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Cornelius Castoriadis
JB
BLACKWELL
318
21 S ee ag ain M S P I , as w ell as I IS , p p . 3 3 2 -7 E .
22 1986 N o te : S ec L A uio-organisation, p . 354.
23 S ee M S P I , in C L , pp. 1 6 3 -4 E .
2 4 S ee I IS , c h a p te rs 4 a n d 6, p assim , a n d I C S I I D (1 9 8 1 ).
2 5 S ee G / (1 9 7 3 ).
26 S ee S B (1 9 4 9 ).
27 1986 N o te : 1 have d e n o u n c e d th e a b su rd ity o f s u c h fictio n a l 'tr a n s p a re n c y ' since 1965, in
M R T I V , n o w in I IS , pp. 1 1 0 -1 4 E [T /E : th is sectio n a p p e a rs ab o v e in th e p re se n t volum e
as C o m m u n is m in its M y th ic a l S e n se ).
2 8 1986 N o te : I h ave d isc u sse d this q u e stio n at len g th in S T C C (1 9 7 9 ). [T /E : S ec, n o w , an
u p d a te d v ersio n o f this te x t, C C S (1 9 8 6 ).]
2 9 1986 N o te : S ee I S R (1 9 8 2 ).
30 1986 N o te : S ec G P C D (1 9 8 3 ).
12
R ad ical Im a g in a tio n and th e S o cia l
In stitu tin g Im a g in a ry (1994)*
i
I have chosen to speak about im agination and the social instituting imagi
nary' not only because these are central them es in my work b u t also for two
m uch less contingent reasons. First, because im agination - the radical imagi
nation of the singular hum an being, that is, the psyche or soul - though
discovered and discussed tw enty-three centuries ago by A ristotle, never won
its proper place, which is central in the philosophy o f the subject. Second,
because the social imaginary', the radical instituting im aginary, has been
totally ignored throughout the whole history of philosophical, sociological,
and political thought.
Given the lim itations of space and tim e, I shall not enter into the history
of the subject, which includes the vacillations o f Aristotle in the treatise De
A nim a, the Stoics and Dam ascius, a long developm ent in Britain going from
H obbes to Coleridge, the rediscovery o f im agination by K ant in the first
edition o f the Critique o f Pure Reason and the reduction of its role in the
second edition, the rediscovery of the K antian discovery an d retreat by
Heidegger in the 1928 Kantbuch, the subsequent total silence o f H eidegger
on the subject, the hesitations o f M erleau-P onty in The Visible and the
Invisible as to w hat is reason and w hat is im aginary,1 not to m ention
Freud, who talks throughout his work about w hat is in fact im agination, and
accomplishes the feat of never m entioning the term.
I shall limit m yself to two remarks about the Aristotelean discovery and,
later, to a brief discussion of som e problem s raised by K an ts treatm ent of
the subject in the first edition of the first Critique.
It has not been noticed, as far as I am aware, that the Aristotelean
phantasia, in the treatise De A nim a, covers two com pletely different ideas.
M ost of the treatm ent corresponds to what I have called second (secondary)
imagination, imitative, reproductive, or com binatory im agination - and
Originally published in Rethinking Imagination Culture and Creativity, Gillian R obinson an d John R undel),
eds (L ondon and N ew York R outlcdge, 1994). T ran sla tio n forthcom ing in C L 5.
320
has provided the subsiancc of w hat, for centuries and up to now, passes for
im agination. But in the m iddle of Book T hree, Aristotle introduces,
w ithout warning, a totally different f>hantasa, w ithout which there can be
no thought and which possibly precedes any thought. T his I have
called prime (primary) imagination; it corresponds, roughly, to my radical
im agination.2
It is, at the sam e time, characteristic that Aristotle does not establish any
relation whatsoever between phantasia and poiesis, for him , is techne, and
techne im itates nature, even in the loftiest case, the case of techne noietikc.
