Abstract

In the age of globalization, Althusser’s thought can be a compass that allows us to find points of reference in a situation where the sense of history appears as unthinkable. Althusser defined our age as a “without a center” one. An era that forces us to leave every idealistic residual in classical historical materialism, i.e. the idea of human essence, and a teleology of history and of its necessary course. On the contrary, moving from Althusser and its uninterrupted critical dialogue with Machiavelli and Gramsci, we need to conceive a “materialism of the encounter” that is also an “aleatory” one. A materialism whose central conceptual category, the idea of “conjuncture”, in force of its constitutive provisional nature, can help us to act in our world. A world marked by a continuous and unforeseeable becoming, that rejects any aprioristic analysis.