Imaginary Signification Research Articles

A Further Conversation on Social Imaginaries

Abstract The conversation begins with a discussion of political philosophy, a critique of a priori normativist approaches to that field, and reflections on the distinction between politics and the political. It moves on to clarify the place of the political within an ontology of the social-historical; while the pioneering contribution of Castoriadis to such an ontology is acknowledged, the need for a more elaborate theory of creative action, with due allowance for its involvement in historical processes, is emphasized. After some considerations on the role of ideology and utopia within the social-historical context, the conversation moves back to the questions of autonomy, creativity and the imaginary, and underlines the need to theorize autonomy as an imaginary signification in its own right, rather than merely a new attitude to imaginary significations. Implications of that view for the idea of reflective autonomy are discussed, with particular emphasis on confronting the omnipresent temptation of hubris, the condition of value pluralism and the fundamental fact of uncertainty about the future. The conversation concludes with some comments on diagnoses of our times, and a critique of various “postisms” as well as of the attempts to reduce contemporary societies to a single denominator.

Co-creative epiphany of citizenship and health in the 1820 Liberal Revolution in Portugal

ABSTRACT Following the outbreak of the Liberal Revolution, which broke out in Portugal after the revolutionary actions that happened in Porto on 24 August, and in Lisbon on 15 September 1820, a new political regime emerged and, consequently, changes in values as well as in ways of thinking and acting. It is a new conception of sovereignty with the shift of absolute power from the king to the nation. In this new imaginary signification arises the need to construct common good. In this sense, the question is posed: What is the idea of citizenship that Liberalism projected? The goals are: to interpret the specificity of the idea of citizenship, and to discuss the role assigned to instruction-education as a tool to promote citizenship. The sources are: constitutional catechisms, hygiene manuals, political textbooks, and handbooks. Regarding methodology, by reference to the Liberal Revolution, an interpretive analysis of the sources was conducted along two major dimensions and their respective descriptors: first dimension: liberal regime: constitution, state, laws, health, citizenship; second dimension: educational city: instruction-education, public education, illustration, health, citizenship. To conclude, liberalism triggered a concern with conceiving citizenship as a key factor in health promotion, and health as a crucial factor in the construction of citizenship, with instruction-education being given a fundamental role in the construction process. Citizenship in the 1820s already announced the health paradigm, which presupposes the community’s and the citizen’s empowerment.

Language, Globalisation, and National Identity : A Study of English-Medium Policy and Practice in Indonesia

ABSTRACT This paper uses a study of the withdrawal of English as a medium of instruction in Indonesian schools to examine the role of language in nation-building using the sociological concept of imaginary signification. The main reason for the withdrawal is located in the tension between two main imaginary significations of the nation’s identity. The government saw Indonesia in terms of its economic ambitions. Indonesia was to enter the global knowledge economy, and the education system was to provide the human resources to do so. The teachers understood the use of Bahasa Indonesia in the education system as the means to reproduce children into the nation. We argue that the withdrawal of English as the medium of instruction policy was the result of the tension between these two different representations of national identity.

Russia: Colonial, anticolonial, postcolonial Empire?

This article is devoted to the discussion of Russian colonial and anti-colonial social imaginaries. It starts by delving into the definitions of colony and colonization, and proceeds to the analysis of the colonial experience of the Russian continental Empire. The internal colonization thesis is also analyzed in the context of the imperial reality. The complex Soviet experience is understood as, on the one hand, a radical break with the past, through decolonization and anti-colonialism. The author, on the other hand, agrees with those who claim that Stalinism can also be understood in terms of an internal colonialism theory. This article, however, emphasizes the metaphoric nature of the internal colonialism arguments. In conclusion, the author describes different features of Russian colonial/anti-colonial experience as aspects of what he calls the modernity of control and what he describes as the dominance of the rational mastery discourses over imaginary signification of autonomy.

Temporality and the Political Imaginary in the Dynamics of Political Representation

ABSTRACT Modern democratic societies are contradictory societies. They are grounded on normative premises, which are not fully realized in practice. Non-democratic practices have been tolerated in democratic societies, persisting a long time after democratic revolutions and after the commitment to universalism and human rights. The paper argues that the contradictions of democratic society do not essentially disrupt the coherence of the political imaginary of democracy. Moreover, it is possible to explain such contradictions through the interplay of two levels of democratic life, which may have diverging temporalities. The first is the normative structure of democracy settled by the major imaginary signification that works as the primary reference of democratic representation: popular sovereignty. The second level can be found in social norms manifested through social practices, these are culturally and historically variable.

A Critical Approach to ‘Financialization’ through the Castoriadian Lens of the ‘Social Imaginary’

In order to capture certain dynamics of recent socio-economic history over the last forty years, many scholars have made use of the term ‘Financialization'. The concept has been used as a lens to understand myriad phenomena including de-industrialization, the forces responsible for the decline of the middle class, the rise of an ethics of ‘individual responsibility, the growth of unprecedented economic inequality, a catalyst for the diffusion of a shareholder value logic of corporate governance, a cause of the recent subprime crisis, and as a force behind the increasing commodification of everyday human life. Despite the significant exploration of the processes and effects of ‘financialization' by scholars in disparate fields, there has been a relative dearth of research that endeavors to explore the more ideational and therefore cognitive/emotional aspects of financialization. The present study will address this gap by using the lens of the ‘social imaginary' as developed by the Social Philosopher/Psychoanalyst Cornelius Castoriadis. The argument will be made that we now live in a world where the ‘Imaginary of financialization' has become an overarching ‘imaginary signification' that serves to orient human behavior, define social relations and determines the forms of our socio-technical projects.