T his ballet, this hide-and-seek gam e, should of course be explained, or,
rather, understood. T he m ain factor seems to me to be that philosophy from
the start has been a search for the truth (aleOieia) as opposed to m ere opinion
(<doxa), and truth was im mediately correlated with logos, nous, ratio, Reason,
Verstand and Vemunft. Doxa was linked with sense impressions, or imagina
tion, or both, and left at best to the sophists and sceptics. T ru th about the
world and about being was to be found along the ways of logos, of Reason,
w ithout the question being raised: How can a world, and being, exist for a
hum an subject in the first place? And how is it that these hum an subjects
possess logos, language? (In Aristotle logos is an extremely polysem ous term;
but in his dictum , anthrpos esti zoon logon ekhon - hum ans are living beings
possessing logos - logos, I believe, refers centrally to language; the translation
animal rationale is Senecas in the first century C E . ) Animals are certainly
m uch m ore logical or rational than hum ans: they never do something
wrongly or in vain. And hum an reason, as I shall try to sketch, entails radical
im agination, b u t also would be nothing w ithout language. It w ould, of
course, be preposterous to argue that language is a product of reason. But
then where does language come from? It is significant that the dispute about
the natural or conventional/instituted character of language was already
very heated in Greece in the fifth century' b c e , with Dem ocritus supplying
already unsurpassable argum ents for the conventional/instituted character
of language; that P latos Crarylus is inconclusive, though it obviously makes
fun of the idea of a natural character of words; and that Aristotle defines
the word as phnZ sSmamik kata suntheken, a voice (or so und) signifying
according to a convention, but does not push his reflection further. The
G reeks had discovered the phusislnomos (nature/institution-convention)
distinction and had already put it into practice by changing their institutions.
But their m ost im portant philosophies stopped short of using it, obviously
- at least in the case of Plato - out of fear o f opening the way to arbitrari
ness and freedom.
T his also allows us to understand why the social origin that is, creation
of language and of all institutions, though explicitly known and practically
d em o n strated at least in the dem ocratic cities, rem ained w ithout con
sequences for philosophy. W hen tradition and/or religion stopped supplying
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an indisputable source and form ulation for the law and for the m eaning of
the world, philosophy rushed in to take its place. F or this it had to find a
fundamentum inconcussum, an unshakeable foundation, which was to be
Reason. And according to the already em erging basic ontological categories,
this Reason could be found in Things, in Ideas, or in Subjects - that is,
Substantive Individuals - but certainly not in the anonym ous social collec
tive w hich could only be a collection o f such individuals entering into
com m erce because of need, of fear, or o f rational calculation.
Also, alm ost from the beginning (and already in Parm enides) the philo
sophical tenet ex nihilo nihil - a constitutive axiom of ensem blistic-identitary
logic* - im posed itself. But im agination, and social instituting imaginan-,
create - ex nihilo. Therefore, what they create m ust be a nonbeing, Unsein at best, fictions and illusions. O f course, this is a nonsolution, since illusions
are (e.g., they may have trem endous consequences). B ut this was covered
up by the idea o f degrees of being - or of intensity of existence - linked
very rapidly with the criteria o f duration, so diat perm anence, eternity, and,
finally, atem porality becam e fundam ental characteristics o f true being - of
immutability - so that everything belonging to the H eraclitean flux becam e
disqualified - and of universality - opposing what m ust be for everybody to
what just happens to be for somebody. Mutatis mutandis, all this rem ains
true today, despite talk about imagination and creativity, both of which are
rapidly becom ing advertising slogans.
II
Before going further, a preliminary- explanation o f the use of the term s imag
ination, imaginary', and radical may be helpful.
I talk about im agination because of the two connotations o f the word: the
connection with images in the m ost general sense, that is, forms (Bilder-,
Einbildung, etc.); and the connection with die idea of invention or, better
and properly speaking, with creation.
T h e term radical I use, first, to oppose w hat I am talking about to the
secondary im agination which is either reproductive or simply com binatory
(and usually both), and, second, to em phasize the idea that this im agination
is before the distinction between real and fictitious*. T o put it bluntly: it is
because radical im agination exists that reality exists for us - exists tout court
- and exists as it exists.
Both considerations apply as well to die radical instituting social imagi
nary'. It is radical because it creates ex nihilo (not in nihilo or cum nihilo). It
does not create images in the visual sense (though it docs this as well: totem
poles, em blem s, flags, etc.). It creates, rather, forms which can be images in
a general sense (linguists speak ab o u t the acoustic im age o f a w ord),
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hut in the main are significations and institutions (each o f those being
impossible w ithout the other).
So, to put it briefly, in both cases we talk about an a-causal vis fomxandi.
A-causal does not m ean unconditioned or absolute, ab-solutus, separated,
detached, w ithout relations. All actual and factual relations are not casual.
T h e seat of this vis formandi as radical im agination is the singular hum an
being, m ore specifically its psyche. T h e seat of this vis as instituting social
imaginary- is the anonym ous collective and, m ore generally, the socialhistorical field.
