Studiekretsar / Krets 8 2007-2009 Vintersymposium: Program 


Creation%

Vintersymposium: Program

Inlagd i december 2006


BUREAUCRATIC SOCIETY AND AUTONOMY

Programme per January 15. 2007

Friday 23.3.

17:00-18:00 Anders Ramsay:
Bureaucratic capitalism, degenerated workers state or state capitalism?
Castoriadis and the left-wing analysis of the Soviet Union

18:00-19:30 Snacks and get-together


Saturday 24.3.

10:00-11:00 Mona Ringvej:
Castoriadis and classical Athens
- A historico-theoretical example on politics and organisation

11:00-12:00 Mats Rosengren:
Creation?


-- Lunch --

13:30-14:30 Emanuele Profumi
Revolution and autonomy, Castoriadis after "L'institution imaginaire de la société

14:30-15:30 Kathleen Wilson:
For a Politics of Autonomy: the question of Praxis in Socialisme ou Barbarie

-- Coffee --

16:00-17:00 Ingerid Straume:
The Creation of a Common World: Arendt-Castoriadis connections

17:00-18:00 Patrik Baard:
What is the nomos of autonomy today? Planes of consistency in global capital and post-fordist production

18:00-19:00 Elisabeth Blaser-Erke
Women, Autonomy and Politics

-- Supper ca. 20:00 --


Sunday 24.3.


10:00-11:00 Dominique Bouchet:
The Ambiguity of the Modern Conception of Autonomy and the Paradox of Culture

--Coffee --

11:30-12:30 Fotis Theodoridis
On the ontological and social-historical conditions of freedom

12:30 - 14:00 Final remarks, further plans for the study circle - summer session 2007 etc.


ABSTRACTS

Dominique Bouchet:

The Ambiguity of the Modern Conception of Autonomy and the Paradox of Culture

From the Call for papers: “The problem of autonomy, its obstacles and possibilities needs to be scrutinised over and over again, from many different angles – political, sociological, philosophical, historical etc.”
Rather than the historical developments, I am more interested in the paradoxical situation in which the interpretation of society as well as the relation between the individual and the social remains ambiguous even though autonomy and interrogation of the social emerges: Autonomy remains trapped between transcendence and immanence. I am analyzing this auto-production of exteriority, this outsourcing of collective responsibility, this movement of self-separation, self-externalization. The ambiguity of social autonomy can be expressed in these terms: We have to admit that two apparently paradoxical assertions coexist. The first assertion says that individuals act the society. The second one says that collective phenomena are infinitely more complex than the individuals that generate them …


Ingerid Straume:

The Creation of a Common World: Arendt-Castoriadis connections

The 100 year anniversary of Hannah Arendt is an occasion to discuss similarities and differences between her phenomenology of the World and the thought of Castoriadis. I find it very enriching to read the two together and up against each other, especially in terms of the political. Where one stops, the other continues and vice versa. My impression is that Castoriadis is the strongest on ontological issues whereas Arendt has more to say on the level of intersubjectivity and praxis, e.g. what does it mean to be one human being among other beings who are different – uniquely different. The latter point is sometimes vehemently contested by Castoriadis, who claims that if you are 1 % unique and "only" 99 % socialization, you are truly a genius. The main problem with this is that Castoriadis, by focusing exclusively on the levels, the polar concepts of society and the psyche, and playing down notions of human multiplicity and individual differences, also diminishes the concept of political creativity which he promotes in so many other ways. In other words, his concept of social autonomy would be enriched if supplemented with a meso-level of human creativity which can be found in Arendt's thought on the conditions for a common World.
Keywords for both are politics as creation.



Kathleen Wilson:

For a Politics of Autonomy: the question of Praxis in Socialisme ou Barbarie

While recent French debates have focused on the theme of autonomy in Castoriadis' early works (Caumeres, 2006), few have stressed the importance of the question of praxis through which the explicit development of autonomy is to be done. Our presentation will thus tackle the question of normativity, more precisely "what is to be done?", leading Castoriadis to conceive of the project of autonomy as a politics of transformative action. The purpose of our excursion into Castoradis' Socialisme ou Barbarie is thus not to provide a description of Castoriadis' prescriptions; answering the question of normativity definitely as a state and end to be achieved. Rather, entering the terrain of Socialisme ou Barbarie through the question of normativity reveals the internal dynamic between organization and spontaneity, theory and practice, as perpetually done and to be done (Castoriadis, 1987). We thus claim that the question of praxis bridging the structural analyses of a heteronomous society to the imagined possibility of an autonomous society is essential to grasp the project of autonomy as something more than mere utopian romanticism.


