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Ingerid S. StraumeA common world? Arendt, Castoriadis and political creation

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Article

A common world?Arendt, Castoriadis andpolitical creation

Ingerid S. StraumeUniversity of Oslo, Norway

AbstractAmong the many parallels between Hannah Arendt and Cornelius Castoriadis is theirshared interest in the kind of politics that is characteristic of the council movements,revolutionary moments and the political democracy of ancient Greece. This article seeksto elucidate how the two thinkers fill out and complement each others thought, withspecial attention to political creationan ambiguous theme in Arendts thought. Whilecritical of the notion of making in the political field, Arendt also emphasizes theimportance of building institutions. To take this seriously means that her analyses of thenature of politics must be modified and, in this respect, Castoriadiss understanding of politics as institution-building can serve as a guideline. However, Arendts concept of plurality in the public sphere represents a level of political analysis that is under-developed in the work of Castoriadis. Taken together, their thought highlights manyimportant aspects of political creation in a radical sense.

KeywordsArendt, castoriadis, creation, politics, revolutionary movements

Hannah Arendt and Cornelius Castoriadis, arguably two of the most original thinkers of the 20th century, shared a deep interest in political action and the possibility for some-thing new to appear in the sphere of politics. The parallels in their work become all themore intriguing in view of the difficulties with which their respective oeuvres combinewith those of other thinkers. 1 Owing to their idiosyncrasies, attempts to discuss their arguments tend to become enveloped in their respective philosophical universes. Of

Corresponding author:Ingerid S. Straume, University of Oslo, University of Oslo Library, PO Box 1009 Blindern, 0315 Oslo, NorwayEmail: [email protected]

European Journal of Social Theory15(3) 367383

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course, this may not have been entirely to their dismay, as both were deeply criticaltowards traditional ways of doing philosophy (as exemplified by Plato), and, whileclaiming not to be theory builders, they both, more or less explicitly, asserted their own

(anti-foundationalist) alternatives.The challenges in the case of Hannah Arendt are connected to style, as well as sub-stance. Her work is phenomenological at times, categorical at others; her style of proseessayistic rather than systematic. She would sometimes pursue her themes longer thanwhat would seem necessary or productive, and cared little whether she was correctlyunderstood (Canovan, 1994: 3). For these, and other, reasons, she is often misunderstood (Canovan, 1994; Pitkin, 1998). In the case of Castoriadis, the challenges are mostly con-nected to his mode of philosophizing, termed elucidation . Elucidation can be contrasted to definition aimed at determinacy: where the latter strives toward pinpointing a phe-nomenon in a more or less unequivocal manner, elucidation means to explore the way phenomena operate in the world in their various modes of existence (Castoriadis,1984, 1987; Whitebook, 1985). The ontological premise is that the social reality is notdescribable in an exhaustive manner; there is always an undetermined surplus of meaning.Thus, elucidation echoes the magmatic nature of thought and of the social-historical.When Castoriadis works out his thought in chains of (often self-made) concepts, where oneis elucidated, explained and understood through the introduction of another, this poses aconsiderable challenge to those who seek to present Castoriadiss work and discuss it ina systematicconceptually distinctway.

There are also important biographical parallels between Arendt and Castoriadis. Bothspent their adult life in exile, which meant the loss not only of a mother tongue as a workinglanguage, but also a referential world wherein thoughts can be expressed. For large parts of their lives, both were more engaged in the public sphere than in mainstream academia. Thereare, of course, also major differences between the two thinkers, as we shall see. The task of the present essay is not, however, to make comparisons per se, but rather to highlight a spe-cific theme where Arendt and Castoriadis complement each other, but where productive ten-sions also lie; namely, the nature of political creation. A guiding idea of this article is to showhow the weaker points of one thinker can be used to elucidate the strengths of the other.

In the following sections I outline what politics means for Arendt and Castoriadis

respectively. In my discussion I am particularly interested in the challenges they posefor each other, such as whether Arendts critique of the use of the notion of poiesis(making) in political matters applies to Castoriadiss project of autonomy and, conver-sely, whether the latter can inform Arendts stark divisions between the human spheresof activity, which has been strongly criticized. I also discuss Arendts concept of plur-ality and argue that it represents a missing level in Castoriadiss philosophy. To round off, I turn to the contemporary global scene, with its on-going social revolts and financialand political crises, and consider in what sense the thought of Arendt and Castoriadis canelucidate these socio-political phenomena.

Politics and poiesisThere is no doubt that Castoriadis has studied the works of Hannah Arendt, whereas it isunlikely that Arendt ever read Castoriadis. 2 A common ground is their deep fascination

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for the notion of politics that first emerged with the twin birth of politics and philosophy around the 5th century BCE (Arendt, 1989; Castoriadis, 1991, 1997a). While empha-sizing different aspects of the political impulses of the Athenian polis, both made active

use of the Greek case to further their own political thought. A further parallel is their active engagement with the political events of their time, which crystallized in their respective political analyses of the USSR, totalitarianism, revolutions, the Cold War and the growth of modern bureaucracy. A special status was given to various historicalinitiatives of self-organization, such as the Hungarian workers councils, whichinspired both of them (Arendt, 1990; Castoriadis, 1988). Like the Greek polis , they sawthe councils as rare instances of genuine politics, which, for Castoriadis, would bemanifestations of the project of autonomy , while for Arendt they signified momentsof power and spontaneous action .

