Overdetermination: Althusser versus Resnick and Wolff

This paper is a critical investigation of Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff's theory of overdetermination. I demonstrate the overall structure of Louis Althusser's original theory of overdetermination through a close examination of his major works and compare it to Resnick and Wolff's reformulation. My main interest in this task lies not so much in revealing the difference between the two as it does in questioning Resnick and Wolff's understanding of Althusser as not antiessentialist enough, leaving some “essentialist moments” in his works. I show that, as with his major concepts such as “determination in the last instance” and “structure in dominance,” Althusser was so serious and consistent that Resnick and Wolff's allegation of inconsistency is unfair. Furthermore, I argue that these allegedly “essentialist” concepts are not something that can be removed from the overall structure of Althusser's theory of overdetermination as suggested by Resnick and Wolff.