Studiekretsar / Krets 8 2007-2009 Vintersymposium: Abstracts 

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Vintersymposium: Abstracts

Inlagd i november 2007

Akureyri March 7.-9. 2008

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Giorgio Baruchello:
Capitalism and Freedom: The Core of a Contradiction
An Essay on Cornelius Castoriadis and John McMurtry

"Capitalism and freedom" is not only the title of a 1962 book by Milton
Friedman playing a pivotal role in asserting worldwide the neoliberal
paradigm, but also a slogan that leading statesmen, politicians and
opinion-makers have been heralding in recent years in order to justify,
amongst other things, the slashing of welfare states and the invasion of
foreign countries. In particular, "capitalism" has been coupled
regularly with "democracy", the latter being seen as the political system that
better entrenches and promotes "freedom" or "autonomy". Thus,
"capitalism" and "democracy" have been described as the two sides of one and
the same project for human emancipation, which is said to characterise
modernity. However, Castoriadis reminds us of their different historical
origin and of their different nature, which John McMurtry's attempt to
overcome the categories of standard economic rationality highlights in
further depth. Hence, in this paper, Castoriadis' hermeneutic of
modernity is integrated with the insights provided by McMurtry, whose notions
of "civil commons", "life-needs" and "life-value economics" offer a
novel explanation of how an emancipatory modernity may be still possible.

Andrea Gabler:
Work Analysis and Autonomy -
„Socialisme ou barbarie's“ Concept of Revolutionary Work Research

Even though there is a long and rich tradition of academic research and discussion about work under capitalism, it's „interior life“ often remains hidden or undetermined. „Socialisme ou Barbarie“, Castoriadis' political group from 1949 to 1967, not only was an independent and original project of left activism in post-war France but also developed a concept of
work analysis which still stimulates today. Integral part to its political project was the attempt to analyze daily work and work experiences to search for hidden traces of self organization. The core finding at work is, that the contradictory bureaucratic organization requires the subject's participation (inclusion) and his/her exclusion at the same time. Bureaucratisation for Castoriadis
was the characteristic and – differing from Weber – pseudo-rational tendency of modern capitalism, expressing itself most clearly in the realm of work. In this sense Castoriadis draws a good deal of his theoretical inspiration from „Socialisme ou Barbarie's“ work analysis.
„Socialisme ou Barbarie“ tried to establish a work research in revolutionary perspective with qualitative, most authentic methods to gain informations: through the collection of testimonials of proletarian experiences and their self-interpretation by their authors themselves („témoignages“).
These témoignages are thick descriptions of daily work life and of work experiences; these insights from inside inform us about the double life inside the enterprise as formal and informal organization. And since inclusion and exclusion tendencies here exist as parallels, autonomy and heteronomy seem to be simultaneous tendencies in bureaucratic organizations. From here derives
the group's and Castoriadis' temporary optimism and hope to find germs of autonomy and of emancipation and to advance labour's and society's humanization.
I'd like to explain the concept and the results of „Socialisme ou Barbarie's“ analysis of work and their productive influence on Castoriadis' theory. And what about today's (post-fordistic) work? My last point deals with the témoignages's relevance for today's discussion on the changing character of organziation, new concepts of management and the „flexibilization“ of work. The concept of „Socialisme ou Barbarie“ may help us, to consider modern capitalist work processes and working life as a political, ambiguous, contradictory field of social action with remaining perspectives on autonomy.


Jacob Dahl Rendtorff:
Modernity, legitimacy and organizational change: The perspective of
Cornelius Castoriadis

