Althusser redeploys ‘science’ as a strategic metaphor rather than a positivist truth-claim
Evidence
One of the chief complaints against Althusser is his privileging of “science” over “ideology,” and his cutting up Marx into an earlier ideological and a later scientific thinker. I would submit that, in the spirit of a critique of positivism, Althusser bricoles or tinkers with the name of science itself, re-constellates it by spinning it out (filer) as a convenient metaphor even as he establishes Marx’s claim to be a scientist rather than merely a philosopher of history: “When I say that Marx organized a theoretical system of scientific concepts in the domain previously monopolized by philosophies of history, I am spinning out [filons] a metaphor which is no more than a metaphor.” — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 1051
Categorization
- XREF: Althusser’s knowing, non-literal use of ‘science’ is structurally the same move as strategic essentialism — adopting a loaded, authoritative term while denying its literal truth — offering a test case for whether such positions can be sustained. — connects to: Theory is deployed strategically as bricolage rather than produced as autonomous object