin andPhilosophy, and Other Essays (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001), 109.

7. In Althussers archives we nd two olders o notes and index cards onMaos writings (Notes sur Mao Zedong, Institut Mmoires de ldition Contem-poraine [hereater IMEC], AL T2.A57-03 01 and 02) and two olders o Chinesepropaganda rom 1966 67 (IMEC, AL T2.A57-05 01 and 02).

8. The relationship between Lacan and Althusser is well documented in Elisa-beth Roudinesco, Jacques Lacan: Esquisse dune vie, histoire dun systme de pense

(Paris: Fayard, 1993), 383 402. See also the introduction by Oliver Corpet andFranois Matheron to Louis Althusser, Writings on Psychoanalysis: Freud and Lacan(New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).

9. On Althussers years as caman at the ENS, see tienne Balibar,Althusser and the Rue dUlm, New Left Review 58 (2009): 91 107.

10. Throughout this essay, I use the term structuralism rather than post-structuralism, which is usually the concept associated with the critique o ideology,humanism, totalization, centers, closed and stable meaning, and metaphysics. Thisis due to the act that the termpost-structuralism is rarely used in French. Althoughthe term has in recent years returned to France ater years o circulating in theAmerican academic context, it was to my knowledge never used by Althusser or any

o the other thinkers included in the nebulous category o French theory. For ananalysis o this cross-Atlantic dialogue, see Franois Cusset, French Theory: HowFoucault, Derrida, Deleuze, and Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States(Minneapolis: University o Minnesota Press, 2008). Although Althusser did noteven sel-describe as a structuralist, his reading o Marx, especially in Reading Capi-tal, is clearly inormed by structuralism in the sense that he is interested in systems,structures, and their relation to one another. The diculty o locating Althusser ineither a structuralist or a post-structuralist camp is also perhaps another indicationo how limited and limiting these categories ult imately are.

11. Susan Buck-Morss, Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History (Pittsburgh: Uni-versity o Pittsburgh Press, 2009), 79.

12. Louis Althusser, For Marx (London: Allen Lane, 1969), 9 10.13. Ibid., 10.14. See Michael Scott Christoerson, French Intellectuals against the Left: The

Antitotalitarian Moment of the 1970s (New York: Berghahn Books, 2004); and Ber-nard Pudal, Un monde dfait: Les communistes franais de 1956 nos jours (Bellecombe-en-Bauges: Croquant, 2009).

15. Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals, Maos Last Revolution(Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press at Harvard University Press, 2006), 4.

16. Ibid., 7.17. Christophe Boursei ller, Les Maostes: La folle histoire des gardes rouges fran-

ais (Paris: Plon, 1996), 46 54.



18. Louis Althusser, Lavenir dure longtemps; suivi de, Les faits (Paris: STOCK/IMEC, 1992), 379.

19. Cited in Ross,May 68 and Its Afterlives, 85.20. Althusser, For Marx, 10.21. Ibid., 21.22. Ibid., 11.23. Louis Althusser, Marxism and Humanism, in For Marx, 221; see also

10 11.24.Aggiornamento (literally, a bringing up to date) is the term used by Ber-

nard Pudal, Prendre parti: Pour une sociologie historique du PCF(Paris: Presses de laFondation nationale des sciences polit iques, 1989). For an analysis o how this aggior-namento maniested itsel in more intellectual circles, see Frdrique Matonti, Intel-lectuels communistes: Essai sur l obissance politique. La Nouvelle Critique, 1967 1980

(Paris: La Dcouverte, 2005). Even beore the 1960s, the PCF had a complicatedrelationship to the label ohumanism. For more on this history, see Steanos Gerou-lanous,An Atheism That Is Not Humanist Emerges in French Thought(Stanord: Stan-ord University Press, 2010); and Edward Baring, Humanist Pretensions: Catholics,Communists, and Sartres Struggle or Existentialism in Postwar France, Modern

Intellectual History 7, no. 3 (2010): 581 609.25. Quoted in G. M. Goshgarian, introduction to The Humanist Controversy

and Other Writings (1966 67), by Louis Althusser (London: Verso, 2003), xxv.26. Althusser, For Marx, 23. Althusser blames this theoretical vacuum on

French politics, and in particular on the act that 1789, 1830, and 1848 were allbourgeois revolutions. He also blames French philosophy rom Cousin to Bergson,because o its conservativeness, its contempt or history and or the people, its deepbut narrow-minded ties with religion (25).

