Jacques Rancière's Epistemological Analysis of Louis Althusser's Structural Marxism and Its Implications for Character Education at St. Thomas 1 High School, Medan

Authors

  • Benediktus Sipandi Ginggar SMA St Thomas 1 Medan
  • Petra Putri Sarinah Pandiangan Universitas Negeri Medan

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.58258/96f6f673

Keywords:

Jacques Ranciere, Louis Althusser, Pendidikan Karakter, SMA St. Thomas 1, Medan, Emansipasi Epistemologi, Break Epistemology.

Abstract

This paper critically examines Jacques Rancière's rejection of Althusser's concept of interpretation in epistemological rupture, and explores its implications for character education at SMA St. Thomas 1 Medan. Rancière's critique stems from his rejection of hierarchical epistemological structures in the dichotomy between science and ideology. For Rancière, this approach constrains the division of social aesthetics of class outside of power as an ideological object, rather than as an autonomous political subject. By connecting this epistemological critique to the practice of character education, this paper argues that Rancière's principle of epistemic equality provides a theoretical foundation for building more inclusive and emancipatory learning environments. At SMA St. Thomas 1 Medan, character education that is grounded in critical reflection, autonomous thinking, and the equal recognition of all students as active moral agents aligns with Rancière's post-structural vision. The author uses a qualitative hermeneutic method to analyze primary works of Rancière and Althusser and relate them to current educational practice. Results affirm that the interpretation of Marxism must be grounded within social aesthetics, and that this framework offers a progressive, emancipatory model for character formation in secondary schools.

References

Althusser, Louis. Reading Capital. London: Verso, 1970.

———. For Marx. Paris: The Penguin Press, 1969.

———. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, Translated by Ben Brewster. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971.

———. Esai Self-Criticism, Translated by Grahame Lock. NLB, 1976.

Aprilianto, Tedy. Genealogi Pemikiran Louis Althusser: Diskursus Marxisme-Strukturalis, Negara, dan Kritik Kekuasaan. Solok: PT Mafy Media Lestari, 2025.

Aprilianto, Tedy. "Konsep Emansipasi pada Estetika Politik Jacques Rancière." Acitya: Jurnal Teologi, Filsafat, dan Studi Agama 1, No. 2 (2025): 200-215.

Araujo, Tais. "May 68's Effects in Jacques Rancière's Path: The Althusserian Dichotomy between Science and Ideology Questioned." Pro-Posições Campinas, SP V.35 (2024): 1-21.

Baker, Anton, dan Achmad Charris Zubair. Metodologi Penelitian Filsafat. Yogyakarta: Penerbit Kanisius, 1998.

Balibar, Etienne. "Althusser's Object." Social Text No. 28 (1994): 157-188.

Bourg, Julian. From Revolution to Ethics: May 1968 and Contemporary French Thought. London: Mc-Gill Queen's University Press, 2007.

Brown, Nathan. "Red Years: Althusser's Lesson, Rancière's Error and the Real Movement of History." Radical Philosophy 170 (2011): 16-24.

Chambers, Samuel A. "Jacques Rancière's Lesson on the Lesson." Educational Philosophy and Theory 45, No. 6 (2013): 637-646.

Eagleton, Terry. Ideology: An Introduction. London and New York: Longman, 1994.

Erdem, Erdinc. "Althusser's Relation to Hegel: French Hegelianism, Marxism, and Aleatory Materialism." A Journal of Economics, Culture and Society 31 (2019): 380-401.

Fajardo, Christian. "Jacques Rancière: Aesthetics, Time, Politics." Journal of Aesthetics & Culture 14 (2022): 1-12.

Frank, Jason. "Logical Revolts: Jacques Rancière and Political Subjectivization." Political Theory 43 (2015): 249-261.

Fraser, John. "Louis Althusser on Science, Marxism and Politics." Science & Society 40, No. 4 (1976): 438-464.

Guerro, Daniel. "Reconciling Theory and Praxis: Defending Subjective Agency Against Althusser's Structuralism." Honors Undergraduate Thesis, University of Central Florida, 2025.

