Introduction: why read Althusser today? -- The theoretical conjuncture : structure, structurality, structuralism -- Towards a prehistory of structuralism : from Montesquieu to Dilthey -- Settling accounts with phenomenology : Husserl and his critics -- Lévi-Strauss: ancestors and descendants, causes and effects -- Between Spinozists: the function of structure in Althusser, Macherey and Deleuze -- Marxism and humanism -- Althusser and Lacan: towards a geneaology of the concept of interpellation -- Althusser and Foucault: apparatuses of subjection -- The late Althusser : materialism of the encounter or philosophy of nothingness?