Anders Ramsay:

Bureaucratic capitalism, degenerated workers state or state capitalism?
Castoriadis and the left-wing analysis of the Soviet Union

After the Bolshevik revolution and the bloody history of ’real socialism’, and various ‘third world socialisms’ we know one thing for certain: Whatever comes after capitalism as we know it, it might not be any better; rather, it might be worse. Although the various ‘socialisms’ of the twentieth century are gone or slowly facing their end under global capitalism, the problem does not belong to the past. These regimes were not, as some traditional Marxists today might claim, fine ideas at the time and brilliant mistakes. They have to be analysed and learned from, if the idea of an autonomous society ever will have a chance to be realised. On the far left, some attempts in that direction were actually made during the last century. They were, however, largely ignored by the mainstream left.

Castoriadis was, among other things, known as an expert on the Soviet Union. His articles on the subject collected in two volumes in the seventies were in fact the only ones of his books in the 10/18-series which were reedited and reissued after the breakdown of the USSR, giving him a well deserved recognition for his foresighted insights. For what was later to become Socialisme ou Barbarie, the Chaulieu-Montal-tendency, the question of the USSR was from the start the central point of opposition in relation to the PCI and the Fourth international. Critique and analysis of the development of the USSR was then a continuous thread throughout Castoriadis work.

Castoriadis certainly provides us with one of the best and well founded analysis of the USSR from the left-wing of the twentieth century. However, as often is the case, discussions of competing and alternative accounts, except for the thorough critique of Trotsky’s theory of the degenerated workers state, are largely absent from his writings. Castoriadis, however, was not the first to present a left-wing analysis and critique of the USSR. I have particularly in mind various theories of state capitalism, such as those of the council communists, the Johnson-Forest tendency, the Frankfurt School and dissident Trotskyites such as Tony Cliff. In this paper I want to discuss Castoriadis analysis in comparison with some of these theories in order to highlight both their merits and their shortcomings.



Patrik Baard:

What is the nomos of autonomy today? Planes of consistency in global capital and post-fordist production

What is the concept of autonomy? This paper will mostly consider this concept from a philosophical point of view – taking into consideration both the greek etymology of the term and its relation to nomos, meaning law, which is here given special attention and analysed with the aid of concepts derived from philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. The aim is to read Castoriadis through these aforementioned philososphers. We might find certain points of affinity, with concepts such as plateau and, more importantly, plane of consistency, will both function as tools in our attempt to grasp what is meant with the nomos in the concept of autonomy, and how Castoriadis grasped the concept and function of institution. The basic premise is that the concept of nomos is often overlooked, and this concept stress the importance of the need to create, albeit temporary, stable institutions and mental images which enables both practise and rationality – anything else would consist in what Deleuze and Guattari would call a suicidal escape line. The temporariness of these instutitions and mental images calls for an ethos – a creation of territory from which subjectivity emerges and is enabled to act and think. However, there are also points where these two schools of thought differ, especially when it comes to such term as escape, which has had a great influence on the autonomia school of thought in Italy but seems to be a void in Castoriadis thought. However, my hope is to find that we, in this paper, can take the affinity as a point of departure, in order to see how these two philosophical systems and thoughts of autonomy complete each other in various ways, especially when it comes to the constitution of institutions and temporary static territories, as well as the escape or exodus from such institutions in order to make creativity and autonomy, the constrant questioning of nomos, understandable.



Anders Michelsen:

Cornelius Castoriadis's theory of alienation: on reflection and the struggle for recognition


The paper will ponder a possible new mode of critique with point of departure in Cornelius Castoriadis’s theory of heteronomy and alienation. In Castoriadis theory alienation is inherently related to the issue and problem of reflecting on the imaginary. Given its self-constituted, magmatic and metainstable character, the magma of radical imaginary significations distinguishes the human strata in modes which are paradoxically autonomous (self-instituted/self-organized) yet heteronomous, thus alienative. The source of alienation thus pertains to creativity; to ”self-creation” ”deployed as history.”
The paper will juxtapose/confront this train of thought/ theory in Castoriadis’s philosophy with Axel Honneth’s work on social ethics based on a ”struggle for recognition.” While Castoriadis was highly critical towards philosophy of ethics (see ”The Ethicists’ New Clothes” in World in Fragments (1997)) and argued for a grounding of ethical issues within a larger realm of the imaginary – i.e. social self-creation, this paper wants to expand on the ’lack’ of place for ethics in his thought by coupling aspects of his theory of alienation with Honneth. One immediate outcome of this should be a better understanding of the problem of metainstability – further conflict surrounding issues of ethics, due e.g. to the conflicting aspects of the struggle for recognition, which does not fall within ’recognition’. In a larger sense it is to be pondered whether principles of ethics can be said to be somehow heteronomous, given their constitution in social creation.

