Mapping the theme of Creativity in Cornelius Castoriadis’s and Paul Ricoeur’s Social Imaginaries

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 11-36
Author(s):  
George Sarantoulias ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Action ◽  
Philosophical Anthropology ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Social Imaginary ◽  
Social Imaginaries ◽  
Cultural Imagination ◽  
The Social ◽  
Theories Of Action ◽  
Cornelius Castoriadis ◽  
Convergence And Divergence

This paper elucidates the notion that action is creative through the social imaginaries perspective. Hans Joas’s critique of sociological theories on action developed in The Creativity of Action (1996 [1992]) argued that creativity is an essential concept to better understand social action. Cornelius Castoriadis and Paul Ricoeur employ an understanding of action as being inextricably connected to the social imaginary and capable of bringing forth historically novel forms of being and doing. An elucidation of Castoriadis’s dichotomy between the instituted and instituting imaginaries and Ricoeur’s distinction of the ideological and utopian poles of the cultural imagination bring to the surface points of convergence and divergence in their respective understandings of the social imaginary and historical novelty. Inspired by Joas’s critique of sociological theories of action through pragmatism, which is underlined by a critique of the philosophical anthropological assumptions held by structuralism, this essay argues that Castoriadis’s and Ricoeur’s distinct insights on the creative dimension of social action and the way in which social reality emerges can elucidate further an anti-structuralist philosophical anthropology that can help inform sociological theories of action.

scholarly journals Social imaginaries and the theory of the normative utterance

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (10) ◽  
pp. 1045-1071
Author(s):  
Meili Steele
Keyword(s):  
Charles Taylor ◽  
Social Imaginary ◽  
The West ◽  
Social Imaginaries ◽  
Normative Concepts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
Propositional Form

From Charles Taylor to Marcel Gauchet, theorists of the social imaginary have given us new ways to talk about the shared structures of meanings and practices of the West. Theorists of this group have argued against the narrow horizons of meaning that are deployed by deliberative political theories in developing their basic normative concepts and principles, providing an alternative to the oscillation between the constructivism and the realism. Theorists of the imaginary have enabled us to think about normatively charged collective imaginaries as logically prior to the construction of normative principles. What theorists of the imaginary have not done is make specific connections between the ontological background of social imaginaries and the normative utterance. This lacuna has left them vulnerable to the charges of ‘normative deficit’ and vagueness that Habermas and others famously make against philosophies of ‘world disclosure’. This article develops a conception of the normative utterance that enables us to reason through social imaginaries. In such reasoning, claims are not expressed in the propositional form of the Rawlsian or Habermasian justification, but through a complex engagement with the worldhood that informs normative judgements.

scholarly journals Imaginarios de la violencia en el cine mexicano contemporáneo. El caso de Miss Bala, de Gerardo Naranjo.

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (9) ◽  
pp. 185-219
Author(s):  
Mayté Murillo
Keyword(s):  
Drug Trafficking ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Social Imaginaries ◽  
Mexican Cinema ◽  
Mexican Society ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Spectator ◽  
Narrative Forms

The article reflect on the construction of the imaginary of violence in the contemporary Mexican cinema, and how the social imaginaries are connected with the filmic imaginaries. Edgar Morin's suggestion about the imaginary is crucial for this reflection, also Merleau-Ponty’s ideas about the Phenomenology of the perception. To support this aim, an analysis exercise of Miss Bala (Gerardo Naranjo, 2011 is proposed, a representative film that approach the issue of violence that was increased since the symbolic "declaration of war" to drug trafficking during Felipe Calderón government. Its aesthetic and narrative forms allow the spectator to glimpse other manifestations of violence, which go beyond visual spectacular violence, to allow us to see more intrinsic and symbolic ways, based on the Žižek approach. The present reflection can provide the reader a panoramic perspective on the role played by the cinema and its filmic imaginaries in the constitution of the social imaginaries, on how one lives, perceives, condemns and assimilates a social reality pronounced by narco violence in Mexican society.

Crisis, liminality and the decolonization of the social imaginary

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 493-512 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angelos Varvarousis
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Social Imaginary ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Imaginaries ◽  
Greek Crisis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Global North ◽  
Second World

The decolonization of the social imaginary has been proposed as an important dimension of the transition towards a degrowth society. However, although omnipresent in the degrowth literature, the terms “social imaginary” and “social imaginary significations” have not been adequately explained. This creates a level of mystification that limits the analytical value of the degrowth framework. In addition, there is very little theoretical work on how actual social imaginaries can be decolonized and transformed. This paper first tries to clarify those concepts. Subsequently, it develops a theoretical framework for explaining such transitions of the imaginary. In developing this framework, the paper focuses on moments of crisis, since crises have been historically associated with change and transition. It argues that crises are important because they destabilize social imaginaries and open up a stage of suspension—a liminal stage—in which the rise of new social practices can facilitate the emergence of new social imaginary significations and institutions that can contribute to the alteration of the social imaginary at large. The paper draws on case studies related to the Greek crisis, the biggest ever faced by a country of the Global North after the Second World War.