What is the nature of the politics that was born in ancient Greece and reborn in mod-ern revolutionary moments, such as Hungary in 1956? One central characteristic is thecommunicative aspects of politics: public discussion, questioning, deliberation and debate. But a more distinctive and important feature is self-organization: when peopletake it upon themselves to create institutions that regulate their own active participationin the running of society. The terminology varies, but Castoriadis and Arendt are fasci-nated by similar phenomena. What Arendt calls politics proper (as well as genuine or authentic politics), Castoriadis calls true politics, or just politics ( la politique ). Cas-toriadis sees politics as distinct from the political ( le politique ), which refers to the political field , such as institutions of explicit and regulative power. In mainstream polit-ical theory, however, it is the latter notion that is most often elaborated under the term of politics. 3 For both thinkers, failing to distinguish between the political field and politics proper means to cover up the radical potential of politics, where practices of freedom,action, spontaneity (Arendt) and creativity (Castoriadis) can take place.

In the case of Greece, where politics emerged for the first time, general political par-ticipation was made possible by the creation of the public sphere, a point elucidated byArendt (1989) and acclaimed by Castoriadis (1991: 112). A vital public sphere is char-acterized by on-going discussion of questions of collective interest. This shared notion of politics is underpinned by what Castoriadis (1987) calls an ontology of doing and Arendt

calls the active life: vita activa .4

They reject the widespread tendency to regard politicsas a defined set of practices that can be organized and managed in a bureaucratic fashiononce the proper institutions are in place. Representative democracy, for example, is seento have very little political potential. For Arendt and Castoriadis, politics is a delicatematter that needs to be continually exercised and kept alive through vital public discus-sion, deliberation and dissent. Above all, politics signifies freedom. Arendt argues that:The raison de tre of politics is freedom, and its field of experience is action (2006a:145), while Castoriadis tells us that The objective of politics is not happiness but free-dom (1997b: 5). Exactly because it is an embodiment of freedom, however, politics is

one of the first things to disappear from a society when, for instance, its inhabitants stopcaring about their common world or cease to question societys institutions, laws and foundations (Arendt, 2004; Castoriadis, 1991).

So far, I have presented the common ground between Castoriadis and Arendt in their respective views on politics. It is true that the resemblances are striking, but there are also

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great differences, some of which concern the very nature of politics itself. When thesubject is probed further, the question of political praxis becomes crucial. As we will see,Castoriadiss notion of political doing and Arendts understanding of action are not redu-

cible to each other, but steer the discussion in rather different directions. This becomesclear when we consider the concept of political creation : the process whereby a specificsociety is createdor creates itselfwith its specific institutions, norms and significa-tions. If we take political creation to mean a politics that aims at making political insti-tutions , the notion becomes rather problematic for Arendt, while Castoriadiss politics isquite attached to such ideas, especially in his emphasis of the project of autonomy. Inorder to explore these differences, we will make a brief visit to ancient Greece.

In Greece, the co-birth of politics and philosophy made possible the creation of democracy, which, for Castoriadis, is an embodiment of the project of autonomy . Auton-omy, in short, means to posit ones own laws. But whereas all societiesincluding het-eronomous societiesdo posit their own laws, only autonomous societies do this in anexplicit, conscious way. According to Castoriadis, the Greeks were the first to realizethat their laws were entirely their own creation, with no external foundations. The auton-omy in question here is not of the Kantian or liberal kind, that is individual-based inde- pendence from others, but a participatory, collective activity: a strong version of what incontemporary parlance is called active citizenship. But there is more: autonomy isalways individual and collective; it cannot be practiced by individuals unless it is collec-tively instituted, which means that there is a collective awareness that society positsand creates its own laws. Autonomy is, in one of many formulations, the project thataims . . . at bringing light to societys instituting power and at rendering it explicit inreflection (Castoriadis, 1991: 174). Autonomy is political freedom, but it is also neces-sarily self-limiting , as there are no external limitations to the project of autonomy.

It is important for Castoriadis to conceptualize societys capacity to create. Societyhere consists of two aspects: that which creates itself as society, institut ing society and that which is created in each case, institut ed society. As Castoriadis tells us, Society isself-creation. That which creates society and history is the instituting society, asopposed to the instituted society (1991: 84). Autonomy means to be aware of this rela-tionship, while heteronomy means to cover it up. Politics is of the utmost importance

here. It means not only to debate, deliberate and question the instituted laws and norms, but, more importantly, to create new laws and institutions; in other words, effective and creative self-rule ( autogestion ). Thus, political activity concerns the institution of soci-ety itself: Politics is the lucid and reflective collective activity that aims at the overallinstitution of society. It pertains to everything in society that is participable and share-able (Castoriadis, 1991: 169).

