Imaginary Democracy

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Imaginary Democracy Danish Yearbook of Philosophy, Vol. 33 (1998), 31-54 IMAGINARY DEMOCRACY 0JVIND LARSEN Copenhagen Business School The imaginary democracy theory should be of equal interest to sociology and the study of politics. The task of sociology is to interpret the imaginary as it comes to expression in the symbolic order of social institutions. Just as the task of psychoanalysis is to discover the suppressed pathological traits of the soul, the task of sociology is to uncover the sup- pressed pathological traits of institutions. The role of the study of politics in this theory is to come to a fundamental understanding of the political as an imaginary relationship. Introduction Before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, very few people looked at what characterizes democracy itself. Democracy was first and foremost understood as the opposite of the totalitarian regimes of Eastern Europe. This is no longer the case. Today there is no other form of rule which competes with democracy. It is therefore quite natural that a great interest has arisen in finding out what it is then that characterizes democracy. In this context, there is a danger that de- mocracy simply becomes identified with the particular historical form it has taken for us. By making such an identification, there is a risk that we will never come to an understanding of democracy itself, but merely confuse it with a particular historical form. There is, in other words, need for an understanding of democracy through which we have the opportunity to relate to the historical forms which democracy has taken not just in our time, but throughout history. In this regard it is useful to take up the work of two French philosophers, Cornelius Castoriadis and Claude Lefort, both of whom were examining this issue long before the East European regimes crumbled. Claude Lefort remarked in his 1989 essay "Reflexions sur Ie present" that it is isn't surprising that there is a close relation between the renaissance of de- mocracy and the dissolution of authoritarian forms of governance in Eastern Europe (Lefort 1992:371). The surprising thing is that some of the most clear thinking intellectuals, who sized up Nazism and Stalinism when these regimes 32 0JVIND LARSEN evolved, found no motivation in the historical circumstances to reflect upon the type of regime, namely democracy, which was so disliked by the new rul- ers in Germany and Russia respectively, and which was the only form of gov- ernance which offered the possibility for a free life. According to Lefort, one searches in vain for such reflections in critical thinkers such as Simone Weil, Horkheimer and Adorno. They instead, according to Lefort, rather attempted to uncover the preconditions for totalitarianism in European society, precondi- tions which Lefort believes still exist. In the following, I will look closer at how Lefort and Castoriadis treat the is- sue of democracy. Here I am initially interested in their general reflections on the imaginary, then subsequently in their assessment of the imaginary dimen- sion in democracy. Though I name Castoriadis and Lefort in the same breath, it should be noted that they represent two independent philosophies. On the other hand, they have worked together so much that they have many points in common in their view of the imaginary and its importance for democracy. However, whereas Casto- riadis primarily has taken up the issue of the imaginary's philosophical signi- ficance, Lefort has especially concentrated on the significance of the imagi- nary for democracy. Therefore, in the following I will first review what is meant by the imaginary, and then proceed to what significance the imaginary can play in a philosophical understanding of democracy. The imaginary The word "the imaginary" itself has its roots in the Latin word imago, which is a translation of the Greek word phantasia. In English the words "fantasy" and "the fantastic" have their roots in the Greek word phantasia. In a number of places Castoriadis brings in his own definitions of the imaginary. In his article "La decouverte de l'imagination" Castoriadis concentrates on the origins of the concept in Aristotle (Castoriadis 1986a). According to Castoriadis, in Ari- stotle's work On the Soul, there are two understandings of the imaginary; the conventional and the creative. The first and dominant understanding is that which since has become our conventional understanding of the imaginary. This meaning of the imaginary corresponds to the words "fantasy" and "the fantastic". What is meant by this is a sense experience which does not allow it- self to be reduced to an experience which is conveyed through one or more of the traditional five senses. We can thus in a clearly awakened condition have .
