Page 99 - Decoding Culture

92 D E C O D I N G C U L TURE

Against this tendency Althusser argued that there was an episte­
mological break in Marx's work, separating the youthful
philosophical speculations from the mature, anti-essentialist sci­
ence of his 'theoretical anti-humanism' (Althusser, 1969: 227-231).
In the course of establishing his reading of Marx, Althusser con­
tributed significantly to a wide range of issues in marxist theory.
However, it was his distinctive epistemology and his theory of ide­
ology that most strongly influenced both Screen theory and 1970s
cultural studies more generally, and it is on these elements of his
work that I shall focus here.
Let me begin with epistemology. The twin pillars of Althusser's
view of knowledge are his thoroughgoing anti-empiricism and,
allied to it, his commitment to the view that a science's object of
inquiry is always theoretically constituted. This can best be under­
stood in relation to what he calls 'theoretical practice'. 'Scientific'
theoretical practice, as opposed to 'ideological' theoretical prac­
tice, is a process of production whereby 'raw material' is
transformed into knowledge. However, this is not (as in empiri­
cism) a process whereby 'facts' are persuaded to give up their
essence, because the raw material upon which science works is
always conceptual and the transformation is therefore from one
kind of concept to another. When a science is first constituted,
Althusser (1969: 184) writes, it 'does not "work" on a purely objec­
tive "given", that of pure and absolute "facts". On the contrary, its
particular labour consists of elaborating its own scientific f a cts
through a critique of the ideological 'facts" elaborated by an earlier
ideological theoretical practice.' Even when it is fully constituted,
science still 'works' on concepts, though now they may be ideo­
logical as before, or 'facts' within the terms of the scientific
theoretical practice, or concepts from an earlier phase of the sci­
ence. In his distinctive (and revealing) language, the process is
one whereby Generality II works on Generality I to produce

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