Althusser's LessonJacques Rancire's first major work, Althusser's Lesson, appeared in 1974, just as the energies of May '68 were losing ground to the calls for a return to order. Rancire's analysis of Althusserian Marxism unfolds against this background: what is the relationship between the return to order and the enthusiasm which greeted the publication of Althusser's Reply to John Lewis in 1973? How to explain the rehabilitation of a philosophy that had been declared