Recommended publications
  • The Symbolic, the Imagrnary, and the Real
    The Symbolic,the Imagrnary,and the Real : Inauguralmeeting of SFP,Paris : 8tl'July 1953: JacquesLacan P1-52of On the Names-of-the-Father: Jacques Lacan. translatedby BruceFink JacquesLacan spoke on "The Synrbolic,the Imaginary, and the Real" immediately beforewriting the so-calledRome Report on "The Functionand Field of Speechand Langua-eein Psychoanalysis"(published in theEcrits) during the summerof 1953,a paperthat markedthe publicdebut of "Lacan'steaching," as it was latercalled. The earliertalk includedthe first thematicpresentation of the famoustriad that undergirdedall of Lacan'swork for the next threedecades and that went on to becomeits essentialobject - not merelya conceptualobject, but a mathematicaland materialone as well in the form of the Borromeanknot andits derivatives. Publishedin Frenchat EcoleLacanienne de Psychanalyse - Pas tout Lacan - 1950i1959: ,. ", Available, ,".,,.http.//wu'w.ecole-lacanienne.net/documents/1953-07-08.doc Cetteconferer'rce ( Le.symbolique,l'imagirtaire el le reel r.firtpronortceele Bjuillet 1953pourout'rir les actit,itesde la Societt.fi'curEctisede Psvchcuralvse. Cette versirtrt e.stannoncee dans le cataloguede la Biblirfihit1uede I'e.l.p. contmever.sion J.L. Il existeplusieurs autres version.s,sensiblement di//erentes a certains endroits,dont une pante dan.sle Bulletinde l'Associationfreudienne, 1982, n" I. Referencesto SigmundFreud Wolf Man . The Historyof an InfantileNeurosis : 1918(SE XVII) RatMan : Notesupon a caseof Obsessionalneurosis . 1909 (SE X) Beyondthe pleasureprinciple 1920(SE XVIII) My friends, you can see that, for the first so- called scientific presentation of our new Sociery, I have selecteda title that is quite ambitious. I will thus begin first by apologizing for it, asking you to consider this presentation both as a summary of viewpoints that those here who are my students know well, with which they have become familiar over the past two years through my teaching, and also as a sort of preface or introduction to a certain orientation for studying psychoanalysis.
    [Show full text]
  • 7. Time in the Ontology of Cornelius Castoriadis
    Page No.64 7. Time in the ontology of Cornelius Castoriadis Dr Alexandros Schismenos University of Ioannina, Greece E-Mail: [email protected] ORCID iD: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8490-4223 Abstract: We can locate the problematic of time within three philosophical questions, which respectively designate three central areas of philosophical reflection and contemplation. These are: 1) The ontological question, i.e. 'what is being?' 2) The epistemological question, i.e. 'what can we know with certainty?' 3) The existential question, i.e. 'what is the meaning of existence?' These three questions, which are philosophical, but also scientific and political, as they underline the political and moral question of truth and justice, arising from the phenomenon of time, the irreversible constant flow of phenomena that undermines every claim to absolute knowledge. The purpose of this essay is to illuminate the importance of time for philosophical thought and, more generally, for human social and psychical life, in the context of the ontology of Cornelius Castoriadis. Castoriadis, who asserted that “being is time – and not in the horizon of time”, correlated history to society and being to temporality within the social-historical stratum, the ontological plane created by human existence, where “existence is signification”. Time is interpreted as the creation and destruction of forms in a magmatic, layered with a non-regular stratification, reality, where the social-historical manifests as the creation of collective human activity, in the manner of social imaginary significations. This notion of temporality is accompanied by a profound criticism of traditional rationalistic philosophy, to which Castoriadis assigns the name ‘ensemblistic/identitary’, that highlights the necessity of a new, magmatic ontology, based on the primacy of time.
    [Show full text]
  • Imaginary Significations and Education As a Social Institution
    E-ISSN 2281-4612 Academic Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies Vol 2 No 11 ISSN 2281-3993 MCSER Publishing, Rome-Italy October 2013 Imaginary Significations and Education as a Social Institution Stavros Moutsios Associate Professor, International Comparative Education, Aarhus University Marie Curie Research Fellow, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Institut für Erziehungswissenschaften, Abteilung Vergleichende Erziehungswissenschaft, Germany Email: [email protected] Doi:10.5901/ajis.2013.v2n11p144 Abstract This paper is about culture and education as a social institution. Evidently, there is no society without culture and there is no society without institutions. Culture is incarnated in social institutions and we need to elucidate this relation in order to understand education across societies. By education we mean not only the official school system, but the entire realm of learning experience available in social institutions, or what we call today lifelong learning. Our analysis is based on the Castoriadian ontology, which considers culture embedded in the imaginary institution of society. Each society is instituted by creating its own world of imaginary significations and exists through them. In these terms, the paper argues, to understand education as an institution of a particular society, ones needs to access its world of significations. The paper explores further the methodological implications of this argument for social-scientific and educational research. 1. Introduction This paper, part of a broader theoretical project in comparative education studies,1 examines theoretically the relation between culture and education. Based largely on the ontology of Cornelius Castoriadis (1987), we maintain, that societies have not only a functional/instrumental dimension (i.e. their physical and biological reality) but also a signitive dimension, which expresses their culture.
