What is to be Done?. Louis Althusser

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Note on the Text

      The text on which the present translation is based, an unfinished manuscript titled Que faire? that Louis Althusser wrote in 1978, was first published in 2018 in an edition that I prepared for the Presses universitaires de France/Humensis. The French edition is based on a photocopy of a ninety-five-page typed manuscript bearing many corrections in Althusser’s hand. This photocopy, four pages of which are defective, would appear to be the only copy of the text in Althusser’s archives, housed in the Institut mémoires de l’édition contemporaine (Imec) in Caen. An appeal to Althusser’s collaborators failed to turn up other copies of Que faire?

      A list of notes has been preserved at the Imec along with the photocopied manuscript. They bear on passages of Antonio Gramsci’s Quaderni del carcere (Prison Notebooks) quoted or referred to in Que faire? However, they contain no note markers pegging them to the text. Some of the notes contain brief comments, all of them in Italian; one includes a handwritten sentence that is not in Althusser’s hand. The references to Prison Notebooks in the present edition are, without exception, taken from this list, which refers to the edition of the Quaderni published in 1975 under Valentino Gerratana’s general editorship. Where possible, I have replaced the references to the Italian edition with references to published English translations. I have also inserted note markers at what seemed to be the right places.

All other notes to the text are mine, with the exception of one note by Althusser. I am responsible for the division of the text into chapters as well as the chapter titles. The general title is Althusser’s. A few minor errors on Althusser’s part have been silently corrected.