Decostruzione e Materialismo Aleatorio

In 1976 in Granada Louis Althusser will talk of a future philosophy which is a “'non-philosophy' - that is, one which ceases to be produced in the form of a philosophy, whose function of theoretical hegemony will disappear in order to make way for new forms of philosophical existence.” I was immediately struck by the Schürmannian overtones of this formulation. 1976-77 marks Derrida’s seminar Theory and Practice, which alongside Positions and Specters marks three fundamental moments regarding the articulation between deconstruction and the thought of Althusser and Marx. It is a course about the status of philosophy, of thinking, of theory and of practice. Later that year in New York, Reiner Schürmann will hold his course on Marx, where he will agree with Althusser on the existence of an epochal break in Marx but disagree regarding the status assigned to this break. Non-philosophy in Althusser’s trajectory is followed by the writings which have come to be known as aleatory materialism. We will propose a relation between these three gestures: non- philosophy and aleatory materialism, deconstruction, and what with Schürmann we can call non-hegemonical philosophy. What relationship does aleatory materialism entertain with metaphysics, insofar as Althusser posits aleatory materialism as a repressed current, by both idealism and materialism, consigned to lead an underground existence beneath these two oppositional terms which compose the kampfplatz of the history of traditional philosophy? This aleatory materialism which, we recall, was for Althusser a materialism that does not belong to this pair and whose thinking was profoundly influenced by Martin Heidegger. Following Schürmann’s observation that “one domain of positivities which Foucault has actually said very little about is the history of philosophy”, we will ask questions that we think Michel Foucault would have asked: Is there such a thing as philosophical repression? How was aleatory materialism incited into traditional materialism? By means of what operation was it captured by the philosophical apparatus and how was it integrated into metaphysical materialism? How does it stand in relation to logocentrism, ontotheology and the hypothesis of closure? What kind of existence did aleatory materialism lead under the domination of the hegemonic phantasmatic maximization carried out by idealism and materialism? see the extent to which there is a relation between Schürmann’s ontology of the manifold and Althusser’s aleatory materialism, a relation then between the “principle” of anarchy and the “principle” of aleatority – above all we will inquire into aleatory materialism as a theory, a theory based upon a decision, of reading-writing the history of philosophy. The thesis tries to articulate a reading of aleatory materialism as a weakening and saturation of dialectics and a challenge to the idea of the self-sufficiency and full-presence of philosophical tendencies. It posits aleatory materialism as Althusser's trajectory of weakening and considers that this trajectory is best understood through protocols coming from Derrida's deconstruction and Reiner Schürmann's investigations in the hegemonic practice of philosophy.