Décalages

^{Title page from the manuscript of L’Avenir dur longtemps, 1985. Archives Louis Althusser, IMEC.}

Décalage names, on the one hand, certain disruptions, discrepancies, dislocations, breaks, or shifts; yet, like the brisure or, as it was translated into English, “hinge,” décalage also names the joint that prevents any final or total closure on a composite body or ensemble. The position of this word (or concept) helps identify a certain intervention in the conjuncture (another important watchword here) of politics and philosophy in the writings of Louis Althusser, and it orients the writings pursued in this journal. As Althusser’s former student, Pierre Macherey, argued in his first book Pour une théorie de la production littéraire: “Rather than that of structure, the essential concept of such an analysis would be that of décalage.” Indeed, structures are articulated in and through their décalages themselves. If there is any indication of the untranslatability of this concept, it would certainly be the fact that the sentence that contains this “essential concept” was suppressed in the English translation of Macherey’s book. As a name for this journal, Décalages invites contributions which consider and reconsider the work of Althusser and his comrades and its discrepant effects on the terrains and relations of philosophy and politics.