Henry, Chris. Ethics of Political Resistance: Althusser, Badiou, Deleuze. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Horowitz, Morgan. "On the Supposed Break in Marx." Journal Science & Society 78, No. 4 (2014): 454-483.

Kosat, Oktavianus. "Louis Althusser: Marxis Struktural." Lumen Veritatis: Jurnal Filsafat dan Teologi 11, No. 2 (2021): 187-198.

Lampert, Matthew. "Jacques Rancière and The Politics of Theory." Cultural Critique 106 (2020): 1-26.

Montag, Warren. Althusser and His Contemporaries: Philosophy's Perpetual War. London: Duke University Press, 2013.

Musto, Marcello. "The 'Young Marx' Myth in Interpretations of the Economic-Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844." Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory 43, No. 2 (2015): 233-260.

Perica, Ivana. "The Archipolitics of Jacques Rancière." Krisis: Journal for Contemporary Philosophy 39, No. 1 (2019): 15-26.

Rancière, Jacques. Althusser's Lesson, Translated by Emiliano Battista. London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2011.

———. Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.

———. Mallarme: The Politics of the Siren. London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2011.

———. On the Shores of Politics, Translated by Liz Heron. London: Verso, 2007.

———. "The Aesthetic Dimension: Aesthetics, Politics, Knowledge." Critical Inquiry 36, No. 1 (2009): 1-19.

———. The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation, Translated by Kristin Ross. California: Stanford University Press, 1991.

———. The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible, Translated by Gabriel Rockhill. London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2004.

Retnick, Stephen, dan Richard Wolff. "Althusser's Liberitation of Marxian Theory." In The Althusserian Legacy. London: Verso, 1993.

Ross, Alison. "The Aesthetic Fable: Cinema in Jacques Rancière's 'Aesthetic Politics'." Sub Stance 28, No. 1 (2009): 128-150.

Smith, Neil. "Symptomatic Silence in Althusser: The Concept of Nature and the Unity of Science." Science & Society 44, No. 1 (1980): 58-81.

Suryajaya, Martin. Sejarah Estetika: Era Klasik sampai Kontemporer. Jakarta: Gang Kabel, 2016.

Suter, Mischa. "A Thorn in the Side of Social History: Jacques Rancière and Les Révoltes Logiques." International Review of Social History 57 (2012): 61-85.

Thomas, Paul. Marxism and Scientific Socialism: From Engels to Althusser. New York: Routledge, 2008.

Valentine, Jeremy. "Rancière and Contemporary Political Problems." Paragraph 28, No. 1 (2005): 46-60.

Zwabrt, Hub. Continental Philosophy of Technoscience. Swiss: Springer, 2022.

Downloads

Published

2026-06-18

Issue

Vol. 11 No. 2 (2026): JUPE : Jurnal Pendidikan Mandala (Juni)

Section

Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2026 Benediktus Sipandi Ginggar, Petra Putri Sarinah Pandiangan

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Publication Ethics

This scientific code of ethics statement is a code of ethics statement for all parties involved in the publication process of scientific journals, namely managers, editors, reviewers, and authors. The statement of the ethical code of scientific publications is based on the Head Regulation of LIPI Number 5 of 2014 concerning the Code of Ethics for Scientific Publication, which in essence is the Code of Ethics for Scientific Publication which essentially upholds the three ethical values in publication, namely

  1. Neutrality, which is free from conflicts of interest in the management of publications;
  2. Justice, namely to give authorship rights to those who are entitled as authors / writers; and
  3. Honesty, which is free from duplication, fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism (DF2P) in publications.

Editor-in-Chief’s Duties and Responsibilities of the

  1. Determine the name of the journal, scope of science, scale, and accreditation if necessary.
  2. Determine editor membership.
  3. Defining relationships between publishers, editors, best partners, and other parties.
  4. Respect confidential matters, both for contributing researchers, authors, editors, and best-partner partners.
  5. Implement norms and provisions regarding intellectual property rights, especially copyright.
  6. Conduct a journal policy review and submit it to authors, editors, best partners, and readers.
  7. Make a code of conduct guide for editors and best partners.
  8. Publish journals regularly.
  9. Ensure the availability of funding sources for the sustainability of journal publishing.
  10. Building a network of cooperation and marketing.
  11. To improve the quality of the journal.
  12. Prepare licensing and other legal aspects.

