Revolutionary conjunctures are overdetermined by accumulated contradictions across all levels

Evidence

It is not, in Althusser’s view, to be understood in terms of what produces a particular conjuncture, especially a revolutionary conjuncture. Such moments of fundamental rupture are no more exclusively produced by the single determinacy of “the economic” than any other moment. Such moments are constituted, rather, by the accumulation of the different contradictions, peculiar to each of the levels or practices, in one space or moment: hence, such conjunctures are, like Freud’s symptoms (from whom, indeed, the metaphor is adopted), not determined, but “over -determined.” Determinacy, then, for Althusser, is thought principally in terms of the economic level (determining) having, as one of its effects, the deciding which of the levels of the social formation—economic, political, or ideological—will be “dominant.” — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 534

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies Althusser’s overdetermination: the economic level decides dominance, but rupture comes from accumulated contradictions across all levels.
• XREF: Resonates with Freudian symptom logic already familiar, and with the Frankfurt School’s insistence that fascism was not purely economic.