Within the project of autonomy, political doing is, for Castoriadis, the creation of societal forms, while in philosophical terms, doing ( faire ) is an alternative to repetition,reconstruction and interpretation, which Castoriadis (1987) saw as expressions of a

reductionist ontology that regarded being as being-determined and hence not crea-tive. 5 Thus, genuine politics for Castoriadisdemocratic politicsis about the con-scious and deliberate, collective creation of institutions. Hannah Arendt took adifferent approach to the problem of determinism (or more fundamentally, foundation-alism) with her concept of actionan approach that seems to be at odds with




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Castoriadis. In The Human Condition , she sets forth a strong critique of the modern ideathat human beings make their history, which was brought to its full expression withMarx, but whose origin lies with Platos political theory:

Marxs dictum [in Capital ] that violence is the midwife of every old society pregnant witha new one, that is, of all change in history and politics, only sums up the conviction of thewhole modern age and draws the consequences of its innermost conviction that history ismade by men as nature is made by God (Arendt, 1989: 228).

According to Arendt, the idea that history is made rests on a conflation of action/ praxis with fabrication/poiesis , or, rather, the occultation of action altogether: an oper-ation that has set its mark on the whole terminology of political theory and politicalthought that indeed makes it almost impossible to discuss these matters [politics and history] without using the category of means and ends and thinking in terms of instru-mentality (Arendt, 1989: 229). To understand the depth of her argumentwhich under- pins a comprehensive critique of the organization of modern societies, the social sciencesand politicaladministrative thoughtwe need to briefly recapitulate her theory of labour, work and action as the three modes of the vita activa , the active life, which, sheclaims, were operative in the polis of ancient Greece. 6

For Arendt (1989), the most primitive of the three activities is labour . She under-stands labour as the activity of the life processes ( bios ), the everyday tasks, such as the production and consumption of food, that can neither be abandoned nor terminated, butwhich repeat themselves, day after day, year after year, by the cyclical logic of necessity.These processes and activities are of no (political) interest for Arendt: they belong to theoikos , the private sphere, that is the household and the economy.

The next activity is work , which is concerned with making and fabricating objects ,such as more or less durable artefacts. The guiding principle of fabrication is themeansend category mentioned above. The process of fabrication starts from the ideaof the end product and means are chosen as the best way to realize it. Fabrication alwaysimplies a certain violence, a manipulative use of the material out of which the productis fabricated. Its logic is poiesis, which, for Arendt, characterizes the making of a

world of objects and things, a human artifice which constitutes a common world for inhabiting and living together. This common world is necessary for the exercise of pol-itics, but it is not in itself political. This isolation of poiesis from political actionreflects one of her most disputed ideas: her critique of bringing the social questioninto politics. 7 For Arendt (1989, 1990), social matters, such as material needs and poverty, were destructive to political lifethey should be regarded as technical mat-ters (matters of making, fabrication) and kept outside of politics proper (Pitkin, 1998;Villa, 1996). I will return to this below.

The third activitywhich needs a public space to occuris what Arendt calls action .

The term denotes human affairs that have no ends, nor are they mere (life) processes.Action designates spontaneity, coming together, beginningbut beginnings whoseends or products are unforeseeable and therefore not really ends or products at all.The main activity of action is speech and its logic is spontaneity. Action is meaningfulin itself and, as such, the only activity that can make human beings into unique and

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distinct beings: In man, otherness, which he shares with everything that is, and distinct-ness, which he shares with everything alive, become uniqueness. Speech and actionreveal this uniqueness (Arendt, 1989: 176). The general meaning of action is to begin,

to set something into motion, but in Arendts sense action is not the beginning of some-thing , it is the beginning of somebody, who is a beginner himself (Arendt, 1989: 177).In fact, Arendt only speaks of action in connection with a who, the doer or actor whocomes forth as a speaker of words: though his deed can be perceived in its brute physicalappearance without verbal accompaniment, it becomes relevant only through the spokenword in which he identifies himself as the actor, announcing what he does, has done, and intends to do. For [i]n acting and speaking, men show who they are, reveal activelytheir unique personal identities and thus make their appearance in the human world(Arendt, 1989: 179). This disclosure of who, in contradistinction to what someone is,is of great political importance to Arendt, who is deeply critical of political regimes and theories that are only able to conceptualize anonymous (life) processes, the extreme case being totalitarianism, but also strongly represented in Marxism. 8