    [Show full text]
  • Literature, Ideology, and the Imaginary
    CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture ISSN 1481-4374 Purdue University Press ©Purdue University Volume 11 (2009) Issue 2 Article 1 Literature, Ideology, and the Imaginary Marcello Potocco University of Primorska Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, and the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press selects, develops, and distributes quality resources in several key subject areas for which its parent university is famous, including business, technology, health, veterinary medicine, and other selected disciplines in the humanities and sciences. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact: <[email protected]> Recommended Citation Potocco, Marcello. "Literature, Ideology, and the Imaginary." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 11.2 (2009): <https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.1467> This text has been double-blind peer reviewed by 2+1 experts in the field. The above text, published by Purdue University Press ©Purdue University, has been downloaded 5357 times as of 11/ 07/19.
    [Show full text]
  • The Real and the Gaze of Jacques Lacan
    Roger Williams University DOCS@RWU Architecture, Art, and Historic Preservation Faculty Publications Architecture, Art, and Historic Preservation 2019 The Real and the Gaze of Jacques Lacan John S. Hendrix Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.rwu.edu/saahp_fp Part of the Architectural History and Criticism Commons, and the Arts and Humanities Commons The Real and the Gaze of Jacques Lacan John Shannon Hendrix The third category of the psyche in Lacanian psychoanalysis is the real (réel), which is neither imaginary nor symbolic in conscious or unconscious thought, and which is inaccessible to psychoanalysis itself. The real is not reality in either a conceptual or phenomenological sense, which is the sym- bolic and the imaginary: it is only proposed as an algebraic concept, as it cannot be conceived. It exists as an absence in the symbolic order (lan- guage), as the unconscious exists as an absence in conscious thought. Non- presence can be seen in the real of Lacan, and the gaze, in the dialectic be- tween the imaginary and the symbolic, and in the Hegelian dialectic between subjective and objective spirit. The real of Lacan is exterior to the symbolic, and cannot be represented by the symbolic, and yet the real has an effect on the symbolic, as the unconscious has an effect on conscious thought. The real is the inability of the signifier in language to relate to the signified, the im- possibility of meaning in language, and the impossibility of the subject. In every attempt that the subject makes to represent itself in language or percep- tion, according to Lacan, something is missed, or left behind.
    [Show full text]
  • Charles Taylor's Modern Social Imaginaries, Human Flourishing, and Theological Method
    Andrews University Digital Commons @ Andrews University Dissertations Graduate Research 2019 Toward Engaging the Secular: Charles Taylor's Modern Social Imaginaries, Human Flourishing, and Theological Method Jenifer A. Daley Andrews University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/dissertations Part of the Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons Recommended Citation Daley, Jenifer A., "Toward Engaging the Secular: Charles Taylor's Modern Social Imaginaries, Human Flourishing, and Theological Method" (2019). Dissertations. 1690. https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/dissertations/1690 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate Research at Digital Commons @ Andrews University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Andrews University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ABSTRACT TOWARD ENGAGING THE SECULAR: CHARLES TAYLOR’S MODERN SOCIAL IMAGINARIES, HUMAN FLOURISHING, AND THEOLOGICAL METHOD by Jenifer A. Daley Adviser: Martin Hanna ABSTRACT OF GRADUATE STUDENT RESEARCH Dissertation Andrews University Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary Title: TOWARD ENGAGING THE SECULAR: CHARLES TAYLOR’S MODERN SOCIAL IMAGINARIES, HUMAN FLOURISHING, AND THEOLOGICAL METHOD Name of researcher: Jenifer A. Daley Name and degree of faculty adviser: Martin Hanna, Ph.D. Date completed: January 2019 Increasing secularization seems to fly in the face of Christian proposals for a Scripture-only principle for theology. The question that this dissertation explores is “How will Christian theology tackle the resulting church-society impasse in a way that is both faithful to Scripture and intelligible contemporaneously without appearing to privilege one aspect over the other?” That is, “What form should theological method take to efficaciously engage the secular?” This study suggests that the answer might lie in an innovative fusion of Scripture with borrowed concepts from secular culture.
