420 421 Reviews Reviews C R I S I S & C R I T I Q U E # 3 C R I S I S & C R I T I Q U E # 3 Reviews Revisiting a singular materialism (Warren Montag, Althusser and His Contemporaries. Philosophy’s Perpet- ual War, Durham, Duke University Press, 2013, pp. X+246) Reviewed by Panagiotis Sotiris Recently there has been a new interest in the work of Louis Al- thusser. In contrast to readings of his work from the second half of the 1990s that mainly focused on Althusser’s posthumously pub- lished manuscripts from the 1980s with their imagery of a materialism of the encounter, this new interest has more to do with the totality of Althusser’s work. This has been helped by developments in the publishing history of Althusser’s texts. The recent translation of Althusser’s seminal manuscript from 1969 On the Reproduction of Capitalism 1 , from which Althusser composed the 1971 article on “Ide- ology and Ideological Appara- tuses of the State”, the publication of the 1972 course on Rousseau, 2 and of the Initiation à la philosophie pour les non philosophes (Initiation to Philosophy for the non philosophers), 3 1 Althusser 2014. 2 Althusser 2012. 3 Althusser 2014a. have offered new insights to Al- thusser’s work. In this sense, Warren Mon- tag’s book represents an important development. It follows Montag’s important contributions to the Althusserian literature in the past years, 4 which brought forward important aspects of Althusser’s work such as the importance of singularity, a particular variety of nominalism as opposed to clas- sical criticisms of Althusser as a nominalist. In particular, Mon- tag has stressed the importance of Althusser’s distancing from structuralism in the second half of the 1960s, and his turn towards a more Spinozist approach (Montag is also one of the most important contributors to contemporary Spinoza debates 5 ). Montag’s inter- ventions have been important in highlighting Althusser’s distinct quest for a materialism of singular practices and overdetermination. The book that we are review- ing here attempts to deal with Althusser’s complex relation with his theoretical contemporaries. It begins with taking Althusser’s 1962-63 seminar on the origins of structuralism as a reference point. Montag indeed offers here an important breakthrough since, in contrast to the traditional im- 4 Montag 1991; 1998; 2003. 5 Montag 1999; Montag and Stolze (eds.) 1997.