Aleatory Materialism

I came across this article over at Poetix (a blog which I very much enjoy), so I decided I'd shamelessly steal it and post it here. I concur with his conclusion: Badiou's account of the event does sound suspiciously like Althusser's late work on the encounter. I wish I did better at reading Althusser. Everytime I sit down to read more than an essay, I find myself so irritated by the rhetoric of scientificity and what rings as a call for Marxist orthodoxy that I have to put it back down. Am I superficial for feeling that the return to Marx (parallel to Lacan's return to Freud) needs to be pulled off with a bit more style?