    [Show full text]
  • On Imagination and Imaginaries, Mobility and Immobility
    Article Culture & Psychology 2020, Vol. 26(4) 768–777 On imagination and ! The Author(s) 2020 Article reuse guidelines: imaginaries, mobility and sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/1354067X20936927 immobility: Seeing the journals.sagepub.com/home/cap forest for the trees Noel B Salazar Faculty of Social Sciences, Cultural Mobilities Research (CuMoRe), KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium Abstract It is hard to talk about human mobilities without taking into consideration how mobility is being shaped by and shaping processes of imagination. The key concepts of imagina- tion and mobility have rich and complex genealogies. The matter is even made more complex because there are many related concepts surrounding them. Imagination is associated with images, imagery and imaginaries, whereas mobility is connected to movement, motion and migration (not to mention its imagined opposite, immobility). To be able to see the forest for the trees, I focus in this critical reflection on a discus- sion of the concepts themselves. One of the analytical advantages of mobility studies, a relatively novel field of study, is that it shows us how imagination (a dynamic psycho- logical process) and imaginaries (products of the imagination) are crucial for very different forms of human (im)mobility. Keywords Mobility, immobility, imagination, imaginaries, anthropology Everything you can imagine, is real Pablo Picasso This special issue of Culture & Psychology explores, in various theoretical, empir- ical and methodological ways, the intricate relation between imagination Corresponding author: Noel B Salazar, Faculty of Social Sciences, Cultural Mobilities Research (CuMoRe), KU Leuven, Parkstraat 45, bus 3615, BE-3000 Leuven, Belgium. Email: [email protected] Salazar 769 and mobility.
    [Show full text]
  • Cornelius Castoriadis on the Imaginary Structure of Meanings in Theatre and Performance
    chapter 6 Philosophy and Theatre: Cornelius Castoriadis on the Imaginary Structure of Meanings in Theatre and Performance George P. Pefanis In the context of theatre studies, Greek philosophical thought has been mostly represented by the ancient philosophers, namely by Plato and Aristotle. Nevertheless, the study of Cornelius Castoriadis’s thought about social imaginary and the function of art will be probably very fruit- ful in focusing on the creative character of theatre performance. This paper is an essay of formatting an intelligible dialogue between Castoriadis, Lehmann and Gilles Deleuze-Felix Guattari, concerning the structure and the constructive character of meanings in the theatre (text and performance)—an era where “there is no image that does not have a minimum meaning and there is no meaning that is not borne by an image”—as well as the role of social imaginary with regard to the post- modern or to the so-called postdramatic theatre. “What holds a society together is the holding-together of its world of significations”1 Contemplating on the meanders of theory of the last decades of the 20th cen- tury the notion of something constantly dying becomes apparent. It is a feel- ing that a socio-historical world is losing some of its organic parts. After the death of God (Nietzsche), of the father (Freud), follow the death of the man (Foucault), of the writer, of the subject, the end of history and ideologies, even the end of theory.2 1 Castoriadis, C. (1987). The Imaginary Institution of Society. Cambridge: Polity Press. 2 Stathis Gourgouris (2006: 500) believes that those who preach the end of ideologies (or the end of history) are like children who invent an incoherent language of their own to fill their inner emptiness.
    [Show full text]
  • Imaginaries – P. 1 Future Imperfect: Science, Technology, and the Imaginations of Modernity Sheila Jasanoff Techn
    Future Imperfect: Science, Technology, and the Imaginations of Modernity Sheila Jasanoff Technological innovation often follows on the heels of science fiction, lagging authorial imagination by decades or longer. A hundred and fifty years passed between the youthful Mary Shelley’s fantastic story of a vengeful creature brought to life by Dr. Frankenstein and the production of new life forms in twentieth-century biological laboratories (Shelley 2008 [1818]). Jules Verne’s Nautilus, piloted by Captain Nemo, took to the ocean depths well before real submarines went on such long or distant voyagings (Verne 1887). At the dawn of the Progressive era, the American socialist Edward Bellamy (1889) foresaw an economy fueled by rapid communication, credit cards, and in-home delivery of goods; a hundred years on, those imagined revolutions have become routine. Aldous Huxley (1932) fantasized an assembly-line of artificial human reproduction to serve state purposes twenty years before the unraveling of the structure of DNA, which in turn paved the way for the currently forbidden cloning of human beings. Arthur C. Clarke (1968) created the scheming, lip-reading computer Hal thirty years before IBM programmers developed Deep Blue to beat chess master Gary Kasparov at his own game. And interplanetary travel was in the minds of such writers as H. G. Wells, Fred Wilcox, and Fred Hoyle appreciably before Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon with his “giant leap for mankind.” Belying the label “science fiction,” however, works in this genre are also fabulations of social worlds, both utopic and dystopic. Shelley’s lab-generated monster turns murderous because he is excluded from society by his abnormal birth, and hence is denied the blessings of companionship and social life enjoyed by his creator.