Editor's Duties and Responsibilities

  1. The editor comments on the author's writing so the reader can understand what the writer wants to say, through comments written on the script.
  2. The editor comments on the author's writing in accordance with the EYD language (Enhanced Spelling) or the language according to the standard of the journal.
  3. The editor strives to improve the quality of publications on an ongoing basis;
  4. The editor puts forward freedom of opinion objectively,
  5. The editor conveys corrections, clarifications, withdrawals, and apologies if needed,
  6. The editor ensures that the writer's writings are not related to SARA or anything that could harm the Publisher and coordinate the writer's writings to the editor in chief of the publisher if the writing is slightly controversial.
  7. Editor receives, examines, and follows up complaints from all parties involved in publishing the journal;
  8. The editor supports initiatives to educate researchers about the ethics of publication,
  9. Editors do not maintain their own opinions, authors or third parties that can result in non-objective decisions,
  10. The editor encourages the author, so that he can make repairs to the paper until it is worth publishing.
  11. The editor performs the layout of the manuscript to be published so that it matches the journal template.
  12. Editor membantu pemimpin redaksi dalam menyelesaikan pengumpulan naskah sebelum dicetak dan diterbitkan, terutama dalam hal bahasa, format, dan tata letak.

Tugas dan Tanggung Jawab Peninjau

  1. Memberikan umpan balik tertulis yang objektif dan tidak bias tentang nilai beasiswa dan kontribusi naskah terhadap pengembangan ilmu pengetahuan;
  2. Menunjukkan apakah penulisan naskah cukup jelas, lengkap, dan relevan, serta apakah naskah sesuai dengan ruang lingkup jurnal;
  3. Tidak memberikan kritik atau komentar yang bersifat pribadi; dan
  4. Menjaga kerahasiaan naskah, dengan tidak membicarakannya dengan pihak-pihak yang tidak terkait, atau mengungkapkan informasi yang terkandung dalam naskah kepada pihak lain.

Tugas dan Tanggung Jawab Administrator Situs Web

Administrator Situs Web adalah orang yang bertanggung jawab untuk mengelola situs web jurnal. Secara spesifik, ruang lingkup tugas Administrator Situs Web adalah sebagai berikut:

  1. Menyiapkan situs web jurnal;
  2. Konfigurasikan opsi sistem dan kelola akun pengguna;
  3. Daftar untuk editor, pengulas, dan penulis;
  4. Kelola fitur jurnal;
  5. Melihat statistik laporan; dan
  6. Unggah/terbitkan makalah yang sudah diterima.

    Pemberitahuan Hak Cipta
    Penulis yang menerbitkan karya ilmiahnya di Jurnal Ilmiah Mandala Education setuju dengan ketentuan berikut:

    1. Penulis memegang hak cipta dan memberikan jurnal hak penerbitan pertama dengan karya yang dilisensikan secara bersamaan di bawah  Lisensi Atribusi Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)  yang memungkinkan orang lain untuk berbagi karya tersebut dengan pengakuan atas kepengarangan karya dan publikasi awal dalam jurnal ini. 
    2. Penulis dapat membuat pengaturan kontraktual tambahan yang terpisah untuk distribusi non-eksklusif atas versi karya yang diterbitkan jurnal tersebut (misalnya, mengunggahnya ke repositori institusi atau menerbitkannya dalam sebuah buku), dengan pengakuan atas penerbitan awalnya di jurnal ini.
    3. Penulis diizinkan dan didorong untuk mengunggah karya mereka secara daring (misalnya, di repositori institusi atau di situs web mereka) sebelum dan selama proses penyerahan, karena hal ini dapat mengarah pada pertukaran yang produktif serta kutipan yang lebih awal dan lebih banyak dari karya yang diterbitkan.

How to Cite

Jacques Rancière’s Epistemological Analysis of Louis Althusser’s Structural Marxism and Its Implications for Character Education at St. Thomas 1 High School, Medan. (2026). JUPE : Jurnal Pendidikan Mandala, 11(2), 291-297. https://doi.org/10.58258/96f6f673