Althusser, Feuerbach and the Non-Identical Concept of the Body. Issue 1 (2nd January 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Hauser, Michael
• Is Part Of: Critical horizons. Volume 21:Issue 1(2020)
• Page Start: 49
• Page End: 62
• Publication Date: 2020-01-02
• Subjects: Body -- nature -- non-identity -- death -- Feuerbach -- Althusser; Critical theory -- Periodicals; 142.05
• DOI: 10.1080/14409917.2019.1676950
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1440-9917

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This article begins with a detailed analysis of Althusser's criticism of Feuerbach as an "ideologue" of the body. Althusser concentrates on the mirror structure of the subject and the object and on empiricism, which represents the ideological discourse. I argue that Althusser overlooked Feuerbach's decisive revelations: a bodily materiality which corresponds to Adorno's non-identical inner nature, and the ontological condensation of the human being; a process which generates the "living reality" of the body. I show Feuerbach's breakthrough reinterpretation of the Ground in Schelling's concept of the object (God) that was identified with nature and represents the non-identical limitation of the subject. This limitation, which is connected to death, creates the difference between the "living reality" of the body and bodily materiality as subjected by ideological discourses. I conclude that Feuerbach revealed a non-identical materiality of the body that evades both Althusserian interpellations and Foucauldian regulative practices.