According to Arendt, the Marxian idea of history as mere realization of historicallaws, or politics understood as the making or fabrication of new societal forms, conflatesthe politically important distinctions between labour, work and action. As a result, thereis an occultation of the most fragile of the three activities, action: the only activitywhereby agents become humanized as unique individuals (or persons). On Arendtsaccount, such veiling of the actor characterizes the construction of all utopias and polit-ical theories that are supposed to be implemented, administered and realized on the basisof principles thought out in advance. Such thoughts have been among the most effectivevehicles to conserve and develop a tradition of political thinking in which, consciously or unconsciously, the concept of action was interpreted in terms of making and fabrication(Arendt, 1989: 228). And even though other readings of Marx are valid, and he certainlyinherits a lot of these problems from Hegel (as Arendt also points out, cf. Forti, 2006),Marxs thought does offer itself as a prime example of such instrumentalism, especiallythe mainstream Marxism that was prevalent in many Western countries around the1950s, when The Human Condition was written. Not only did this type of Marxism con-tain an end product, classless society, but it aimed at figuring out (by logical deduction)

the necessary means to achieve this state, some of which were violent. Or perhaps more precisely, any means that were seen to approach the end state were deemed necessary,and hencefor Marxism-Leninism at leastlogical.

Besides Arendts rejection of an instrumentalism that clearly rules out all delibera-tion, problematization and questioning in the strong sense, there is also another reasonwhy it is so urgent for Arendt to conceptualize politics as a non-instrumental activity.When we speak and act, and thus show who we are, this always implies speaking, act-ing and appearing for someone else ; someone who is different from oneself. A definingcondition for action, therefore, is what Arendt calls plurality , meaning that individuals

that are different from each other relate to each other in a free and acknowledging man-ner. This does not necessarily imply that they agree, but rather, and more importantly,that they make themselves recognized as equals. Their uniqueness and distinctnessmakes individuals relate to each other as subjects that form a common world. In oneof her most quoted phrases, Arendt notes that: The hope for man in his singularity lay




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instigated by agents whose motive was precisely thefor Arendt, unpolitical socialquestion. Castoriadis rightly points out that even though social questions about eco-nomic distribution and material conditions may not be political in themselves, they could

(and should) still be treated and decided upon in political processes. Questions about dif-ferent ways to organize oneself as society, judging and choosing between different insti-tutions of society is, after all, the political question par excellence (Castoriadis, 1991:101). Nor is it granted that to treat social questions politically necessarily leads to theinstrumentalization of politics, as Arendt claims (1990: 57, 59ff, 112). In his commentsto Arendt, Castoriadis clearly thinks that politics can have goals, although in other texts he also stresses the open-ended character of political activities (Castoriadis,1987: 71114, 1997c: 12536). 10 The struggle for influence by the working class, for example, is an obvious case of genuine politics for Castoriadis, but not for Arendt, whowould exclude from politics all kinds of struggles on behalf of particular interests, poverty included. 11 Castoriadis also disagrees with Arendts thesis that legislativeactivity was a secondary aspect of politics in ancient Greece, pointing out that Aristotlecounts 13 revolutions in Athens; that is, changes in the fundamental (constitutional)legislation (Castoriadis, 1991: 102). When Arendt (1989) claims that the Greek political framework and legislature were something that was constructed before the political activity itself took place, i.e. fabricated, or erected, like housing, this is simplymisleading for communities whose constitution-building was part of their own politicsand no less political than any of the actions it was supposed to house and regulate(Waldron, 2000: 204). Finally, when Arendt denies that politics can have goals beyond itself, defining all social and economic questions as belonging to the outside of genuine politics, her account of historical events simply becomes unacceptable to professionalhistorians (Hobsbawm, 2006; Waldron, 2000).

But let us not forget that there are other strands in Arendts work than the rigid dis-tinctions worked out in The Human Condition which have been the focus so far. I amthinking of the insistence throughout her work on the importance of institutions . InOn Revolution and Between Past and Future she highlights this dimension through her discussions about the meaning of tradition, authority and the making of promiseswhich serves to constitute a common world. The existence of an institutional frame-

work is of the utmost importance for Arendt: it is what makes action, politics and evenrevolutions, possible (Arendt 1989, 1990, 2006b). We can therefore say that there aretwo essential aspects in Arendts political thought: the expressivist, performative dimen-sion presented above and the (less discussed) political framework, such as constitutionsand councils. In the following passage, the relation between them is made explicit:

The grammar of action: that action is the only human faculty that demands a plurality of men; and the syntax of power: that power is the only human attribute which applies solelyto the worldly in-between space by which men are mutually related, combine in the act of

foundation by virtue of the making and the keeping of promises, which, in the realm of pol-itics, may well be the highest human faculty (Arendt, 1990: 175, my emphasis).

A common world is that which lies between people, separating them and at thesame time holding them together:




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To live together in the world means essentially that a world of things is between those whohave it in common, as a table is located between those who sit around it; the world, likeevery in-between, relates and separates men at the same time. The public realm, as the com-

mon world, gathers us together and yet prevents our falling over each other, so to speak (Arendt, 1989: 52).

