Warren Montag
Biographic Data
| ID | 447017 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Warren Montag |
| GIVEN NAMES | Warren |
| FAMILY NAME | Montag |
| SIGNATURE | MONTAG W |
| AFFILIATIONS | Occidental College |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3957-3979 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 33 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 61 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 33 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1989 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
An interview with Warren Montag
Interview
Materialism, matter and materiality in the work of althusser
Over a decade ago, a number of philosophers declared that the time of what they called “the linguistic turn,” that is, a philosophical orientation to language as the sole medium through which reality could be apprehended, had come to an end, having foundered on its own contradictions. In its place, they proposed a turn to objects or things, that is, that to which we were previously told we could gain access only through language or consciousness,…
Thinking with Balibar
The Other Adam Smith
An account of Adam Smith that explores how his minor and major writings together constitute a comprehensive—if highly contestable—system of thought, this book looks at Smith's writing on knowledge, affect, sociability and government, and political economy in order to challenge both the old view of Smith as a narrow market fundamentalist and the new orthodoxy that casts him as a champion of self-restraint and the architect of humanized markets
Spinoza's counter-aesthetics
Spinoza says very little about art or literature in his work; a fact which partly explains the absence of references to him by the German initiators of aesthetics in the eighteenth century, including Baumgarten, Kant and Hegel. Spinoza's resolute opposition to teleology, however, provides an even more compelling reason for his absence, given the teleological conception of literary and artistic form common to the notion of aesthetics at the time o…
How Does Critique Become Effective
Critique has been the site of a conflict from the time of its origins: the conflict over the proper relation between theory and practice. Must critique protect its fundamental separation from practice, in order to guard against the intrusion of particular interests into what ought to be a realm of rational deliberation? In this case, critique would precede and direct practice. Or, in contrast, does practice precede and make possible the endeavor …
Balibar and the Citizen Subject
Explores the core of Balibar’s work since 1980 This collection explores Balibar’s rethinking of the connections between subjection and subjectivity by tracing the genealogies of these concepts in their discursive history. The 12 essays provide an overview of Balibar’s work after his collaboration with Althusser. They explain and expand his framework; in particular, by restoring Arabic and Islamic thought to the conversation on the citizen subject…
Individuals Interpellable and Uninterpellable
Individuals Interpellable and Uninterpellable: Reflections on James R. Martel’s The Misinterpellated Subject Warren Montag (bio) Martel, James R. The Misinterpellated Subject. Duke UP, 2017. James R. Martel’s The Misinterpellated Subject is a work of great interest, and not simply for those seeking to apply Althusser’s theory of interpellation beyond its sphere of origin. For those of us who, more cautiously (perhaps too cautiously), have limited…
Who/What, Before/After
Introduction to Louis Althusser, ‘Some Questions Concerning the Crisis of Marxist Theory and of the International Communist Movement’
In July 1976, Althusser delivered a lecture in Spain on the topic of the dictatorship of the proletariat. At the moment that many Western European Communist parties sought formally or informally to distance themselves from the dictatorships of both West and East, Althusser proposed to examine the emergence of the concept of the proletarian dictatorship in a specificity. The debates of the mid-seventies, he argued, obscured or repressed the concep…
The economic imagination
To apply the term 'magical' to modern economic thought is to suggest that there remains within it an unassimilated and unexamined residue of irrational thought. Further, it is to hold that this remnant persists despite the discipline's century long attempt to create a 'pure' form of economic science. The specific instance of irrationality to which we refer is perfectly visible but systematically overlooked because it exists in economics' most bas…
Althusser's Authorless Theater
In his commentary on what he calls Althusser's dramaturgy, Étienne Balibar notes the importance of theater as a metaphor and in its literal, material existence as an organized space in which both visibility and invisibility are staged. This essay attempts to explore the importance of the figure of machinery in Althusser's work: stage machinery but also the machinery and apparatuses by which the world of subjection is simultaneously staged and dis…
Althusser and His Contemporaries
Althusser and His Contemporaries
Introduction: why read Althusser today? -- The theoretical conjuncture : structure, structurality, structuralism -- Towards a prehistory of structuralism : from Montesquieu to Dilthey -- Settling accounts with phenomenology : Husserl and his critics -- Lévi-Strauss: ancestors and descendants, causes and effects -- Between Spinozists: the function of structure in Althusser, Macherey and Deleuze -- Marxism and humanism -- Althusser and Lacan: towar…
Between Interpellation and Immunization