Ill
I turn now to the radical imagination o f the singular hum an being. One may
take two paths in order to elucidate this idea: the philosophical and the
psychoanalytical.
On the philosophical path, we may well start with an Auseinandersetzung
with Kant. In the Critique o f Pure Reason (24, B151) a proper definition is
given: Einbildungskraft ist das Vermogen einen Gegenstand auch ohne dessen
Gegemvart in der Anschauung vorzustellen' - Im agination is the power (the
capacity, the faculty) to represent in the intuition an object even w ithout its
presence. One may note that Parm enides was already saying as m uch, if not
m ore: C o n sid er how the absent (things) are w ith certainty present to
thought (>ji>o). A nd Socrates was going m uch further when he asserted that
imagination is the power to represent that which is not. K ant goes on to add:
As all o u r intuitions are sensuous, im agination therefore belongs to the
sensibility. O f course, just the reverse is true as I shall try to show presently.
W e shall see th a t K ant certainly intends m uch m ore than what is entailed
by the above definition: the conception o f transcendental im agination, the
paragraphs on the Schem atism , and even the substance of the chapters on
space and tim e go far beyond this definition. But the latter is useful in order
to oppose to it w hat I consider to be the proper definition: Einbildungskraft
ist das Vermogen Vontellungen hervorzubringen, ob diese einen dusseren Anlass
haben oder nicht. Im agination is the power (the capacity, the faculty) to make
appear representations (ideas is the old English term , e.g. in Locke),
whether with or w ithout an external incitem ent. In other words: imagina
tion is the power to make be that which 'realiter is not (I shall return later to
the term realiter.
W e take first the case of an external incitem ent (or excitation!). Fichte,
who in the first version of the Wissenschaftslehre gives m uch greater weight
to the imagination than K ant, speaks of Anstop (shock). In this he is, I think,
correct. But Kant speaks about the senses, opposing the receptivity of
im pressions to the spontaneity of concepts. Im agination obviously should
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IV
As already stated, we never deal with im pressions. W e deal with percep
tions, that is, a class o f representations (Vorstellungen). And it is impossible
to com pose a perceptual representation (or any representation) by sheer
juxtaposition o f sense d a ta . A Vorstellung, how ever vague or bizarre,
possesses a unity and a formidable organization; it is never a sheer am or
phous multiplicity, a pure Mannigfaltigkeit. T here is therefore a trem endous
am ount of logical work contained in the representation, entailing som e of
K a n ts ca te g o rie s, som e o f his (w rongly nam ed and placed )
Reflexionsbcgriffen and som e o thers, notably topological schem ata (e.g.,
neighbourhood/separation or continuity/discreteness) which I cannot dwell
upon here.
T hese last considerations are certainly true of any living being - any bcingfor-itself- but in this case the logical functions are, in general, sim pler and,
at any rate, unadulterated by the other functions of im agination in hum ans.
Categories are intrinsic, im m anent to the perception. A dog chases a (= one)
rabbit, and usually catches it. A catch surely devoid of transcendental
validity since the unity of the rabbit caught has not been established through
m ediations o f transcendental schem ata from the dogs unity of transcen
dental apperception. K ant is bound to a Cartesian conception of *animaux
machines'. T ru e , the third Critique sketches anodier view, but only reflec
tively and only as p art o f a heavy teleological m etaphysics. L et us,
incidentally, outline my status under the K antian regime: from the deter
m ining point of view I am a (somatical and psychical) m achine; from the
reflective point of view I am a mechanistically un-understandable but id e
ologically understandable being; from the transcendental point o f view I
simply am not - Ich gelte; from the ethical point of view I ought to be what
in fact (from the determ ining point of view) I could never be: an agent acting
outside any psychological motives. T o say, in these circum stances, that I
am m ade o u t o f crooked w ood is certainly the understatem ent o f the
m illennium .
T o revert to our m ain argum ent: radical im agination (as source o f the
perceptual quale and of logical forms) is what makes it possible for any beingfor-itself (including hum ans) to create for itself an own [or proper] world (eine
Eigenzvelt) w ithin which it also posits itself. T h e ultim ately indescribable A'
out there becom es som ething definite and specific for a particular being,
th rough the functioning of its sensory and logical im agination, which
filters, form s, and organizes the external shocks. It is clear that no
being-for-itsclf could organize som ething out o f the world, if this world
were not intrinsically o rg a n iz a d which m eans that it cannot be simply
chaotic. But this is another dim ension of the question - the properly onto
logical dim ension - which cannot be discussed here.
