IMAGES, CONCEPT AND POLITICS, BETWEEN ALTHUSSER AND SPINOZA

Abstract

Using images to make an incisive conceptual problematization was recognized by Althusser as a crucial theoretical question when he pointed out that “it’s not possible to think in philosophy, but under metaphors”. That’ why he recovered and preserved Marx's famous architectural metaphor, which suggested that a society, as if it was a “social building”, should be thought of as a totality consisting on a structure or infrastructure (the kingdom of social economy) that, like a base, sustained the set of superstructures that rose above it (the legal-political order and the “forms of social consciousness”). Starting from the reconsideration of the critical use of the Marxist metaphor, we investigate the complex game of emphasis and distinctions that articulates politics and theory in the critical philosophy formed at the intersection of the perspectives of Althusser and Spinoza.