Althusser's "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses," Balibar's "Citizen Subject," and Esposito's Communitas may be read together as insisting on the indissoluble link between the notion of the subject as agent and the subject as the name of the subjected individual, the one who is submitted to the will of another. Each philosopher, from his own perspective, seeks to explore the paradox of the subject who is free and self-determining only to …
Althusser, el infinito adios Althusser
A review of recent French and Latin-American work on Althusser suggests that the received interpretations of the latter's work may profitably be re-examined. The notion that there exists an early, middle and late Althusser, each distinct from the others in important ways, is called radically into question by this body of scholarship. Various authors show the presence of an aleatory dimension, usually associated with the late Althusser, in even hi…
War and the Market
The essay examines the place of war in the work of the original theoreticians of neo-liberalism. The reigning dogmas proclaim that the free market and economic competition offer a way in which irrational and destructive violence between states can be transmuted into rational and productive forms from which all parties stand to benefit. Von Mises and Hayek, however, show clearly that the destruction that war brings has its place in the market syst…
The Future of the Human
To pose the question of the future of the human is to open at least two distinct lines of inquiry.The first concerns the idea of the human itself, an idea whose complexity is perhaps obscured by the use of the definite article.There are not only different and openly antagonistic theories of the human (of what constitutes humanity, that is, the essential properties that distinguish it from other species of life, as well as of the rights, obligatio…
Imitating the Affects of Beasts
Is Spinoza a theoretician of self-interest? Historians of philosophy have arrived at diametrically opposed answers to this question. His introduction of the term conatus, meaning endeavor or striving, in part 3 of the Ethics, together with his assertion that when human beings most seek that which is useful to them individually they are most useful to each other, might appear, as A. O. Hirschman argued, to render him both a follower of the Stoics …
Locke et le concept d'inhumain
Dans cet article, l'auteur se propose de développer les suggestions d'Althusser pour qui la théorie politique de Locke (de l'état de nature au contrat social ) est fondée sur une distinction entre l'humain et l'inhumain. La conception lockienne d'une espèce humaine, avec des droits et des obligations que Dieu lui aurait donnés, relève plutôt de la politique que de la biologie ou de la nature. À l'origine de l'humanité il y a un choix : consulter …
Tumultuous Combinations”
"Les subalternes peuvent-illes parler ?" et autres questions transcendentales
L'auteur repend la question soulevée au début des années 1990 par Gayatri Spivak dans un article célèbre et difficile : « Les Subalternes peuvent-illes parler ? », qui a alimenté d'interminables discussions dans le champ des études postcoloniales. Il entend montrer que la question est trompeuse, qu'il s'agit moins de savoir dans l'absolu si les subalternes peuvent parler - ils le font de toute évidence -, que de savoir s'ils parviennent à le fair…
Materiality, Singularity, Subject
This essay is a response to four commentaries on the book Louis Althusser. Michael Hardt argues that the book's emphasis on Althusser's critique of the subject and his questioning (with Pierre Macherey) of the notion of the author is itself conjunctural, made possible by the hegemony of “immaterial labor” in the recent period. I respond that the subversion of the subject emerged with the legal subject itself—that is, at the dawn of capitalism in …
Who's Afraid of the Multitude? Between the Individual and the State
Research Article| October 01 2005 Who's Afraid of the Multitude? Between the Individual and the State Warren Montag Warren Montag Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google South Atlantic Quarterly (2005) 104 (4): 655–673. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-104-4-655 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Permissions Search Site Citation Warren Montag; Who's Afraid of the Multitude? Between the Individual an…
Foucault et la problématique des origines »
Reading of Folie et déraison. In 1963, Althusser gave a lecture on Foucault’s Folie et deraison to his seminar on structuralism. His notes, the only written record of his impassioned encounter with this text, suggest that he was particularly interested in the way Foucault defined culture not on the basis of the values it proclaimed, but through that which it rejected and refused. Althusser distinguished Foucault’s analysis from those of Husserl a…
The Soul is the Prison of the Body
Au-dela des differences ideologiques qui opposent Althusser et Foucault, l'A. tente de rapprocher leur analyse respective de la domination et de l'autorite developpee dans «Ideologie et appareils ideologiques d'etat» et «Surveiller et punir». Dans chacune des oeuvres se lit le meme desespoir politique illustre par l'expression l'âme est la prison du corps
Who's Afraid of the Multitude? Between the Individual and the State
Research Article| October 01 2005 Who's Afraid of the Multitude? Between the Individual and the State Warren Montag Warren Montag Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google South Atlantic Quarterly (2005) 104 (4): 655–673. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-104-4-655 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Permissions Search Site Citation Warren Montag; Who's Afraid of the Multitude? Between the Individual an…
Spinoza
(1989). Spinoza: Politics in a World without Transcendence. Rethinking Marxism: Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 89-103
"Les subalternes peuvent-illes parler ?" et autres questions transcendentales