    [Show full text]
  • Jurgen Habermas: Democracy And
    Jürgen Habermas Democracy and the Public Sphere Luke Goode Pluto P Press LONDON • ANN ARBOR, MI Goode 00 pre iii 23/8/05 09:36:30 First published 2005 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 839 Greene Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48106 www.plutobooks.com Copyright © Luke Goode 2005 The right of Luke Goode to be identifi ed as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 7453 2089 9 hardback ISBN 0 7453 2088 0 paperback Goode, Luke, 1971– Jürgen Habermas : democracy and the public sphere / Luke Goode. p. cm. –– (Modern European thinkers) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0–7453–2089–9 (hb) –– ISBN 0–7453–2088–0 (pb) 1. Habermas, Jürgen. Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit. 2. Sociology––Methodology. 3. Democracy. 4. Mass media––Political aspects. 5. Political participation. 6. Political sociology. 7. Internet––Political aspects. I. Title. II. Series. HM585.G66 2005 302.23––dc22 2005014366 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services Ltd, Fortescue, Sidmouth, EX10 9QG, England Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Printed and bound in the European Union by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne, England Goode 00 pre iv 23/8/05 09:36:30 Contents Acknowledgements vi Introduction 1 1 Excavations: The History of a Concept 3 The bourgeois public sphere 4 The fall of the
    [Show full text]
  • The Following Is a Brief Discussion of Lacan's Three "Orders"
    The following is a brief discussion of Lacan's three "Orders". The text is taken from An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Dylan Evans, London: Routledge, 1996. Order order (ordre) Although Lacan uses the terms 'real', 'symbolic' and 'imaginary' from early on in his work, it is not until 1953 that he speaks of these as three 'orders' or three 'registers'. From that moment on they come to be the fundamental classification system around which all his theorising turns. The IMAGINARY, the SYMBOLIC and the REAL thus comprise a basic classification system which allows important distinctions to be drawn between concepts which, according to Lacan, had previously been confused in psychoanalytic theory. For example Lacan argues that much misunderstanding has arisen in psychoanalytic theory due to a failure to distinguish between the imaginary father, the symbolic father and the real father. Thus Lacan claims that his tripartite classification system has shed invaluable light on Freud's work: 'Without these three systems to guide ourselves by, it would be impossible to understand anything of the Freudian technique and experience' (S I, 73). The imaginary, the symbolic and the real are profoundly heterogeneous, each referring to quite distinct aspects of psychoanalytic experience. It is therefore difficult to see what they have in common, and yet, the fact that Lacan refers to all three as 'orders' implies that they share some common property. Lacan explores this question of what the three orders have in common by means of the topology of the BORROMEAN KNOT in his 1974-5 seminar. They are not mental forces like the three agencies in Freud's structural model.
    [Show full text]
  • Masks and Sartre's Imaginary: Masked Performance and the Imaging Consciousness
    Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University Communication Dissertations Department of Communication 4-20-2007 Masks and Sartre's Imaginary: Masked Performance and the Imaging Consciousness William Keith Tims Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/communication_diss Part of the Communication Commons Recommended Citation Tims, William Keith, "Masks and Sartre's Imaginary: Masked Performance and the Imaging Consciousness." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2007. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/communication_diss/10 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Communication at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Communication Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. MASKS AND SARTRE’S IMAGINARY : MASKED PERFORMANCE AND THE IMAGING CONSCIOUSNESS by W. KEITH TIMS Under the Direction of Greg Smith ABSTRACT The use of masks in performance and actor training is often linked to the imagination, but there is seldom discussion of the nature of this imaginary link. Using the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre (most especially his work The Imaginary ) and the writings of modern mask theorists, this dissertation examines the relationship between masks and the imaging consciousness in both masked actors and the audiences who observe them. We discover that a mask is an analogon for an Other and that a mask authorizes games of identity which play out imaginatively in the performance milieu. In fact, generally speaking, a mask in performance is apprehended in a more imaginative way than a non-masked performance. Further than this, the mask illustrates the basic nature of the human consciousness and identity espoused by Sartre: that who we are is not a product of our psychology, but rather, the product of our imaginations and our choices.
    [Show full text]