27. On the details o these debates, see Matonti, Intellectuels communistes, 31.See also Goshgarian, introduction.

28. Althusser, Lavenir dure longtemps, 206.

29. Quoted in Pudal, Un monde dfait, 76.30. Althusser, Marxism and Humanism, 223.31. Ibid.32. Ibid., 227.33. Ibid., 230.34. Ibid., 232.35. Ibid.36. Ibid., 238.37. Goshgarian, introduction, xxii.38. Mao Tse-Tung, On the Correct Handling o Contradictions among the

People, in On Practice and Contradiction (London: Verso, 2007), 132.39. Ibid., 155.40. Ibid.41. IMEC, ALT2.A57-03.01.42. Ibid.43. IMEC, ALT2.A57-04.01.44. IMEC, ALT2.A57- 04.03.45. IMEC, ALT2.A57-03.02.46. IMEC, ALT2.A57-05.01.47. IMEC, ALT2.A57-03.02.48. Althusser, Lavenir dure longtemps, 389.



49. Sur la rvolution culturelle, in La Grande rvolution culturelle prol-tarienne, special issue, Cahiers marxistes-lninistes, no. 14 (1966): 8.

50. Ibid.51. Ibid., 12.52. Ibid., 11.53. Ibid., 14.54. This was one o the reasons or his split with Rancire ater May 1968.

See Jacques Rancire, La leon dAlthusser(Paris: Gallimard, 1974). Althusser alsodiscussed this in Lavenir dure longtemps, 254.

55. For the history o these movements, see Bourg, Red Guards o Paris;Bourseiller, Les Maostes; Dominique Damamme, Boris Gobille, Frdrique Matonti,and Bernard Pudal, eds., Mai-juin 68 (Paris: Les ditions de lAtelier, 2008),130 43; Herv Hamon and Patrick Rotman, Gnration, 2 vols. (Paris: Seuil, 1987).

56. Cahiers marxistes-lninistes, no. 15 (1967). Many o these oundationalMaoist texts can also be ound in Groupe pour la ondation de lUnion des commu-nistes ranais (marxiste-lniniste), Premire anne dexistence, printemps 70 / print-emps 71, dune organisation maoste (Paris: Maspero, 1972); and Patrick Kessel, Lemouvement maoste en France, textes et documents (Paris: Union gnrale dditions,

1972).57. Bibliothque de Documentation Internationale Contemporaine, Fonds:

Gauche Proltarienne (hereater BDIC), F.Delta-Rs-576/2/3/1.58. BDIC, F.Delta-Rs-576/7.59. BDIC, F.Delta-Rs-576/3/4.60. Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, 109.61. In this sense, my argument here is close to that made in Kristin Ross, Fast

Car, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture (Cambridge,MA: MIT Press, 1995), 157 65. According to Ross, the death o man eect thatcharacterized much o French philosophy in the 1960s needs to be thought o inconjunction with decolonization and, more specically, with the idea (propagated

by Frantz Fanon and Aim Csaire, among others) that a new man was emergingin the third world.62. Guy Hocquenghem, Lettre ouverte ceux qui sont passs du col Mao au

Rotary (Paris: Agone, 2003).63. On French antitotalitarianism, see Christoerson, French Intellectuals.64. For two sympathetic (although quite dierent) assessments o this transi-

tion, see Julian Bourg, From Revolution to Ethics: May 1968 and Contemporary FrenchThought(Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2007); and Wolin, Wind fromthe East. For ar more critical approaches, see Jean Birnbaum, Les Maoccidents:Un noconservatisme la franaise (Paris: Stock, 2009); and Hocquenghem, Lettreouverte; and Ross,May 68 and Its Afterlives.

65. For a good example o a justication o the rule o law as the rst condi-tion to guarantee the existence o individual rights, see Jacques Julliard, Pour nepas condure . . . , in Le tiers monde et la gauche, ed. Jean Daniel and Andr Burguire(Paris: Seuil, 1979), 145.

66. Rony Brauman, ed., Le tiers-mondisme en question (Paris: Olivier Orban,1986), 12.

67. Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press, 2010).


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