The common world consists of words and deeds, but, of course, also institutions ina wide sense of the term. In fact, instituted society (to use the Castoriadian term) is of the utmost importance to Arendt: it needs protection for the sake of protecting our humanity. And even though she does not see institutions as the product of politics proper, it is hard to see why the creation of institutions, especially constitutions,should not be a political matter.

Dichotomy and pluralityI now want to discuss how the respective works of Arendt and Castoriadis can help us forman inspiring and constructive understanding of political creation. The previous sectionrelated Arendts critique of Marx and the modern tradition. A question yet to be addressed is whether this critique can also be aimed at Castoriadiss project of autonomy, because, aswe have seen, politics for him is largely about creating institutions while Arendt is deeplysceptical about this notion, which for her occludes genuine politics. The question, whichmerits some consideration, requires an introduction to Castoriadiss social ontology. Onthe one hand, like Arendt, Castoriadis is critical of theorizing not only politics, but alsosociety and history. On the other hand he clearly thinks that political activities can (and should) have goals, and he also thinks that autonomous societies are preferable to hetero-nomous ones; thus, he has a certain vision for politics. In the first part of The Imaginary Institution of Society , called Marxism and Revolutionary Theory, Castoriadis criticizes both the idea of founding praxis upon a theory, and the idea that as a theory of the socialis impossible, praxis must be blind (Castoriadis, 1987: 71ff). 12 He writes:

To be sure, praxis is a conscious activity and can only exist as lucid activity, but it is some-

thing quite different from the application of prior knowledge [ . . . ]. It is based on knowl-edge, but this knowledge is always fragmentary and provisional. It is fragmentary because there can be no exhaustive theory of humanity and of history; it is provisional because praxis itself constantly gives rise to new knowledge [ . . . ]

The theory can never be given beforehand, because it constantly emerges out of the activityitself. The clarification and transformation of reality progress together in praxis, each con-ditioning the other (Castoriadis, 1987: 76).

This critique resembles and expands Arendts critique of Marx. Castoriadiss notion of

politics combines rationality with anti-foundationalism and lucidity with radical creation(creation ex nihilo ). On his account, there can be no political expert-knowledge, since:

If a full and certain knowledge ( episteme ) of the human domain were possible, politicswould immediately come to an end, and democracy would be both impossible and absurd:

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democracy implies that all citizens have the possibility of attaining a correct doxa and thatnobody possesses an episteme of things political (Castoriadis, 1991: 104).

Instead of theory and certain knowledge Castoriadis sees the history of human soci-eties as a matter of creation: self-creation deployed as history (1997c: 13). History isthe creation of social forms: complex, irreducible forms that do not accord to laws or principles. But as traditional thought is by and large oblivious towards notions such asthe imagination and creation, philosophy has been unable to conceptualize the truenature of the social-historical, according to Castoriadis:

Here, inherited ontology and logic are helpless: they are bound to ignore the proper being of the social-historical. Not only is creation for this ontology and logic a dirty word (except in atheological context [ . . . ]) but also this ontology is inevitably driven to ask, Creation bywhom? Yet creation, as the work of the social imaginary, of the instituting society [ . . . ],is the mode of being of the social-historical field, by means of which this field is. Societyis self-creation deployed as history. To recognize this and to stop asking meaningless ques-tions about subjects and substances or causes requires, to be sure, a radical ontologicalconversion (Castoriadis, 1997c: 1314).

To theorize the social-historical, as Marx did, is therefore a way to cover up these dis-turbing notions. 13 History, for Castoriadis, is not something that happens to a given soci-ety, nor is a society a kind of embodiment of something outside of itself. This is a

problem for traditional philosophy, since:. . . the inherited way of thinking has never been able to separate out the true object of [thequestion of the social-historical] and to consider it for itself. This object has almost always been split into a society, related to something other than itself and, generally, to a norm, end,or telos grounded in something else, and a history, considered as something that happens tothis society, as a disturbance in relation to a given norm or as an organic or dialectical devel-opment towards this norm, end or telos (Castoriadis, 1987: 167).

But Castoriadis is not an advocate of the unpredictable as pure contingency. In a text

published in the midst of the uprisings of May, 1968, La revolution anticipe e (Theanticipated revolution), Castoriadis names the challenges for what he sees as a possiblyrevolutionary movement. 14 In his view, a movement should posit itself and declare itsintentions, as to abstain from doing so means to abstain from political power. He espe-cially warns the students against existing dichotomies posed as mutually exclusiveoptions, for instance, when there is either the imagination or the organization; creativityor reality. This warning is worthy of some consideration as it also applies to Arendtsconception of authentic politics which halts before the act of making .

