Work · Socialism, Anarchism, Marxism & Critical Theory
The Imaginary Institution of Society
Breaks with Marxist determinism: every society creates itself through imaginary significations that are neither rational nor natural, and autonomy means recognising and questioning one’s own institution.
Introduction
“The Imaginary Institution of Society” appeared in 1975. Its first part, “Marxism and Revolutionary Theory”, had been published in “Socialisme ou Barbarie” in 1964–65; there Castoriadis concludes that Marxism, as a theory claiming to know the laws of history, has become an obstacle to the project of autonomy it once served. The second part, written for the book, develops his own ontology: society cannot be explained by function or by reason, but institutes itself through a “magma” of imaginary significations, gods, values, ideas of what is real, that give each society its world. The individual psyche rests on a radical imagination, which Castoriadis develops with and against Freud and Lacan. Autonomy means that a society knows itself as the author of its institutions and can call them into question. Habermas discussed the book in 1985; it is Castoriadis’s main work.
Connections
Criticizes
- Capital1867 · Karl Marx
More works by Cornelius Castoriadis
Sources: Wikidata
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