L'auteur repend la question soulevée au début des années 1990 par Gayatri Spivak dans un article célèbre et difficile : « Les Subalternes peuvent-illes parler ? », qui a alimenté d'interminables discussions dans le champ des études postcoloniales. Il entend montrer que la question est trompeuse, qu'il s'agit moins de savoir dans l'absolu si les subalternes peuvent parler - ils le font de toute évidence -, que de savoir s'ils parviennent à le fair…
Althusser's Nominalism
Imitating the Affects of Beasts
Is Spinoza a theoretician of self-interest? Historians of philosophy have arrived at diametrically opposed answers to this question. His introduction of the term conatus, meaning endeavor or striving, in part 3 of the Ethics, together with his assertion that when human beings most seek that which is useful to them individually they are most useful to each other, might appear, as A. O. Hirschman argued, to render him both a follower of the Stoics …
On Marx and Freud
Althusser's Authorless Theater
In his commentary on what he calls Althusser's dramaturgy, Étienne Balibar notes the importance of theater as a metaphor and in its literal, material existence as an organized space in which both visibility and invisibility are staged. This essay attempts to explore the importance of the figure of machinery in Althusser's work: stage machinery but also the machinery and apparatuses by which the world of subjection is simultaneously staged and dis…
The Future of the Human
To pose the question of the future of the human is to open at least two distinct lines of inquiry.The first concerns the idea of the human itself, an idea whose complexity is perhaps obscured by the use of the definite article.There are not only different and openly antagonistic theories of the human (of what constitutes humanity, that is, the essential properties that distinguish it from other species of life, as well as of the rights, obligatio…
Locke et le concept d'inhumain
Dans cet article, l'auteur se propose de développer les suggestions d'Althusser pour qui la théorie politique de Locke (de l'état de nature au contrat social ) est fondée sur une distinction entre l'humain et l'inhumain. La conception lockienne d'une espèce humaine, avec des droits et des obligations que Dieu lui aurait donnés, relève plutôt de la politique que de la biologie ou de la nature. À l'origine de l'humanité il y a un choix : consulter …
Materiality, Singularity, Subject
This essay is a response to four commentaries on the book Louis Althusser. Michael Hardt argues that the book's emphasis on Althusser's critique of the subject and his questioning (with Pierre Macherey) of the notion of the author is itself conjunctural, made possible by the hegemony of “immaterial labor” in the recent period. I respond that the subversion of the subject emerged with the legal subject itself—that is, at the dawn of capitalism in …
Spinoza
(1989). Spinoza: Politics in a World without Transcendence. Rethinking Marxism: Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 89-103
On Marx and Freud
The Emptiness of a Distance Taken
The Soul is the Prison of the Body
Au-dela des differences ideologiques qui opposent Althusser et Foucault, l'A. tente de rapprocher leur analyse respective de la domination et de l'autorite developpee dans «Ideologie et appareils ideologiques d'etat» et «Surveiller et punir». Dans chacune des oeuvres se lit le meme desespoir politique illustre par l'expression l'âme est la prison du corps
Althusser's Nominalism
Masses, classes, and the public sphere
Despite the passing of some forty years since the original publication of Jurgen Habermas's The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, the fundamental concepts that informed the book remain prominent and distinctly influential. So much so that the term 'public sphere', as Habermas introduced it, has today become an ultimately foundational concept for assessing everything from intellectual debate and 'public access' criticism, to the func…
On Antonio Negri's Insurgencies
Louis Althusser
Foucault et la problématique des origines »
Reading of Folie et déraison. In 1963, Althusser gave a lecture on Foucault’s Folie et deraison to his seminar on structuralism. His notes, the only written record of his impassioned encounter with this text, suggest that he was particularly interested in the way Foucault defined culture not on the basis of the values it proclaimed, but through that which it rejected and refused. Althusser distinguished Foucault’s analysis from those of Husserl a…
Materiality, Singularity, Subject
This essay is a response to four commentaries on the book Louis Althusser. Michael Hardt argues that the book's emphasis on Althusser's critique of the subject and his questioning (with Pierre Macherey) of the notion of the author is itself conjunctural, made possible by the hegemony of “immaterial labor” in the recent period. I respond that the subversion of the subject emerged with the legal subject itself—that is, at the dawn of capitalism in …
Who's Afraid of the Multitude? Between the Individual and the State
Research Article| October 01 2005 Who's Afraid of the Multitude? Between the Individual and the State Warren Montag Warren Montag Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google South Atlantic Quarterly (2005) 104 (4): 655–673. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-104-4-655 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Permissions Search Site Citation Warren Montag; Who's Afraid of the Multitude? Between the Individual an…
"Les subalternes peuvent-illes parler ?" et autres questions transcendentales
L'auteur repend la question soulevée au début des années 1990 par Gayatri Spivak dans un article célèbre et difficile : « Les Subalternes peuvent-illes parler ? », qui a alimenté d'interminables discussions dans le champ des études postcoloniales. Il entend montrer que la question est trompeuse, qu'il s'agit moins de savoir dans l'absolu si les subalternes peuvent parler - ils le font de toute évidence -, que de savoir s'ils parviennent à le fair…