The social philosophy Cornelius Castoriadis provides us with an
explanation of the legitimacy of organizational change. Castoriadis
argues that humanity searches to come to autonomous self-expression
through imagination as a primary force of history. The social imaginary
is a dream of human autonomous emancipation and self-expression. Social
institutionalization is a product of this social imaginary. I would
argue that we can apply Castoriadis’ concept of institutionalization on
the process of search for legitimacy of organizations and we may say
that we experience a process of search for autonomy and self-limitation
within the creations of new meanings of change processes in organizations.
In contrast to bureaucratic organization of reified institutions with
strict separation of group and classes and with strong hierarchical
structures based on instrumental and utility oriented rationality,
imaginary search for autonomy is characterized of a strife for autonomy
and emancipation like the one represented by new social groups and their
reaction against established social structures. According to Castoriadis
we have to conceive human revolutionary project as an effort to be
emancipated from bureaucratic structures in an imaginary creation of
autonomous democratic institutions. The social imaginary is not a
picture of anything. It is not predetermined, but it expresses a
capacity to create in the perspective of hope and desire of a better
social reality and new social institutions.
Castoriadis defines this concept of institutionalization in his
L’institution imaginaire de la société as the foundation of a theory of
democracy: History is understood as creation (poiesis), determined by
human imaginary capacity of creation. Society is created through an
imaginary symbolism based on conceptions of meaning and values that are
the basis for social existence. We can talk about a social capacity of
imagination that represents a capacity to imagine and thereby contribute
to the creation of new social structures and contexts. Human imaginary
capacity creation can be characterized as a primordial kind of being
that contributes to the creation of common imaginary contexts of
significance as the basis for community and collective meaning. This
horizon of meaning can be based on a more less open or closed autonomy,
dependant on democratic or totalitarian forms of organization.



Mikael Carleheden:
The structural transformation of modern democracy

In my paper I take my point of departure in a theory about the structural transformation of modernity. This theory understands modernity on an abstract level as autonomy, that is, as an inescapable tension between freedom and discipline. Further, it involves a distinction between abstract modernity and three epochs of realized modernity. The theory is first and foremost inspired by Peter Wagner’s history of modernity, who - in turn- was inspired by Castoriadis’ understanding of modernity. In the paper a discussion of Castoradis’ understanding of modernity will be included. The main purpose of the paper is to apply the general theory of a structural transformation of modernity on a special case; i.e. modern democracy. In this part of the paper, Habermas’ early theory of the structural transformation of the public sphere and his later theory of three paradigms of law will be important points of departure. In his early work Habermas talks about two epochs of democracy (liberal democracy and social state mass democracy). In his later work he has added a third epoch of deliberative democracy, however this epoch is then first and foremost only a normative construction. In the paper I will discuss the possibility of understanding deliberative democracy as an emerging historical epoch. I will contrast this idea with post-althusserian theories of our age as a “post-political” age.

Harald Wolf:
Modernity at Work

Obvious enough, modernity invented work or labour as we now know it, creating thereby a „labour society“, for which labour is more and more the only activity, „of which it knows something about“ (H. Arendt). Theories of modernity, therefore, initially turned a good deal of their attention to the realm of work and its social organisation (Marx, for instance, to alienation and real subsumption in the capitalist labour process, Weber to rationalization and work ethos). But this great theoretical attention waned since theories of postmodernity completely turned their focus in other directions (consumption, knowledge, identity) or some theories of neomodernity saw the sphere of social production not longer in the center of the social structures and dynamics, too (extreme example: the talk about „end of work“).

It seems as if here – after a correct turn away from a Marxian „production paradigm“ - most of contemporary social theory has thrown the baby out with the bath water. Cornelius Castoriadis is a very important exception in this respect as well. He maintained his original position, which comprises a critical concept of bureaucratic-capitalistic formation and development of work and technology. For him, the capitalist imaginary implies – as a „core value“ – a contradictory subsumption of activities under a pseodo-rational organization and market logic. And this subsumption results both in exclusion and inclusion of the subjects' activity. Modernity at work should, therefore, be interpreted as imaginary signification, contested interaction and as a potential place of origin for elements of the imaginary of autonomy. In discussing and valuating the relevance of this critical concept, my contribution pleads for a reopening of the theoretical debate about the social meaning of work in modernity.


Stuart Winchester:

