5. Althusser before Althusser: from Christianity to Communism
6. Marxists’ preshistory
7. Proletariat of Human Condition versus the Proletariat of Labor
8. Christian Materialism
9. Antiphilosophy
10. Definition of Ideology
11. Epistemological Break
12. Interpellation
13. State Apparatuses
14. Church as an Ideological State Apparatus
15. Althusser’s Politics
PART II: The Gospel According to Althusser
16. Setting the Stage
17. Camera as an Ideological Apparatus
18. Film as a Commodity
19. Representation
20. The Christian Reality21. Religious Suspension of the Theological
22. Religious-Political
23. Class Struggle
24. Class Struggle Versus Humanity
25. The Politics of Religion
26. Pasolini’s Political Though
Conclusion: Marxism and Film
Agon Hamza is a PhD candidate in philosophy at the Postgraduate School ZRC SAZU in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He serves as the co-editor-in-chief of the international philosophical journal Crisis and Critique. His latest publications are: Slavoj Žižek and Dialectical Materialism (co-edited with Frank Ruda), Repeating Žižek, and From Myth to Symptom: The Case of Kosovo, co-authored with Slavoj Žižek.
Agon Hamza offers an in-depth analysis of the main thesis of Louis Althusser’s philosophical enterprise alongside a clear, engaging dissection of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s most important films. There is a philosophical, religious, and political relationship between Althusser’s philosophy and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s films. Hamza teases out the points of contact, placing specific focus on critiques of ideology, religion, ideological state apparatuses, and the class struggle. The discussion, however, does not address Althusser and Pasolini alone. Hamza also draws on Spinoza, Hegel, Marx, and Žižek to complete his study. Pasolini’s films are a treasure-trove of Althusserian thought, and Hamza ably employs Althusserian terms in his reading of the films. Althusser and Pasolini provides a creative reconstruction of Althusserian philosophy, as well as a novel examination of Pasolini’s film from the perspective of the filmmaker’s own thought and Althusser’s theses.