The ideological dichotomy is set between reality and the imaginary : The revolution-

ary students feel an antinomy between action and reflection: between spontaneity and organization, between truth of act and coherence of speech, between imagination and project. Their perception of this antinomy is what consciously or unconsciously lies behind their hesitations (Castoriadis, 1993: 130). In ordinary discourse, politics is often perceived as something dull, hardened or set; it signifies bureaucracy and non-creativity




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[well illustrated by Jacques Rancieres (1995) concept of la police ]. But it also signifieshard reality, that which in the end must have a final say, the non-eligible. Political insti-tutions and their keepers seem real in a commanding way: You can play all you like,

but in the end we all have to grow up and face reality, i.e., to comply. If, correspond-ingly, the political repertoire of actions and ideas is limited to the other side of thedichotomy, such as happenings, the imagination, the event, the carnivalesque or show-ing who one is (Arendt), we are actually feeding into the existing political system. Toaccept the dichotomy and, hence, to restrict our political activities to just one side out of fear of being captive to the other means, for Castoriadis, to submit to the (hierarch-ical) structures of the society in question. It also means saying that only one part of the dichotomy can be real, whereas the other becomes purely imaginary in the senseof fictional, non-real.

One thing must be made clear at this point. As Castoriadis also recognizes, there aregood reasons to fear that a new (proto-political) initiative can be co-opted ( re cupere e) byalready existing organizations. The students of May 1968 had good reasons to be scep-tical of the leaders of the existing left-wing organizations, having experienced how rev-olutionary talk had been turned into sterile dogma; left-wing organizations turned bureaucratic and routine-driven; projects replaced by rigid programme and political dis-course having been mystified (Castoriadis, 1993). Interestingly enough though, Castor-iadis remarks that those who fear such recuperation are still on the old ground; they aretalking from within the existing power structures, whereas the ground for a revolutionarymovement must be defined anew, that is, created and defined by the new movement:

To accept this antinomy as valid, final, and insurmountable is to accept the very essence of bureaucratic-capitalist ideology. It is to accept the existing philosophy and reality. It is toreject a real attempt at transforming the world. It is to integrate the revolution into the estab-lished historical order (Castoriadis, 1993: 130).

The point to remember is that it will always be in the interest of the powers that be tofacilitate change in order to swallow it, or use it to renew and refine the existing power structures. Hence, if one accepts the dichotomies offered by the social order and choose

one side against the other, one is already playing the game of the instituted power. It istherefore imperative, says Castoriadis (1993), that the would-be revolutionary move-ment gives itself form. It must organize itself, give itself a face and articulate somethingto which it is willing to commit itself (a programme), albeit temporarily. By givingitself a new form, the revolutionary movement leaves the old ground with its definitions,dichotomies and dilemmas. This will also make the movement immune to co-optation, atleast for some time. Furthermore, such self-positing is the only way to transgress hier-archies and divisions in society that tend to reproduce themselves in ever new versions.

This advice to the would-be revolutionaries demonstrates that genuine politics for

Castoriadis here means poiesis , that is to create institutions in a conscious, explicit and lucid manner. We are now in a position to consider the question whether Castoriadiss project resembles that of Marx (or Marxism) in such a way that Arendts critique of work ( poiesis ) replacing action ( praxis )15 can also be turned against Castoriadis.Clearly, the answer is no. Firstly, even if the project of autonomy involves elucidation,

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this does not imply that political creation equals transparent or exhaustively planned actions. Secondly, as we have seen, Arendt herself recognizes the importance of institu-tionalization, which means that her notion of politics in The Human Condition is insuffi-

cient. Compared with Arendts political expressivism, Castoriadiss notion of elucidationcomes forth as the more politicized alternative. By naming and de-masking power relationsand taking social matters seriously in a theoretical context, his political thought seemsmore orientated toward praxis .

Other aspects of Arendts thought, however, pose more of a challenge to Castoriadis, particularly when it comes to conceptualizing political, collective subjectivity in terms of plurality . Where the basic unit of Arendts socio-political analyses is ultimately the indi-vidual, 16 Castoriadis insists that all analyses of political and social phenomena mustdepart from the social-historical level and certainly not from inter-subjectivity, of which Arendts plurality is an instance. For Castoriadis, [t]he social-historical is neither the unending addition of intersubjective networks (although it is this too), nor, of course,is it their simple product (1987: 108). Castoriadis emphasizes the limited capacity of inter-subjective relations in establishing the social level, since for him socially instituted meaning is always primary to the constitution of individuals and, in fact, circumscribeswhat can be seen as meaningful activities, including inter-subjectivity.

Castoriadis makes a conceptual distinction between the individual, which is alwayssocialized, and the psyche, which is the irreducible counterpart of the social-historical.In his later years (after the Socialisme ou Barbarie period), he displayed little interest indiscussing philosophy at the inter-subjective, already socialized-qua-instituted level.This could be a coincidence rather than a systematic flaw, but the fact remains thathe did not work out an adequate conceptual apparatus for dealing with the political con-dition of plurality. In his philosophical writings, subjectivity is usually related tomicro- and macro-levels, not the in-between levels. In this respect, Arendts thoughtcan elucidate a lacuna in Castoriadiss thought by bringing attention to the who of political creationor better, the whos that create a world between them throughwords and deeds (Arendt, 1989; 1990). Plurality asserts that while the subjectsoccupy different places in the world, they are connected. In comparison, the conceptsCastoriadis uses to denote collective agency in his later worksthe anonymous collec-

tive, the social-historical, the instituting social imaginary and the instituting society are, in my opinion, too abstract for many practical purposes such as analyses of social phenomena. Thus, Arendts concept of plurality represents an important dimension of the politically active, collective subject (like the demos of antiquity); a dimension thatis lacking in (the later) Castoriadis.