Honneth offers an interesting model for a social grounding of ethics in pragmatic forms of dynamic social agency (George Herbert Mead) which build up maxims by wider processes of concrete action, reflection, and mutuality taking the form of a struggle for recognition. However, this infusion of apparant value to actions seems to remain at odds not only with the conflicting aspects of struggle but with what may be termed ’concrete evil’, or even ’the imaginary of evil’, due e.g. to imaginings of a diverse nature. Put differently: while Honneth’s strength may be his alignment of ethics with pragmatics, his weakness is the indirect assumption of action to be somehow generalisable in terms of ethics. This may further be questioned by pondering Honneth’s claim of post-metaphysics.

The paper thus wants to ponder whether a struggle for recognition turning into social ethics is compatible with Castoriadis’s insistence on social meaning as circular, paradoxical and self-creative. Whereas Honneth outlines a quite feasible theory of a social ethics, Castoriadis maintains that creativity must be a strong ontological foundation of any form of action. For one thing this raises a number of questions on the nature of ’the pragmatic’’ – in Castoriadis’s thought thematized in the profound and difficult debate on ”legein” and ”teukhein” in The Imaginary Institution of Society (1987 [1975]). Most importantly the metainstable character of self-creation lends an issue of alienation to the fundamental dynamic of any struggle for recognition.

A juxtaposition/confrontation of Castoriadis and Honneth makes it possible on the one hand to adapt issues of social ethics into the framework of self-creation – and on the other hand to ’complicate’ Honneths theory beyond the assumption of the ’validity’ of postmetaphysical action; further to discuss the eclectic history of ideas from within which Honneth argues his critical theory– e.g. the principles of a Hegel vis-a-vis the pragmatics of a Mead. One may consider whether the pragmatic struggle does not remain on distance to real complications of social-history proper that is, to possible forces beyond the mutuality of ’recognition’ per se.


One prospect – and intention, of the paper is to indicate possible ways of mutual adaption between a Habermasian project of communicative action and a reflexive public and Castoriadis work on human self-creation and autopoiesis.
Many aspects of todays reality call for such a project, not least an inherent need to develop frames for communicative action vis-a-vis the inherent creativity of globalization processes, presently manifest e.g. in forms of cultural and ’civilizational’ conflict. Whereas Habermas’s theory may outline a framework for the development of a communicative form of globalization – bluntly a world democracy – Castoriadis may supply a critical dimension to the creation of such a form.

The paper forms the basis of a concluding chapter in my project ”Billedet i Globaliseringen” [The Image in Globalization] reflecting on possible conditions for critique in relation to the cultural conflicts in globalization. The juxtaposition of pragmatically developed ethics for co-existence with the strong ontological condition of human creativity opens a new field of social critique where the issue of ethics undergoes a double process of creative acknowledgement and possible critical adjustment – compatible with the paradoxical impetus of Castoriadean autopoiesis.

Importantly it further indicates a framework for a future compatibility between an Enlightenments impetus of secular ethical principles and the current renouncement of hopes for human universalism in the conflicts arising from alleged civilizational and cultural self-assertion. As Edward Said writes in Culture and Imperialism (1993), the world ”cannot afford” such conflicts anymore.




Mats Rosengren

Creation?

The question of the new is central to Castoriadis, who devoted a large part of his academic life to an attempt to identify and clarify the aporias it entails. But leaving the traditional and entrenched modes of thinking about these matters behind is not easy. When he insists on talking about human creation as a precondition for the emergence of the new – i.e. for the emergence of new thoughts, ideas, ways of living and ways of dying etcetera ¬– doesn’t he run the risk of getting caught in a rahter theologian way of approaching this matter?
So exactly what does his concept of creation entail, ontologically as well as epistemologically? How is it founded? In my paper, I would like to contribute to the discussion of this problematic, multifaceted and promising concept from a doxological point of view.



Fotis Theodoridis

On the ontological and social-historical conditions of freedom


The notion of freedom as individual and collective autonomy relies, in Castoriadis’ thought, upon a particular ontological conception of the human psyche and the social-historical but also upon a particular interpretation of the Greco-western civilisation which is assumed to have created the social-historical conditions of freedom. The first aim of the paper is to explicate these ontological and social-historical conditions and elaborate their implications for the political project of autonomy. We have to elaborate here a conception of freedom which not only lacks any foundation, in nature or in reason, but where this “lack” is its very precondition.

