15 - Whither Materialism? Althusser/Darwin

Summary

Whither materialism? This title echoes another one, ‘Whither Marxism?’, that of a conference held in 1993 in California where Derrida presented an oral version of Specters of Marx. With regard to this ambiguous title, Derrida proposed that ‘one may hear beneath the question “Where is Marxism going?” another question: “Is Marxism dying?”’ (2006: xiii).

The same ambiguity will be at work throughout this chapter. Where is materialism currently going? Is materialism currently dying? These two questions will, of course, allow me to address the problem of Marxism proper but from the point of view of what Marxism has repressed, that is, materialism itself. This strange approach to Marxism, according to which, in all Marx's work, an official materialism would be repressing a more secret one, is defended by the late Althusser in a fascinating text from 1982: ‘The Underground Current of the Materialism of the Encounter’ (2006: 163–207).

In this text, Althusser brings to light

the existence of an almost completely unknown materialist tradition in the history of philosophy […] a materialism of the encounter, and therefore of the aleatory and of contingency. This materialism is opposed, as a wholly different mode of thought, to the various materialisms of record, including that widely ascribed to Marx, Engels and Lenin, which, like every materialism in the rationalist tradition, is a materialism of necessity and teleology; that is to say, a transformed, disguised form of idealism. (2006: 167, 168)

Such a repressed materialism is the one I intend to interrogate here: a materialism that threatens necessity, order, causality, meaning, a ‘dangerous’ materialism, as Althusser characterises it (2006: 168), a materialism – this is the central idea of this essay – ‘which starts out from nothing’ (2006: 189). I will constantly ask: What does ‘starting out from nothing’ mean, and is it possible?

I quote Althusser again: ‘to free the materialism of the encounter from this repression; to discover, if possible, its implications for both philosophy and materialism; and to ascertain its hidden effects wherever they are silently at work – such is the task that I have set for myself here’ (2006: 168).