The metaphysics of the Time-Machine

The concept of time-travel is a modern idea which combines the imaginary signification of rational domination, the imaginary signification of technological omnipotence, the imaginary concept of eternity and the imaginary desire for immortality. It is a synthesis of central conceptual schemata of techno-science, such as the linearity and homogeneity of time, the radical separation of subjectivity from the world, the radical separation of the individual from his/her social-historical environment. The emergence of this idea, its spread during the 20th century as a major theme of science fiction literature alongside its dissemination as a scientific hypothesis, its popularity with both the public and the scientific community, are indications of the religious role of techno-science. It is my opinion, finally, that, as a chimera, time-travel is non-feasible and impossible. In order to support my claims, I will briefly outline the origins of the time-travel concept and its epistemological and metaphysical/ontological conditions. If these conditions prove to be absurd, the logical impossibility of time-travel will have been demonstrated. DOI: 10.5958/2347-6869.2018.00014.6

The Rational Mastery in the Work of Cornelius Castoriadis

ABSTRACTIn this article, I make the claim that the notion of rational mastery in the work of Cornelius Castoriadis is of outmost importance for fully understanding his philosophy. Yet, this notion has largely been ignored by the literature thus far. For this reason, I intend to highlight here the importance it assumes in Castoriadis’ philosophy. To this end, I argue that the notion of rational mastery in Castoriadis’ philosophy consists in an imaginary signification of progress that develops from modernity onwards in the form of unlimited expansion of technology and economy. I continue by presenting Castoriadis’ criticism of rational mastery. I then expand his criticism into the broader context of what I claim to be the social-historical perspectivism of Castoriadis’ logic-ontology of Magmas. Finally, I conclude with the demonstration of Castoriadis’ project of individual and collective autonomy as the counterweight to rational mastery of unlimited expansion of technology and economy against nature and society.

Tanto vilão quanto herói: a estética do novo protagonista dos contos de fadas

A partir da observação de padrões culturais e comportamentos sociais da modernidade e da pós-modernidade, o conto de fadas A Bela Adormecida, em suas versões para Disney (EUA-1959 e EUA-2014), é usado como objeto de estudo para constatação das polarizações entre o bem e o mal, presentes em representações até a primeira metade do século XX e o seu lento abandono, chegando à personagem Malévola, heroína e vilã ao mesmo tempo, caracterizando os humores fluídos do início do século XXI. Fundamentado em autores como Santaella, Maffesoli, Camargo, Corso e Corso, Calabrese e Eco o artigo trabalha na significação de produtos culturais do imaginário que facilitam a compreensão de paradigmas que se esgotam, dando lugar para novas formas de pensar e representar.

Imagination and Tragic Democracy

Cornelius Castoriadis is one of the very few social and political philosophers - modern and ancient - for whom a concept of imagination is truly central. In his work, however, the role of imagination is so overarching that it becomes difficult to grasp its workings and consequences in detail, in particular in its relation to democracy as the political form in which autonomy is the core imaginary signification. This article will proceed by first suggesting some clarifications about Castoriadis's employment of the concept. This preparatory exploration will allow us in a second step to discuss why the idea of democracy is closely linked to tragedy, and why this linkage in turn is dependent on the centrality of imagination for human action. In a third conceptual step, finally, we suggest that any concept of imagination will need to take into account the plurality and diversity of the outcomes of the power of imagination. Thus, the question of the nature of the novelty that imagination creates needs to be addressed as well as the one of the agon in the face of different imagined innovations in a given democratic political setting. As a consequence of this shift in emphasis, to be elaborated further, one will be able to say more about one question of which Castoriadis was well aware, which he never addressed himself in detail, though: the decline and end of polities and political forms, the question of political mortality.

The Imaginary Significations of Modernity: A Re-Examination

This article deals with the concept of modernity upon which one of the most interesting contemporary theories about modern social change is based—Peter Wagner's theory of successive modernities. Wagner understands modernity as a double imaginary signification which entails a basic tension between liberty and discipline. This conception is almost directly taken from Cornelius Castoriadis. I argue that this tension exists in two versions in Castoriadis' philosophy and that the two versions are incompatible. It is further claimed that the two versions reappear in Wagner's theory, which makes his theory of successive modernities partly inconsistent. A stance is taken for one of these versions and it is argued that the theory of successive modernities should appropriate that version as its point of departure in order to grasp the history of modernity in a consistent way.

The Never Ending Dance: Islamism, Kemalism and the Power of Self‐institution in Turkey

Kemalism in Turkey is often presented as an exemplary case of paternalistic and authoritarian modernisation from above, and lauded or condemned for that very reason. Represented in these terms, certain analytic and political binaries are also activated: state versus society; world‐view versus life‐world; universality versus particularity; inauthenticity versus indigeneity; homogeneity versus heterogeneity/resistance. By contrast, in this paper I seek to sidestep these organising categories to focus on Kemalism and Islamism as rival forms of the same social imaginary signification, and not as shorthand for these polarities. Using a number of representative texts, I argue that the extravagance of Islamist resistance in Turkey post‐1980 brings to light the fantastical power of Kemalism itself, exposed as a project of the triumph of the will. This being the case, what has been written in anthropology about acts of ‘self‐institution’? The work of Nigel Rapport and Cornelius Castoriadis emphasises, in different ways, the arbitrariness and gratuity of social creation out of nothing or self‐institution. Pierre Bourdieu's work, on the other hand, is radically contrary to Rapport's in its structuralist elaboration of agency as guided action. My analysis of processes of change within both the Islamist and Republican social movements in Turkey from the early 1990s to the present seeks a temporary rapprochement, at least in this case, between Rapport's methodological individualism and Bourdieu's methodological holism.