On Overdetermination and Althusser: Our Response to Silverman and Park

We respond to critical comment directed at our understanding of overdetermination and our argument that Althusser fell into economic determinism despite also offering a way out of it. Our first response reviews what the concept of overdetermination is and what it implies. On that basis, we argue that the first critic's claim of “prediction” is logically impossible. Our second response explains why we still think that a tension arises in Althusser's work between formulating a notion of overdetermination that in effect rules out any form of causal determination in the last instance and yet affirming economic determination in the last instance. On that basis, we criticize and reject the second critic's claim that Althusser escaped this tension between offered nondeterminist and determinist positions.