scholarly journals Adiós a la tierra prometida. Crónicas de migrantes latinoamericanos que retornan a su País de origen

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 507
Author(s):  
José Escobedo Rivera
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Country Of Origin ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Promised Land ◽  
Palabras Clave ◽  
The Social ◽  
America Latina ◽  
First World

<p>La presente investigación se realiza bajo el paradigma Empirista “<em>EMIC</em>” -investigación cualitativa-, que nos servirá, como metodología de las Ciencias Sociales, para conocer las razones que tuvieron los migrantes de América Latina y el Caribe, que radicaron en un país de acogida del Norte Desarrollado, para retornar a su país de origen diciéndole “Adiós” a la tierra prometida a través de la versión dada por ellos mismos en sus <em>Crónicas de Vida</em>. La comprensión de estos relatos testimoniales que los migrantes vertieron, como sujetos en la construcción de la realidad social, fueron concebidos como actos reflexivos. Nos hemos propuesto los siguientes objetivos con el propósito de conocer los motivos que llevaron al migrante a tomar esta decisión de volver a su país de origen, toda vez que dichos relatos implican una intencionalidad que reivindica el papel del sujeto en la construcción de la realidad social: <strong><em>a) </em></strong>conocer el retorno del migrante por <em>motivos</em> <em>deseados</em>, y <strong><em>b)</em></strong> conocer el retorno del migrante por <em>motivos ajenos a su voluntad. </em></p><p> </p><p><strong>Palabras-clave:</strong> paradigma, motivos, acción social, migración de retorno, primer mundo, Latinoamérica.<strong></strong></p><p class="paragraph">  </p><p class="paragraph"><strong>Abstract</strong></p><p class="paragraph">The present research is carried out under the Empiric paradigm "<em>EMIC</em>" - qualitative research -, which will serve as a methodology of the Social Sciences, to know the reasons that had migrants from Latin America and the Caribbean, who settled in a host country of the developed North, for returning to their country of origin saying "Goodbye" to the promised land through the version given by themselves in their <em>Chronicles of Life</em>. The understanding of these testimonies that migrants offered, as subjects in the construction of social reality, were conceived as reflective acts. We have proposed the following objectives with the purpose of knowing the reasons that led migrants to make this decision of returning to their country of origin, since these stories imply an intentionality that claims the role of the subject in the construction of social reality: <strong><em>a</em>)</strong> to know the return of the migrants for <em>desired motives</em>, and <strong><em>b</em>)</strong> to know the return of the migrants for <em>motives beyond their control</em>.</p><p class="paragraph"> </p><p class="paragraph"><strong>Keywords:</strong> paradigm, motives, social action, returning migration, first world, Latin America.</p>

Espaciologia: Uma Objeção

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 72-93
Author(s):  
Marcelo José Lopes de Souza
Keyword(s):  
Social Studies ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Marxist Theory ◽  
Methodological Basis ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cornelius Castoriadis

The present work aims at analyzing one particular outcome of the traditional logics/onthology with its problems and de formations, the social space autonomization, and, in special, the tendency named spatiology. Starting from the radical premise that according to the fundamental theoretical contributions of Cornelius Castoriadis, the marxist theory - general philosophical/methodological basis of "spatiology" and of its interlocutors - is, in a radical analysis, a tributary of those logics and anthology, the present essay seeks to contribute for the construction of a revolutionary - non fragmentary, authentically dialetical - approach to the Social reality. Under this view, or on introductory level, the question of spatial autonomization is contextualized, and the formalistic problematic in the social studies sphere is present ed and discussed.

scholarly journals The Social Imaginary of Emancipation in Entrepreneurship

2020 ◽  
pp. 104225872095925
Author(s):  
Lauri Laine ◽  
Ewald Kibler
Keyword(s):  
Research Agenda ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Social Imaginary ◽  
Philosophical Hermeneutics ◽  
Social Imaginaries ◽  
Ideal Types ◽  
The Social

This article contributes to the research agenda of emancipatory entrepreneurship by developing the understanding of emancipation as a social imaginary in entrepreneurship. In particular, we draw on fiction and philosophical hermeneutics to generate three ideal types of the social imaginary of emancipation in entrepreneurship theorizing. Building on our hermeneutic analysis, we introduce a framework that explains how entrepreneurship theorizing can strengthen, undermine, and shape emancipatory practices as well as the social imaginary of emancipation. We conclude our article by explicating and discussing the relevancy of emancipation in and for entrepreneurship theorizing across different social imaginaries and social practices.