Even though Arendt does not think of politics as making (something), her work hasseveral openings towards creation as spontaneity and newness. The notion of creationcan be found in the spontaneous acting in concert that characterizes revolutions(Arendt, 1990). The capacity to create something radically new is also inherent in the

faculty of natality, where every person is a new beginning (Arendt, 2006b). On another level, she notes how thoughts are forced out of their tendency towards closure when people go visiting other people whose position in the world is different from their own(another aspect of plurality). This opening belongs to the faculty of the imagination.As people occupy different places in the instituted world, they also hold different




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viewpoints and different views from each other. The idea that one could go visiting byusing the imagination was rather brusquely dismissed by Castoriadis (1991), whoclaimed that in order to put oneself in anothers position one would simply have to

become somebody else. But Arendt makes a good case for using the imagination on thelevel of political inter-subjectivity, not only for remaining open to and interested in other viewpoints, but in order to position ourselves politically and pass judgments. Pluralitycan thus be seen as a precondition for creativity and creation, as a plurality of viewpoints between people, dissent and disagreements constitute productive tensions. It does not somuch pertain to what people are their identitiesas to what they do; their contribu-tions in the political sphere (Ringvej, 2011). Even though Castoriadis could probablyagree with many of these points, he has not elaborated on them. His emphasis is on ontol-ogy and his preoccupation is irreducibility and anti-reductionism as exemplified inthe relationship between the social-historical and the psyche presented above. Theseconcerns also affect his concept of autonomy, which, in his later works, consists of philosophical inquiry and problematization, elucidation and autogestion , but without theinter-subjective emphasis that can be found in Arendts notion of a common world. Thus,Castoriadiss later works become curiously void of subjects. However, I see no reason whyfurther work on Castoriadiss conceptual apparatus, for example to make it more applica- ble to empirical analyses of social phenomena, could not include a concept like plurality.A methodology of elucidation would logically imply worldliness as plurality and action.In such a reconstruction, the work of Arendt could be helpful, their similarities taken intoaccount, and vice versa, as I have already argued.

The import of politics proper Both Arendt and Castoriadis are attracting increasing scholarly interest. This is partly aresult of their inspiring modes of doing philosophy, but there can be little doubt that their works are also seen as relevant in understanding contemporary issues as an alternative beyond analyticliberal and post-modern approaches. The typically modern tendenciesof de-politicization that were identified by Arendt in The Human Condition are, for example by no means exhausted. There are also relevant applications for her critique

of the social, albeit in a tempered form, such as her warning against a situation whereinterest groups (alone) define the political field. There are many examples that suchgroups have tried to destroy the political openness of modern forms of democracy, notably lobby groups and corporations. To modify her scheme, however, we could look toanother influential political thinker, Alain Touraine (2000), and argue that the relevantdemarcation is not between social and political questions as such, but rather betweenwhat Touraine calls social and societal movements. While social movements strugglefor their (particular) interests, societal groups become (part of) political movementswhose concern is society as a whole, not just their own interests. In such a framework,

the instrumental character of the former can be contrasted to the politicized approach of the latter without sacrificing socio-economic questions altogether.To round off, a brief discussion of the actuality of the two thinkers political ideas

seems fitting. For example, in what way can their ideas about politics proper, democracyand revolutions elucidate the uprisings in the Arab countries, Southern Europe and

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beyond that followed the financial crisis from 2008? Just a few general remarks are possible here. Firstly, it seems clear that political action of the revolutionary kind is notsomething planned in advance. At the start of a revolution, everything happens very