The Great Resistance

In his Excursus on Cornelius Castoriadis (in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity) Jürgen Habermas concludes that:
“Castoriadis cannot provide us with a figure for the mediation between the individual and society... Intrapsychic conflicts are not internally linked with social ones; instead, psyche and society stand in a sort of metaphysical opposition to one another,” (Ibid.: 334).
This contention is made without any reference to sublimation which is, for Castoriadis, precisely the mediating figure which Habermas considers to be absent.
Sublimation, in Castoriadis' scheme, is where our relation to what is known exists. This “frontier concept” in which 'reality' and ‘unreality’ flux is a two-way affair. On one hand the psyche replaces private objects of cathexis with “objects which exist and which have worth in and through their social institution”. On the other it facilitates “the positing, in and through the institution [of society], of forms and significations.”
For me this amounts to a theory of reciprocal constitution, reconciling the agency/structure debate. The deduction and elaboration of sublimation’s functioning is an attempt then to clarify the threshold between psychoanalysis and the social-political. But this task requires an openness to the ‘a-rational’. Castoriadis seeks to elucidate it, Habermas acknowledges it only as ‘problematic.’ Insofar as Habermas does not fully ‘step into’ the arguments, he simply does not engage with theoretical content, including sublimation, which incorporates elements of the a-rational. Both Habermas and Castoriadis share in opposing ‘end of philosophy’ thinking, but it is their response to the a-rational which shapes their contradictory conceptions of consciousness. In creating the challenge to rational mastery, one’s response to the a-rational is intellectually and politically significant.

Mats Rosengren:
Castoriadis and doxology – a post post-modern connection

In an attempt to further elaborate and deepen the epistemological stance that I call doxological, I would like to explore the notion of magma in Castoriadis’s philosophy, specifically in relation to the concept of doxa to which I have devoted much thought over the last few years.

I believe that both concepts offer ways of approaching the questions of social change and creation, which still seem to be unexplored, not least from an epistemological point of view. Taking the rather new and in many ways promising field of artistic research as my starting-point, I will use the notion of intervention in my attempt to untangle questions like ‘How does social creation come about?’, and ‘Where and how do we find the limits to our ability to create?’.

In short, how are we to understand this process of creation that we, scientists and artists alike, are engaged in? A central part of my paper will thus deal with the question of intervention into what, introducing Castoriadis’s concept of magma as an essential addition to doxology. My general aim is to find theoretical backings for a sustainable concept of creation, applicable within artistic research as within science at large.


Catharina Gabrielsson:
Re-thinking creation in architecture as based on Castoriadis

Addressing the theme of “beyond post-modernism”, this paper deals with how the
notion of “beginnings” can be interpreted in architecture as based on
Castoriadis thinking. The notion of beginning is inherent in architecture, since
the “original” or “first” is literally embedded in its etymology [Greek:
archein, to begin]. The potentiality of architecture has been overshadowed,
however, through the post-modern critique of modernism and its seemingly elitist
utopian ideals. Post-modernity in architecture has, to a large extent, been
focused on the importance of the existing, whether interpreted as “authentic”
place, the semiotics of popular culture, local community, language, historical
tradition or the (unsexed) body – reflecting an understanding of architecture as
merely complying to basically unchanging values. The notion of novelty has even
been declared as a threat to a contextually sensitive, thus socially
responsible, architecture. The heritage of the Modernist avant-garde has thus
been discarded on a theoretical level, yet returns in practice in the form of
nostalgic aesthetical quotations in marginal academic production as well as in
corporative building. Facing today’s social, political and ecological
challenges, however, it has become necessary to counter this “post-utopian”
situation in contemporary architecture. The ideas of creation, invention and
social change is terms of architectural production are in urgent need of
re-assessment, which means re-writing the discipline’s conception to its past as
well as to its future. This paper will investigate how central elements in
Castoriadis’ thought can be used in this process of, what is basically, a matter
of rethinking architecture.


Stephen Hastings-King
Making Significations: On Relations of Ontology to Politics

The paper I propose will address the question of what a political theory might be that routes itself through Castoriadis' later philosophical writing. I imagine it as a way to initiate a conversation more than as a definitive statement.

The theme of the symposium points to a tension in Castoriadis' work between the implications of his interrogation of the social-historical, rooted in the ontological-level assumption of partial determinacy, and the status and utility of higher-order meta-significations. The former prompts analysis of localized patterns of self-organization and generates fruitful (if complex) problems for representation of the social-historical. The latter parallel higher-order semantic units in the context of cognitive-linguistic maps: operators that are implicit logically in a given statement. These operators are inferential constructs generated by way of procedures that take the statement itself as their point of departure to the exclusion of consideration of the processes of figuration that conditioned its creation. These inferences are not wrong: rather, by taking the statement itself as the point of departure, inferences are made from within a determinist ontological frame that is necessarily incomplete.