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becom c objects for themselves, and the labile quid pro quo, which is the
prerequisite of symbolism.
T h e second, equally im portant, condition is the creation, by the radical
social im aginary, o f in stitu tio n s and, o f co u rse, first and forem ost, of
language. N either life as such nor the singular psyche as such can produce
institutions and language. U nderstanding and reason are socially instituted,
though, of course, this institution leans on intrinsic possibilities and drives
of the hum an psyche.
A last point m ust be m ade in this respect. T h e (K antian) distinction
between categories, transcendental5 schem ata, and em pirical representa
tions cannot, of course, be taken as a distinction in re (nor is it taken as such
by K ant himself). B ut one can be m ore precise. Any representation (I am
abstracting here from affects and intentions) contains qualia and an organi
zation of these qualia; this organization, in turn, consists in generic figures
and trails and in categorial schem ata. In other w ords, genericity and categoriality are intrinsic and im m anent to the representation. T o becom e
categories and schem ata they have to be named and reflected upon. And this
- that is, abstract thought as such - is a relatively recent historical creation,
not a biological trait of the hum an species, though all m em bers of this
species can share in this creation once it is there. But abstract thought itself
always has to lean on some figure or image, be it, minimally, the image of
the words through which it is carried on.
V
I shall be m uch briefer on the psychoanalytical path, which I have dealt with
at length elsewhere.7
T his path was opened, as we know, through the immense discoveries of
Freud. But as I noted in the beginning, Freud never them atizes im agination
as such. One has to use unsystem atized, though sem inal, indications in his
work to draw rigorous and radical consequences from these and also to go
beyond them in order to reach the reality o f radical im agination. Among
these indications, the m ain ones are the magical om nipotence of thought
(better called the effective om nipotence of thought, since we are dealing here
with unconscious thought, where, in the first approxim ation, thinking makes
it so purely and simply), and the (practically equivalent) assertion that there
is no distinction, in the U nconscious, betw een a strongly cathected repre
sentation and an actual p ercep tio n , th at is, th a t there are not in the
Unconscious indices of reality. W here from we can draw almost im m edi
ately a cardinal principle: for hum ans, representational pleasure prevails as
a rule over organ pleasure, from which it also results that both representa
tion and pleasure are fefunctionalized in hum ans. A nother equally decisive
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sia n from som ething different from a reduction o f one of the two entities to
the other, or an irreversible and irreparable separation of soul and body.
Here are some indications along this line. We should posil b eh in d or
below the Freudian Unconscious (or the Id) a N onconscious which is the
living body qua hum an anim ated body in continuity with the psyche. T here
is no frontier between this living, anim ated body and the originary psychical
m onad. T h e m onad is neither repressed nor repressible: it is unsay able. N or
do we repress the life o f the body. W e vaguely feel ii, w ithout knowing
why and how - the beats o f the h e a n , the m ovem ents o f the bowels, proba
bly already, very long ago, our m ovem ents within the am niotic fluid. T here
is a presence of the living body 10 itself, inextricably mixed with what we nor
mally consider as the m ovem ents o f the soul proper. And there is the
obvious and understandable substantive hom ogeneity between the singular
persons psyche and soma. Socratess dead body is no longer Socrates.
K anis soul could not inhabit Ava G ard n ers body, nor the reverse. H um an
physiology is already soul-like; auloim m unc disorders, where the body's
defence m echanism s turn against the body they arc supposed to protect,
can hardly be understood as the result o f an external influence of the soul
on the body. (This example shows, incidentally, the nonfunctional, nonlogical character of the hum an im agination.) It is in this light that we should
consider the idea o f a sensory, and m ore generally bodily, im agination.
T hese arc tentative, embryonic thoughts. But there is a solid conclusion
we reach on the psychoanalytic path: that the imagination of the singular
hum an being is defunctionalized. Hegel has said that man is a sick anim al.
In truth, m an is a m ad anim al, totally unfit for life, a species that would have
disappeared as soon as it emerged if it had not proven itself capable, at the
collective level, of another creation: society in the strict sense, that is, insti
tutions em bodying social im aginan' significations. T his creation we cannot
help b u t im pute to the creative capacity of anonym ous hum an collectives,
that is, to the radical instituting imaginary.
