3

Starting from an indicative panorama of the Latin American readings of Althusser, the article attempts to identify the source of Che Guevara’s questions, raised by the statements in For Marx setting out the thesis of uneven development as a “primitive law” that “suffers no exception”. It goes on to amplify the contradictory implications of a tendency to “transcendantalise” the principle of unevenness as a “discrepancy” inherent in any structure, in Lire le Capital. Althusser thus prefigures gestures which would then come to be recognized as characteristic of post-structuralist “philosophies of difference”. He also testifies to an unequal development within his own thinking between a philosophical refoundation of dialectical materialism and a reactivation – announced but constantly postponed – of historical materialism.