Window into chaos

Abstract

This is the first English translation of a remarkable two-part lecture given by Cornelius Castoriadis at the École des hautes etudes en sciences sociales in January 1992. The lecture features within a series on social transformation and the task of creative forms of labour. In this installment Castoriadis explores the significance of art through a creative reading of Aristotle's famous definition of tragedy in the Poetics. He rejects Aristotle's dependence on the mimetic tradition in search for a vision of art as the unveiling of the creative resources that lie within the human being. Yet he retains Aristotle's vivid depiction of art as a form of production that is at once cognitive, emotive and social. Art, for Castoriadis, affects a transformation on the level of imagination that opens us anew to the fundamental questions of human being and doing. Through his extensive knowledge of western forms of artistic production Castoriadis draws lucid connections between Aristotle, Shakespeare, Kant, Hegel, Greek sculpture, renaissance painting, modern literature and folk music to explore the work of art as a ‘window into chaos’, a creative production that gives form to what cannot be formed: the ground of creativity at the heart of the imagination.