scholarly journals Gender and the social imaginary in medieval Welsh law

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 267-293
Author(s):  
Robin Chapman Stacey
Keyword(s):  
Social Imaginary ◽  
Social Imaginaries ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Critical Methods

This talk explores the role played by gender in the social imaginaries implicit in medieval Welsh law. It takes as its starting point the lawbooks of medieval Wales, which have narrative qualities rendering them susceptible to analyses of several different kinds, from standard historical readings, to scrutiny as law, to more literary critical methods. Of particular interest in this lecture are the ways in which ideas about male and female inform lawbook depictions of space and time, sexuality in both animal and human bodies, and everyday practices such as farming.

scholarly journals The communicative dynamics and its relation with the social dynamics. Reflections for communication research from the paradigm of critical epistemology

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 30-49
Author(s):  
Vivian Romeu
Keyword(s):  
Social Action ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Communication Research ◽  
Traditional Concept ◽  
Expressive Behavior ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Given

In this work the communicative phenomenon is understood as the germ of social action. This invites us to think of communication as expressive behavior through which the social, even the historical, is configured. Consequently, to think of communication in the social as social action demands to conceive and study the social reality as a reality in constant movement, that is, giving in the given. From the critique of the traditional concept of communication, through the epistemological legacy of Hugo Zemelman, this paper proposes a reflection on the role of communication in the shaping movement of social reality.

scholarly journals On Ricœur’s Shift from a Hermeneutics of Culture to a Cultural Hermeneutics

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzi Adams
Keyword(s):  
General Theory ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Philosophical Anthropology ◽  
Phenomenological Reduction ◽  
Social Imaginary ◽  
Symbolic Function ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World

The essay’s argument is twofold: First, it contends that Ricœur’s articulation of the social imaginary in the Lectures on Ideology and Utopia (and other essays of that period), reveals a turn to a general theory of culture, which is best understood as a shift from a hermeneutics of culture to a cultural hermeneutics. This move forms part of his philosophical anthropology of “real social life.” The essay proposes it is epitomized in Ricœur’s changing reception of Cassirer. Second, the essay hermeneutically reconstructs the emergence of this turn in Ricœur’s intellectual trajectory, and, in so doing, contends that it is connected to a rearticulation of both the phenomenological reduction and the symbolic function that took place in the mid- to late 1960s. Ricœur’s developing response to the phenomenological problematic of the world horizon underlies these further phenomenological-hermeneutic considerations. The essay concludes with a brief sketch of Ricœur’s understanding of the symbolic mediation of action (in the Geertz lecture) as a reconfiguration of the hermeneutical actualization of phenomenological preconditions of the symbolic.

scholarly journals The Social Imaginary of Ruination: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Disaster Mediation

2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Vanderwees
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Social Implications ◽  
Social Imaginary ◽  
Western Modernity ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cornelius Castoriadis ◽  
Historical Specificity ◽  
Lacanian Theory ◽  
Geographic Site

Background  Although the popularity of ruins has accompanied Western modernity in waves since the eighteenth century, the post-9/11 decade marks a notable resurgence of the imagery, aesthetics, and rhetoric of ruins, especially in American culture. This article was completed a few months prior to the global COVID-19 crisis. Analysis  While many scholars dismiss contemporary forms of ruin gazing as a mindless fascination with disaster and destruction in its virtual circulation, the author contends that this contemporary imaginary has significant political and social implications. Conclusion and implications  Although each geographic site of ruination has its own social, political, and historical specificity, the author draws from Cornelius Castoriadis’ psychosocial extension of Lacanian theory to designate a broader iconographic and discursive trend in American culture whereby the imagery and rhetoric of destruction contributes to what he calls the “social imaginary of ruination." RÉSUMÉ Contexte  Bien que la popularité des ruines ait accompagné la modernité occidentale dans les vagues depuis le XVIIIe siècle, la décennie post-11 septembre marque une résurgence notable de l’imagerie, de l’esthétique et de la rhétorique des ruines, en particulier dans la culture américaine. Cet article a été achevé quelques mois avant la crise mondiale du covid-19. Analyse  Alors que de nombreux chercheurs rejettent les formes contemporaines de ruine en les considérant comme une fascination aveugle pour les catastrophes et la destruction dans sa circulation virtuelle, l’auteur soutient que cet imaginaire contemporain a des implications politiques et sociales importantes. Conclusions et implications  Bien que chaque site géographique de ruine ait sa propre spécificité sociale, politique et historique, l’auteur s’inspire de l’extension psychosociale de Cornelius Castoriadis de la théorie lacanienne pour désigner une tendance iconographique et discursive plus large dans la culture américaine par laquelle l’imagerie et la rhétorique de la destruction contribuent à ce que il appelle «l’imaginaire social de la ruine».  

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