Theoretical Practice #27: An Althusserian Prison Break

We were behind barbed wire, watched over by guards and subjected to the vexations of roll-calls, searches, fatigues. We were hungry…

I never seriously thought of escaping… On the other hand, I dreamed up a way of escaping to which I subsequently gave a great deal of thought.

Having noticed that the Germans alerted all the police and troops within a very wide radius once they realised one of us had escaped, which usually resulted in the capture of the daring individual concerned, I decided the surest way of escaping would be to let them believe someone had escaped, wait until the general alert was over which never lasted more than three or four weeks, and then escape after that. What I therefore had to do was disappear from the camp (I must have had a vocation for ‘disappearing’!), and let them think I had gone, before actually have escape, but simply disappear, in other words hide within the camp itself (which was not impossible) and only then vanish into thin air, when all the measures adopted for the alert had been dropped (three weeks later). In essence I had found a way of escaping the camp without actually leaving and of remaining a prisoner in order to escape! Though I perfected my plan, I did not carry it out, but simply pride myself on the fact that I had found ‘the solution’. Having proved that I could do it, there was no need to out it into practice. I have often thought since that the ‘solution’ came from deep within me, combining a fear of danger and the absolute need for security to produce a fictitious act of bravery. If my friend Rancière had known about his ‘episode’ when he reproached me at a much later date for criticising the Communist Party in order to remain within, I believe it would have given him food for thought.

P. 108 The Future Lasts Forever - L. Althusser