Praise

“Killer Althusser offers a powerful feminist analysis of Hélène Legotien’s murder by her husband, Louis Althusser. Dupuis-Déri interrogates the depoliticization of the murder and the exoneration of the killer. Situating Legotien’s murder within a continuum of femicide, he challenges narratives that cast the murder as a crime of passion or an episode from which Althusser was ‘absent,’ instead revealing it for what it is: not extraordinary, but ordinary; not a rupture, but another instance of gendered violence. Althusser emerges not as ‘the philosopher’ or the tormented genius, but as a woman killer—a fact too often occluded by the reverence of his posterity. Killer Althusser—a must-read for political philosophers and feminists—recentres Hélène Legotien’s life and work and exposes male violence against women as a recurring social phenomenon.”

– Jeta Mulaj, assistant professor, Department of Philosophy, Toronto Metropolitan University

“This examination of the 1980 murder of sociologist Hélène Legotien by her partner, philosopher Louis Althusser, lays bare the ways in which such murders are excused and dismissed as the solitary acts of individual madmen rather than understood as systemic acts of misogyny. This murder happened decades ago, but the public discourse about femicide continues to excuse killers of women, while blaming the victims or making them complicit in their own deaths. As Dupuis-Déri notes, the victims disappear, leaving the killers, often vindicated, at the centre of the story. Who, indeed, gets to occupy the public space?”

– Pamela Cross, author of And Sometimes They Kill You: Confronting the Epidemic of Intimate Partner Violence

“This book explores the mundane invisibilization of male violence against women through an examination of the killing of Hélène Legotien by Louis Althusser. Francis Dupuis-Déri highlights Legotien’s life and work, challenging the erasure of women who are victimized by male violence. A sharp focus on this one case provides a vibrant example of the operation of masculine solidarity so central to the process of hiding male violence against women and gendered violence in plain sight.”

– Alan Sears, author of Eros and Alienation: Capitalism and the Making of Gendered Sexualities

“Killer Althusser is a brilliant book. Dupuis-Déri deftly deploys the case of Hélène Legotien, who was murdered by philosopher Louis Althusser—with little consequence to his fame or stature—to lay bare the persistent and violent effects of male supremacy. This vital book is a burst of justice and love and deserves the widest audience possible.”

– James K. Rowe,  associate professor, School of Environmental Studies, University of Victoria

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