Letters to Franca (1961–1972)

Letters to Franca offers an extensive selection from the 500 or so extraordinary letters Louis Althusser addressed to Franca Madonia between 1961 and 1972, the most productive period in Althusser’s life and the time when his most characteristic works were being elaborated and first received. This correspondence allows, therefore, a unique insight into Althusser’s theoretical and political trajectory, giving an intimate account of the establishment of Althusserian Marxism and the intellectual, historical and institutional milieu within which it came to prominence. It also charts the singular story of Althusser’s relationship with Franca, whom he encountered in 1961 and who became his lover, intellectual confidante and Italian translator; the letters thus have a quasi-novelistic dimension and afford a gripping vision of a remarkable couple, the chronicle of a passion. Their correspondence consequently exhibits an exceptionally diverse tonal range, alternately analytical, lyrical, ludic and sombre, displaying an investment in language and expressionbarely suggested by Althusser’s previously published work.

At once the diary of an intellectual-political existence and the narrative of a coup de foudre, these letters also uniquely provide an astonishingly self-reflexive account of Althusser’s experience of manic depression, inviting the reader to witness its sometimes exhilarating, sometimes devastating effects upon his private and public being. Featuring an extensive record of Althusser’s long-term engagement with the thought and practice of psychoanalysis, Letters to Franca bids the reader, here and throughout, to accompany Althusser on a fascinating journey - between theory and life.