VI
T o elucidate the idea o f the instituting social imaginary we can again follow
the iwo paths: the philosophical and the psychoanalytical.
Along the philosophical path, the discussion need not be long. Philosophy
itself, and thought in general, cannot exist w ithout language or, at least,
w ithout strong links with language. But any individual or c o n tra ctu al
prim ordial production of language is logically (not only historically) an
absurdity. Language can only be a spontaneous creation of a hum an collec
tive. And the sam e is true o f all prim ordial institutions, w ithout which ihere
is no social life, therefore also no hum an beings.
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333
C.
Society is always historical in the broad, but proper sense o f the word:
it is always undergoing a process o f self-alteration. T his process can
be, and alm ost always has been, so slow as to be im perceptible; in our
small social-historical province it happens to have been, over the last
4,000 years, rather rapid and violent. T h e question: W hen does a selfaltering society stop being the sam e and becom e another? is a
concrete historical question for which standard logic has no answer
(are the Romes of the early R epublic, o f M arius and Sulla, of the
A ntonins, etc., the sam e?).
D.
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b.
336
E.
VII
How is it possible that we are capable of talking in this way (correctly or not,
that is another m atter) about societies in general, putting ourselves, as it
were, at an equal distance from all of them (be it an illusion, this is also
another matter)?
Almost all societies we know have instituted them selves in and through
the closure of m eaning. T hey are heteronom ous; they cannot put into ques
tion their own institution and they produce conform al and heteronom ous
individuals for w hom the putting into question o f the existing law is not just
forbidden but m entally inconceivable and psychically unbearable. These
individuals are conscious, b u t not self-reflective subjectivities.
T h is state of affairs was broken for the first tim e in ancient Greece, and
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this breaking was repeated fifteen centuries later, with m uch greater diffi
culty but also on an incom parably large scale, in W estern Europe. In both
eases the institutions and the ultim ate beliefs o f the tribe have been explic
itly called into question and, to a large extent, m odified. Partially open
societies have em erged, together with self-reflective individuals. T h e m ain
carriers of this new historical creation were politics as collective em ancipa
tory- m ovem ent and philosophy as self-reflecting, uninhibitedly critical
thought. T h u s em erged what I call the project o f collective and individual
autonomy.
In both cases the project has not been brought to its com pletion. O ne
might say that it coidd not be brought to a com pletion. T o this I would
answer that neither this statem ent nor its contradiction can be theoretically
d em o n strate d o r estab lish ed , it being u n d e rsto o d th a t th e p ro jec t o f
autonom y does not aim at establishing Paradise on E arth or at bringing
about the end of hum an history'; nor docs it purport to ensure universal
happiness. T h e object of politics is not happiness b u t freedom ; autonom y is
freedom understood not in the inherited, m etaphysical sense, but as effec
tive, hum anly feasible, lucid and reflective positing o f the rules of individual
and collective activity. T his is why the social-historical struggles anim ated
by this project have left so many im portant results, am ong which are w hat
ever intellectual and political freedom we may be enjoying today. B ut the
philosophically im portant point is that, even if it finally failed, as in A thens,
or if it is in danger of waning, as in the present W estern world, its effect has
been the creation o f a totally new, unheard of, ontological eidos: a type of
being which, consciously and explicitly, alters the laws of its own existence
as it is, however partially, m aterialized in a self-legislating society and in a
new type o f hum an being: reflective and deliberating subjectivity. And this
is what allows us to take some distance from our own society, to talk about
society and history in general, and to accept rational criticism of w hat we
say in this or any other respect.
Notes
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
S ee M P (1 9 8 6 ).
S ee D / (1 9 7 8 ).
O n c n s c m b listic -id c n tita rv logic, see c h a p te r 4 o f IIS .
S ee, e.g ., C h a rle s T a y lo r, Sources o f the S e lf (C a m b rid g e , E n g la n d : C a m b rid g e U n iv e rsity
P ress, 1 9 8 9 ), p p . 162T. R ich a rd R o rty h a s also , fro m a n o th e r p o in t o f view , a tta c k e d th is
d istin ctio n .
T a y lo r o n D e sc a rte s, Sources o f the Self, p. 162.
S ee S S T (1 9 8 6 ) a n d L IR (1 9 9 1 ).
S ee th e tex ts cited in n o te 6 , a n d c h a p te r 6 o f IIS .
S ee C L , I IS , P P A , a n d W IF .