Agon Hamza is a PhD candidate in philosophy at the Postgraduate School ZRC SAZU in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He serves as the co-editor-in-chief of the international philosophical journal Crisis and Critique. His latest publications are: Slavoj Zizek and Dialectical Materialism (co-edited with Frank Ruda), Repeating Zizek, and From Myth to Symptom: The Case of Kosovo, co-authored with Slavoj Zizek.

Introduction: Althusser and Pasolini

PART I: On Althusser

1. Contextualisation

2. Periodization

3. Taking sides: Hegel or Spinoza?

4. Structural Causality

5. Althusser before Althusser: from Christianity to Communism

6. Marxists' preshistory

7. Proletariat of Human Condition versus the Proletariat of Labor

8. Christian Materialism

9. Antiphilosophy

10. Definition of Ideology

11. Epistemological Break

12. Interpellation

13. State Apparatuses

14. Church as an Ideological State Apparatus

15. Althusser's Politics

PART II: The Gospel According to Althusser

16. Setting the Stage

17. Camera as an Ideological Apparatus

18. Film as a Commodity

19. Representation

20. The Christian Reality21. Religious Suspension of the Theological

22. Religious-Political

23. Class Struggle

24. Class Struggle Versus Humanity

25. The Politics of Religion

26. Pasolini's Political Though

Conclusion: Marxism and Film

Agon Hamza offers an in-depth analysis of the main thesis of Louis Althusser's philosophical enterprise alongside a clear, engaging dissection of Pier Paolo Pasolini's most important films. There is a philosophical, religious, and political relationship between Althusser's philosophy and Pier Paolo Pasolini's films. Hamza teases out the points of contact, placing specific focus on critiques of ideology, religion, ideological state apparatuses, and the class struggle. The discussion, however, does not address Althusser and Pasolini alone. Hamza also draws on Spinoza, Hegel, Marx, and Zizek to complete his study. Pasolini's films are a treasure-trove of Althusserian thought, and Hamza ably employs Althusserian terms in his reading of the films. Althusser and Pasolini provides a creative reconstruction of Althusserian philosophy, as well as a novel examination of Pasolini's film from the perspective of the filmmaker's own thought and Althusser's theses.