Tumultuous Combinations”
Locke et le concept d'inhumain
Dans cet article, l'auteur se propose de développer les suggestions d'Althusser pour qui la théorie politique de Locke (de l'état de nature au contrat social ) est fondée sur une distinction entre l'humain et l'inhumain. La conception lockienne d'une espèce humaine, avec des droits et des obligations que Dieu lui aurait donnés, relève plutôt de la politique que de la biologie ou de la nature. À l'origine de l'humanité il y a un choix : consulter …
War and the Market
The essay examines the place of war in the work of the original theoreticians of neo-liberalism. The reigning dogmas proclaim that the free market and economic competition offer a way in which irrational and destructive violence between states can be transmuted into rational and productive forms from which all parties stand to benefit. Von Mises and Hayek, however, show clearly that the destruction that war brings has its place in the market syst…
The Future of the Human
To pose the question of the future of the human is to open at least two distinct lines of inquiry.The first concerns the idea of the human itself, an idea whose complexity is perhaps obscured by the use of the definite article.There are not only different and openly antagonistic theories of the human (of what constitutes humanity, that is, the essential properties that distinguish it from other species of life, as well as of the rights, obligatio…
Imitating the Affects of Beasts
Is Spinoza a theoretician of self-interest? Historians of philosophy have arrived at diametrically opposed answers to this question. His introduction of the term conatus, meaning endeavor or striving, in part 3 of the Ethics, together with his assertion that when human beings most seek that which is useful to them individually they are most useful to each other, might appear, as A. O. Hirschman argued, to render him both a follower of the Stoics …
Althusser, el infinito adios Althusser
A review of recent French and Latin-American work on Althusser suggests that the received interpretations of the latter's work may profitably be re-examined. The notion that there exists an early, middle and late Althusser, each distinct from the others in important ways, is called radically into question by this body of scholarship. Various authors show the presence of an aleatory dimension, usually associated with the late Althusser, in even hi…
Between Interpellation and Immunization
Althusser's "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses," Balibar's "Citizen Subject," and Esposito's Communitas may be read together as insisting on the indissoluble link between the notion of the subject as agent and the subject as the name of the subjected individual, the one who is submitted to the will of another. Each philosopher, from his own perspective, seeks to explore the paradox of the subject who is free and self-determining only to …
Althusser and His Contemporaries
Althusser and His Contemporaries
Introduction: why read Althusser today? -- The theoretical conjuncture : structure, structurality, structuralism -- Towards a prehistory of structuralism : from Montesquieu to Dilthey -- Settling accounts with phenomenology : Husserl and his critics -- Lévi-Strauss: ancestors and descendants, causes and effects -- Between Spinozists: the function of structure in Althusser, Macherey and Deleuze -- Marxism and humanism -- Althusser and Lacan: towar…
Introduction to Louis Althusser, ‘Some Questions Concerning the Crisis of Marxist Theory and of the International Communist Movement’
In July 1976, Althusser delivered a lecture in Spain on the topic of the dictatorship of the proletariat. At the moment that many Western European Communist parties sought formally or informally to distance themselves from the dictatorships of both West and East, Althusser proposed to examine the emergence of the concept of the proletarian dictatorship in a specificity. The debates of the mid-seventies, he argued, obscured or repressed the concep…
The economic imagination
To apply the term 'magical' to modern economic thought is to suggest that there remains within it an unassimilated and unexamined residue of irrational thought. Further, it is to hold that this remnant persists despite the discipline's century long attempt to create a 'pure' form of economic science. The specific instance of irrationality to which we refer is perfectly visible but systematically overlooked because it exists in economics' most bas…
Althusser's Authorless Theater
In his commentary on what he calls Althusser's dramaturgy, Étienne Balibar notes the importance of theater as a metaphor and in its literal, material existence as an organized space in which both visibility and invisibility are staged. This essay attempts to explore the importance of the figure of machinery in Althusser's work: stage machinery but also the machinery and apparatuses by which the world of subjection is simultaneously staged and dis…
Balibar and the Citizen Subject
Explores the core of Balibar’s work since 1980 This collection explores Balibar’s rethinking of the connections between subjection and subjectivity by tracing the genealogies of these concepts in their discursive history. The 12 essays provide an overview of Balibar’s work after his collaboration with Althusser. They explain and expand his framework; in particular, by restoring Arabic and Islamic thought to the conversation on the citizen subject…
Philosophy (28 works) · Marxism and Critical Theory (19 works) · Epistemology (17 works) · Philosophy (16 works) · Political science (15 works) · Psychology (15 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Law (14 works) · Politics (13 works) · Political Economy and Marxism (10 works)