Althusserianadj.n.
/ˌaltᵿˈsɛːrɪən/, U.S. /ˌɑltˌhʊˈsɛriən/ A. adj.
Of, belonging to, or characteristic of Althusser; esp. relating to or designating his reinterpretation of traditional Marxism in the light of structuralist theories.
ΚΠ
1966 Times Lit. Suppl. 15 Dec. 1162/4 The Althusserian type of analysis finds it difficult, if not impossible, to get outside the formal structure of Marx's thought.
1978 M. Hesse in C. Hooteway & P. Pettit Action & Interpr. 16 It is significant that G. S. Jones, in an Althusserian piece in Blackburn's Ideology, denies that it is values or interpretations that are involved in theory choice.
1984 N.Y. Times 8 July vii. 26/3 Under several rubrics—existential, semiotic, Althusserian, Derridean—culture analysts and philosophical thinkers have been promoting for decades the thesis that humanness is a blip.
1994 A. Ahmad In Theory 319 The Althusserian position in British Marxism..helped retrieve many debates from..a very lax kind of Left populism which had become the hallmark of the British Communist Party.
2001 I. Aitken European Film Theory & Cinema vi. 143 This kind of ‘materialist’ cinema is indebted to Althusserian post-structuralism.
B. n.
An advocate or adherent of Althusserian theories.
ΚΠ
1971 Stud. in Soviet Thought 11 49 It seems quite unfair to drag Sartre—who is definitely a philosopher—down to the amateurish level of the Althusserians.
1986 New Republic 10 Feb. 33/2 The Althusserian or Leninist Marxist who finds it insufficiently Marxist, unduly empirical, sentimental, and moralistic.
1993 R. Hughes Culture of Complaint i. 73 The fact that Marxist influence so endures in the American academic left—to the point where you can still find an Althusserian or two—is a proof of the power of nostalgia.
2006 S. Kimbrough in G. L. Hardcastle & G. A. Reisch Bullshit & Philos. i. 15 The Althusserians can be counted on to respond to Cohen by arguing their methods clarify rather than obscure the study of politics.
Derivatives
Althuˈsserianism n. Althusserian theories collectively, esp. the form of post-structuralist Marxism associated with Althusser.
ΚΠ
1974 Polit. Theory 2 408 Michel Simon's articles..represented a tempered Althusserianism at best.
1987 New Left Rev. 164 113 Wood identifies the new true Socialists of the 1980s as a disparate group of intellectuals, many of them with a past in Althusserianism or Racism, sometimes both.
2005 S. Homer J. Lacan 112 By the mid-1970s Althusserianism had collapsed under the weight of its own theoretical contradictions and limitations.
This is a new entry (OED Third Edition, September 2012; most recently modified version published online December 2021).
<
adj.n.1966