- Lived:
- 1918–1990 · Algiers, then Paris — almost his entire adult life inside one school on the rue d'Ulm
- Tradition:
- French structural Marxism
- The Big Idea:
- Ideology is not a fog of false beliefs but a machine of institutions and rituals that recruits each of us — hails us, like a shout in the street — into being the kind of "subject" the social order needs.
- In their words:
- "the lonely hour of the 'last instance' never comes"
- If you remember one thing:
- He rebuilt Marxism around structures instead of human intentions, gave the world its most influential modern theory of ideology — and, in a catastrophe his own doctors ruled he was not free in, killed his wife, Hélène Rytmann.