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EDITOR’S NOTE ON THE TEXT

THE TEXT THAT FOLLOWS is a faithful transcription of a course that Althusser gave in 1972 at the Paris École normale supérieure for students preparing to sit the agrégation. It is based on a tape recording made with Althusser’s permission; he agreed to have a microphone placed on his lectern. Only a few words have been left out of the transcription: words that mark a hesitation (‘well’, ‘uh’, and so on), repetitions of the same word, and a few bits and pieces of sentences that were lost because a few seconds were needed to change the audio cassette. The reader may consult the original recording, which has been made available to the public by the Fondation Gabriel Péri.

Reading the courses edited by François Matheron and published by Le Seuil under the title Althusser, Politique et histoire, I was struck by the thought that this tape recording, which had been slumbering in my drawer for forty years, might serve as a source of ideas, suggestions for further research, and new knowledge not to be found in Althusser’s 1956 and 1966 courses on Rousseau. That led to the deposit of the audio cassettes with the Fondation Gabriel Péri and publication of the present volume.