The utility of such operators—such meta-significations---varies as a function of project in which one is engaged, and audience one addresses. This point dovetails with the distinction in Wittgenstein's Tractatus between what a proposition says and what it does. So I find the meta-significations that formalize interplay of tendencies toward autonomy and heteronymy as useful in analysis of the institution of capitalism broadly understood because they name tendencies that unfold at a variety of registers within the social-historical. In shorthand, then, the order tendencies without accompanying implications of homogeneity in the analytic "object." Other such significations, on the order of modernity, organize and position often quite vast regions of social being in general. One consequence is that one must work against the effects of the category in the holding-open of the analytic "object." But because these effects deploy differentially in the context of projects, and often involve questions of general orientation, dialogue can be problematic. With this in mind, I will address underlying matters, which I pose here as questions:

Does linking the emancipatory project (or a range of emancipatory projects) to the category "modernity" amount de facto to an assertion of a teleological notion of history, which is the subject of explicit and sustained critique in other areas of Castoriadis' work?

What exactly is the context that one imagines to be operative in the generation of political claims at present? Politics is still a war of position. For example, if you imagine the operative context as co-extensive with the reach of "globalizing capitalism" and fashion statements addressed to potential agents within this expanded purview, use of the category "modernity" or a variant import a host of political problems which stem from it's usage as a discursive element in neo-liberal ideology. To what extent is neo-liberalism/"globalizing capitalism" done to the discourse of modernity what Stalinism did to Marxian discourse?

On the other hand, does simply abandoning such categories deprive the project of autonomy of a sense of direction, make needlessly diffuse the importance of autonomy as (differentially) implicit in ongoing struggles, and undercut the fact that instituting a type of autonomy is going beyond the limitations of the existing order?

More fundamentally, what kind of political arguments or theory is consistent with Castoriadis' ontological-level interrogation of the social-historical and its correlate in the project of autonomy?

What relation is there between work that departs from Castoriadis' later philosophical writings and the revolutionary project developed by Socialisme ou Barbarie? To what extent do categories like that of modernity function to fill in questions of historical location, meanings and generalizability and meanings that were resolved for Socialisme ou Barbarie by the Marxian underpinnings of their project?

Is there a single emancipatory project?



Ingerid Straume,
Tight Socialization: On the notions of Paideia and the Individual in Castoriadis's thought


Wendy C. Hamblet:

Castoriadis' "Quirky" Plato

Since the inception of Western philosophy in ancient Greece two and a half millennia ago, philosophers have tended to pose themselves over against the common people of their societies. The ancient Greek term hoi polloi translates literally as “the many” but its usage today still retains connotatively the archaic prejudice against the commoners as ignorant, impoverished, and virtue-less. Ancient Greek philosophers, in keeping with this prejudice, remained strictly anti-democratic.

Cornelius Castoriadis' love for the ancient Greek philosophers is undeniable. His treatment of Plato in his lectures on the Statesman evidence that deep affection. But also, as an ardent socialist and a political activist for most of his life, Castoriadis must resolve the apparent contradiction of his love for the anti-democratic Plato with his love for the common person. This paper will take up the paradox of Castoriadis' contradictory loves and demonstrate that Castoriadis' exactingly critical engagement of Plato represents an illegitimate attempt to remake Plato into a democrat. I shall challenge this reading of Plato, and offer an apologia for Plato's anti-democratism, as well as show socialistic strains in Plato, not as an innovation of his old age (as Castoriadis claims), but woven throughout his corpus.


J. F. Humphrey:

Castoriadis and Democracy

An important part of Cornelius Castoriadis’ exploration into the adventure of modernity involves his reflections on democracy. Indeed, in no less than three works [Figures of the Thinkable, Rising Tide of Insignificancy (The Big Sleep), and World in Fragments], Castoriadis devotes a part, entitled Polis, in which he discusses democracy and its relation to modernity by beginning with the Greeks. In World in Fragments, the section, “The Greek and the Modern Political Imaginary” clearly indicates the relation existing between the ancient Greeks and democracy in his mind. In my paper, I have considered Castoriadis’ reflections on democracy and the way in which he employs the Greeks in his attempt to rethink modern democracies. I shall argue that if we are to follow Castoriadis in embracing an authentic emancipation promised by but not delivered by modernity, we will have to look to his understanding of democracy as providing the way beyond both the cynicism of post-modernism and false hopes of neo-modernism.

Anders Ramsay, Ana Valdés, Håvard Nilsen: titles pending.