Book Section
The chapter will consider the continuity of Althusser’s thought and revise my previous interpretation backdating aleatory materialism to the sixties. I will analyse the context in which the concept of ‘encounter’ emerged in the sixties and show in a second moment that it is possible to identify this concept in the texts of the eighties, but only in one of the two tendencies which traverses this group of texts, the one I would call a materialist tendency. This tendency is intertwined with another tendency, an eschatological one — which emerged in the late seventies.
Keywords: materialism; encounter; void; take hold; eschatology; parousia; Spinozism; Althusser, Louis
Part of Materialism and Politics Containing:
From ‘Materialism’ towards ‘Materialities’ / Bernardo Bianchi, Emilie Filion-Donato, Marlon Miguel, Ayşe Yuva
Introduction to Part I / Stefan Hagemann
Materialist Variations on Spinoza: Theoretical Alliances and Political Strategies / Mariana de Gainza
Non Defuit Materia: Freedom and Necessity in Spinoza’s Democratic Theory / Stefano Visentin
Temporality and History in Spinoza: The Refusal of Teleological Thought / Ericka Marie Itokazu
Spinozist Moments in Deleuze: Materialism as Immanence / Mauricio Rocha
Are there One or Two Aleatory Materialisms?
Introduction to Part II / Marlene Kienberger, Bruno Pace
Language Follows Labour: Nikolai Marr’s Materialist Palaeontology of Speech / Elena Vogman
Materialism and Capitalism Today: Zoo-aesthetics and a Critique of the Social Bond after Marcel Mauss and André Leroi-Gourhan / Catherine Perret
The Product of Circumstances: Towards a Materialist and Situated Pedagogy / Marlon Miguel
In the Labyrinth of Emancipation: An Inquiry into the Relationship between Knowledge and Politics / Bernardo Bianchi
A Materialist Education: Thinking with Spinoza / Pascal Sévérac
Introduction to Part III / Alison Sperling
Materialism, Matter, Matrix, and Mater: Contesting Notions in Feminist and Gender Studies / Cornelia Möser
Anarchafeminism & the Ontology of the Transindividual / Chiara Bottici
Psychodynamism of Individuation and New Materialism: Possible Encounters / Émilie Filion-Donato
Emergence that Matters and Emergent Irrelevance: On the Political Use of Fundamental Physics / Christoph F. E. Holzhey
Introduction to Part IV / Daniel Liu
Materialism against Materialism: Taking up Marx’s Break with Reductionism / Frieder Otto Wolf
Materialism, Politics, and the History of Philosophy: French, German, and Turkish Materialist Authors in the Nineteenth Century / Ayşe Yuva
The Historicity of Materialism and the Critique of Politics / Alex Demirović
On Populist Illusion: Impasses of Political Ontology, or How the Ordinary Matters / Facundo Vega
Theory’s Method?: Ethnography and Critical Theory / Marianna Poyares
Title
Are there One or Two Aleatory Materialisms?
Author(s)
Vittorio Morfino
Identifier
Description
The chapter will consider the continuity of Althusser’s thought and revise my previous interpretation backdating aleatory materialism to the sixties. I will analyse the context in which the concept of ‘encounter’ emerged in the sixties and show in a second moment that it is possible to identify this concept in the texts of the eighties, but only in one of the two tendencies which traverses this group of texts, the one I would call a materialist tendency. This tendency is intertwined with another tendency, an eschatological one — which emerged in the late seventies.
Is Part Of
Place
Berlin
Publisher
ICI Berlin Press
Date
2 March 2021
Subject
materialism
encounter
void
take hold
eschatology
parousia
Spinozism
Althusser, Louis
Rights
© by the author(s)
Except for images or otherwise noted, this publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Language
en-GB
page start
91
page end
106
Source
Materialism and Politics, ed. by Bernardo Bianchi, Emilie Filion-Donato, Marlon Miguel, and Ayşe Yuva, Cultural Inquiry, 20 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2021), pp. 91–106

References

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  • Althusser, Louis, ‘The Underground Current of the Materialism of the Encounter’, in Philosophy of the Encounter, pp. 163–207
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Cite as: Vittorio Morfino, ‘Are there One or Two Aleatory Materialisms?’, in Materialism and Politics, ed. by Bernardo Bianchi, Emilie Filion-Donato, Marlon Miguel, and Ayşe Yuva, Cultural Inquiry, 20 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2021), pp. 91-106 <https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-20_05>