Pierre Macherey (; born 17 February 1938) is a French

Marxist Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflic ...

philosopher Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

and

literary critic A genre of arts criticism, literary criticism or literary studies is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical analysis of literature' ...

at the University of Lille Nord de France. A former student of

Louis Althusser Louis Pierre Althusser (, ; ; 16 October 1918 – 22 October 1990) was a French Marxist philosopher who studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy. Althusser was a long-time member an ...

and collaborator on the influential volume '' Reading Capital'', Macherey is a central figure in the development of French

post-structuralism Post-structuralism is a philosophical movement that questions the objectivity or stability of the various interpretive structures that are posited by structuralism and considers them to be constituted by broader systems of Power (social and poli ...

and

Marxism Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflict, ...

. His work is influential in

literary theory Literary theory is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for literary analysis. Culler 1997, p.1 Since the 19th century, literary scholarship includes literary theory and considerations of intellectual history, m ...

and

Continental philosophy Continental philosophy is a group of philosophies prominent in 20th-century continental Europe that derive from a broadly Kantianism, Kantian tradition.Continental philosophers usually identify such conditions with the transcendental subject or ...

in Europe (including Britain) though it is generally little read in the United States.

Scholarly work

Macherey is known for his contribution to ''Reading Capital'' and his influential work in Marxist literary criticism. Since October 2000, he has been engaged in a group project entitled "La ''Philosophie au sens large''" (Philosophy in the grand sense), which has been hosted on the academic web platform Hypotheses.org since 2009. The project collects essays, presentations, and longer form studies that highlight the interrelation between philosophy and the literary, political, artistic, and social scientific thought that conditions it. The project is described as an attempt to reformulate the problematic of practice. In this context, Macherey has described philosophy in the 'grand sense' as " a conjunctural practice, which has no other means of surpassing the limits imposed by the conjunctures with which it is confronted other than to reflect on them and to elucidate their conditions in such a way as to eventually be able to intervene with regard to them and, therefore, to contribute to the transformation or evolution of these conjunctures."

Works

Only a partial selection of Macherey's work has been translated into English.
"The Productive Subject"
Viewpoint Magazine 5 (October 2015) * '' Reading Capital'', (1965 - with

Étienne Balibar Étienne Balibar (; ; born 23 April 1942) is a French philosopher. He has taught at the University of Paris X, at the University of California, Irvine and is currently an Anniversary Chair Professor at the Centre for Research in Modern European ...

and Jacques Rancière) * ''Hegel ou Spinoza'', Maspéro, 1977 (reed. La Découverte, 2004) * ''A Theory of Literary Production'' (1978): * ''Hegel et la société'', PUF, (1984) * ''The Object of Literature'' (1995): * ''In a Materialist Way: Selected Essays'' (1998 ed. Warren Montag): * "Hegel or Spinoza", University of Minnesota Press (Jan 2012). Translator, Susan M. Ruddick

References

External links

Pierre Macherey's personal site

Macherey from the Literary Encyclopedia

{{DEFAULTSORT:Macherey, Pierre 1938 births Living people French literary critics Marxist theorists École Normale Supérieure alumni Academic staff of the University of Lille Nord de France French male writers 20th-century French philosophers Spinoza scholars