"Three decades ago, the work of Pierre Macherey helped to change the face of literary studies. In this volume, he reappears in his more customary persona of philosopher rather than literary theorist, retaining all of his materialist rigour but widening his intellectual range. This fascinating set of encounters with Hegel, Lacan, Foucault, Spinoza and others is the record of a subtle, independent, powerfully demystifying mind, as well as an historic document in the after-life of so-called Althusserian Marxism." - Terry Eagleton