The second aim of the paper (which probably has to be postponed for a later occasion than this symposium), is to juxtapose Castoriadis’ conception of freedom (as autonomy) with some other conceptions, from liberalists and Marxists to pragmatists and postmodernists.


Mona Ringvej:
Castoriadis and classical Athens
- A historico-theoretical example on politics and organisation


Classical Athens is a central figure in Castoriadis’ political thought. This historical example serves as a meeting-place for different elements of Castoriadis’ thought, amongst which we also find the theme bureaucratization. In this paper I will argue for the importance of Castoriadis’ historical method in approaching political theory. It is, as Castoriadis himself points out, always difficult to understand “the other” if that “other” is in fact different from ourselves. The Athenians were quite different, but shares some quite similar ways of thought that may lead us to understand some aspects of their otherness. As for bureaucracy, we may be able to visualise a politics without administrative hindrance for political power. That is, by exploring the way the Athenians organized their political machinery in such a way that administration remained inferior to the political process. That is, they avoided bureaucratization by separating administration and political power. I offer an historical explanation for Castoriadis’ argument in this case. I will seek to elaborate on another Castoriadean point in this connection, namely how Max Weber’s theory on political power and leadership fails exactly because he cannot grasp this distinction in his use of Athens as an historical example of universal truth.



Emanuele Profumi

Revolution and autonomy, Castoriadis after "L'institution imaginaire de la société

We can underline two periods in Cornelius Castoriadis’s thought, before and after “L’institution imaginaire de la société”. In particular the second part of this book represents the real constructive beginning of his Philosophy of creation. But, as Castoriadis himself sustains, autonomy is one of his main preoccupation with the human condition, beginning from the “Socialism or Barbary” period. At this time autonomy is one of the most important idea and necessary aspiration for creating a socialist society. The autonomy of proletarian movement against the capitalistic forms of work was in fact the heart of the revolutionary conception of socialism. The idea of revolution in itself was markeded by the real autonomy of the proletarian movement, against the dangerous and wrong Leninist’s revolutionary praxis and conception of the Party. Later autonomy is the centre of his ontological and anthropological reflection, the Archimedes’s point for developing a new and modern idea of human emancipation. Thanks to this new vision of human and social-historical possibility of autonomy, Castoriadis turns his attention to a new idea of revolution. It is something implicit to the change of his philosophical political attention at the different forms of social-historical revolution. In fact we can find it when he passes from the reflection about the Hungarian revolution to the French revolution and the Greek germ. What kind of difference is there between the first and the second reflection? Is it important to know something about the link between the ontological level and the political reflection? In particular is it possible to sustain that the “Philosophy of creation” is an “ontological defence of revolution”, like Axel Honneth affirmed? Democracy and Social-historical dimension take part in the same revolutionary movement.



Elisabeth Blaser-Erke

Women, Autonomy and Politics

“Society, as always already instituted, is self-creation and capacity for self-alteration. It is the work of the radical imaginary as instituting, which brings itself being as instituted society and as given, and each time specified, social imaginary” (Castoriadis, 1991).

Can we as women pick up some motivation here? If not, I am afraid we still have to wait many decades before we will recognize full autonomy for the women in this world. Since the Suisse women entered the political podium in the 70 ties, they have really difficulties to be accepted or to settle. Not to be reconducted to the political duties is typical for the women in 50 % of the cases (Girsberger, 2006, p.11). Since 2003 we can see a negative tendency in the development of political women participation. The percentage of women participation in politics went back to 20 %. In community Reute we have no women represented. Could it be any connections here? The woman sees how hard, and sometime dangerous it can be to enter the political world. Michelin Calmy-Rey, a Suisse government member is occupied with these challenges. She asks “Wieso besteht überhaupt eine Ablehnung oder gar Widerstand gegenüber Frauen an der Macht“?

“Society can exist concretely only through the fragmentary and complementary incarnation and incorporation of its institution and its institutions and its imaginary significations in the living, talking, and the acting individuals of that society” (Castoriadis, 1991).

The women tried for a long time already to fight for accept to participate, as we will see, it wasn’t easy. Through my research in Switzerland, interviewing 8 women in municipality Reute, I will study their idea about politics. I will use of the theories of Cornelius Castoriadis, because he has a different view of politics than I am used to, and his theory about autonomy, power and society can be very useful in this case. For the Suisse people and the government, the idea of autonomy and democracy is very important. Thus it is interesting to see how to example Reute can practice it without political parties, and with local council meetings practising secret agenda. However the political system seems to be, we can say the women are suffering.