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"If it is clear that we are constantly confronted with theoretical thought of great rigor, the central point where everything theoretically converges, escapes interminably into the search for it" (Althusser 1995a, 56): such is, for Althusser, the very substance of Machiavelli's thought, which we find both gripping (saisissante) and ungraspable (insaisissante). To say it in a word, Machiavelli has for the first time attempted to "think the possible conditions of an impossible task": to think the possible conditions of a New Prince in a New Principality in the absence of all necessary conditions. From this follows the figure of the void in Machiavelli and even, as we will see, the figure of its deceleration (demultipliee).
For today's readers, Althusser's work as a whole has an enigmatic quality which becomes progressively more evident, refusing to disappear even after numerous rereadings. Faced with a work that never ceases to destroy what it has established and that nevertheless returns at times to what we believed had vanished forever (here, it is sufficient to think of Hegel), before a work that never ceases to plunge ahead and suddenly interrupt the majority of its endeavors, the reader, torn between terror and admiration, is almost necessarily driven to assign to Althusser himself the very judgment that we have seen him place on Machiavelli. Althusser's identification with Machiavelli's work, crystallized as early as 1962, although initially almost invisible, urges us to go further: the enigmatic character of Althusser's work could well have had some relationship with the void (vide) that he situates at the heart of Machiavelli's approach. Whereas many of the concepts formed by Althusser will sooner or later disappear, the term "void" is indisputably one that constantly returns, often accompanied by other terms belonging to the same galaxy: that of beginning and that of solitude.
To give an idea of the significance of the word void in Althusser's writings, let us begin by considering some of its appearances. Occurring frequently in the Journal de Captivite, it appears early in the first lines of "The International of Decent Feelings" (1946) after a quote from a lecture by Malraux directly associated with the theme of solitude: "I will not forget the emptiness [vide] we felt within us then. The crowd watching from...