fast. For instance, hardly anyone could have foreseen the speed and efficiency withwhich the people of Tunisia and Egypt forced their leaders to resign from power in thespring of 2011. When large groups of people suddenly cease to fear for their own lives,as did the Tunisian vegetable seller Mohamed Bouazizi who set himself on fire in adesperate protest against the authoritiesthe beginning, if not the cause, of theTunisian revolutiontyranny loses much of its grip. With the withdrawal of popular consent, the institutions of explicit power immediately fail, leaving two paths possiblefor the tyrants: escalating violence or resignation. In this respect, there are parallels between the demise of the North African regimes and the very rapid crumbling of theEastern European block (notably the Berlin Wall and Ceausescus Romania). In On Revolution, Arendt asserts that people acting in concert represent a greater power than the force of violence and weapons (Arendt, 1990). This was indeed demonstrated by the relatively peaceful overthrow of the regime in Tunisia. Her accompanying claimthat brute force does not bring about any real societal change, has similarly been pro-ven true by several (or all) Western invasions, for example in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. However, even though there are similarities in various historical cases, therecan be no theory of revolutions as such. Revolutions and revolts are often expressionsof the unexpected will of a people: spontaneously enacted, and therefore effective. Atthe time of writing, there are major demonstrations in regions that have a long traditionof popular manifestations, such as Greece and Spain, and, most recently, in the USAwith occupation of the financial centre, Wall Street. New initiatives are born every day,inspired by the so-called Arab Spring of 2011, and there are worldwide campaigns of solidarity and protest (for example Indignad@s, Real Democracy NOW !; We Are The99% ). These initiatives have no appointed leaders and a rather thin agenda. Their indig-nation is aimed at political structures that favour finance capital over peoples work and welfare. 17 The question is, once again, whether these spontaneous protests can turninto organized form without losing their political momentum. There are also reasons tofear a political backlash, as economic and military forces are more than ready to fill the

power vacuums as they emerge.What seems certain is that it is counterproductive to criticize and doubt these move-

ments in their early stages, as they are in the process of creation and mainly driven byyoung (often well educated) people. As Castoriadis (1987) has argued, history is fullof forms that are other (not merely different) to those already in existence. As long asthere is politics, in the strong and explicit sense, new forms will emerge, even thoughthey can be hard to recognize at first. The open-endedness of the on-going revolts and the inadequacy of theory to guide analyses seem to point in favour of the perspectivesof Arendt and Castoriadis. At the time of writing, nobody knows whether these processes

of autonomy and action will result in something entirely new.18

If the people in revoltshould manage to name themselves and create new institutionsbeyond the significa-tions of corporate capitalismgreat efforts are required. Therefore, let us hope that thefounding moment will be kept open for an extended period of time to allow for reflec-tive discussion about what constitutes fair and just institutions. In other words, our hope




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is for a new constitution, in a wide sense of the term, which will not look too much likethe recipes of capitalist democracy that we already know too well.

Notes1. Their common interests and philosophical parallels have been noted by several scholars (see

Poizat, 2007; Ramsay, 2003; Whitebook, 1998; Zerilli, 2002).2. Castoriadis discusses their shared interests in a talk at an Arendt memorial symposium in 1982

(The Greek Polis and the Creation of Democracy in Castoriadis, 1991: 81123 and in abbre-viated form in Castoriadis 1997a: 26789).

3. The political is for Arendt synonymous to Castoriadiss politics. To prevent misunder-standings, I use the term the political field to designate what Castoriadis calls the political.A further benefit is to stay clear of Carl Schmitts notion of the political, which has a third meaning.

4. An appropriate question, which cannot be pursued here, is the influence of the early Heidegger that looms in the background of both thinkers. See Dana Villa (1996) on how Heidegger served as a (negative and positive) prerequisite for Arendts philosophy of political action.

5. In The Imaginary Institution of Society, Castoriadis set forth to create a philosophy of doing , but he never really carried through his intention (Arnason, 1991).

6. The distinctions are operative in Arendt (1989, 1990) and in the essay What is Freedom?(Arendt, 2006a).

7. The critique of the social, which Arendt set forth in On Revolution, was largely associated with the Jacobin terror following the French Revolution, but also the increasing bureaucrati-zation and technocratic regimes of the 1950s, where an important part was played by the socialsciences. In the French Revolution, a wave of mass slaughtering, censorship and distrust wasunleashed in the name of liberty, equality and faternity. Politics was destroyed for an allegedlyhigher purpose, thus freedom itself was sacrificed for the idea of freedom, that is, a theory(Arendt, 1990).

8. From her analyses in The Origins of Totalitarianism , Arendt was deeply concerned with theloss of a common world and individuality that characterized Nazism and Stalinism. This fear made a significant mark on her political thought (Canovan, 1994; Villa, 1996).

9. Arendt is a rather ambiguous democrat, at best. Her sources of inspiration such as Burckhardt, Nietzsche, Machiavelli, Heidegger and Homeric ideals attest to this. Another important sourceis the existentialist Karl Jaspers.

10. Castoriadis points out that the Greek term techn e had a double meaning that Aristotle knew, but did not clarify, as both mim esis, imitation, and poi esis, creation. Techn e and praxis would then meet in poi esis , and through this connection Plato and Aristotle could co-think work (astechn e) and action (as praxis ). But already with Plato, techn e was reduced to imitation(mim esis ), thus dividing work from politics (Castoriadis, 1984: 22959). This occultationcould be an important premise for Arendts reading of Aristotle in The Human Condition .

11. This does not mean that Arendt does not care for problems such as poverty; her point is thatthey should be dealt with in a different context, which would probably mean technocratically.

12. This paper was first published in Socialisme ou Barbarie , 196465.13. Where Arendt sees a covering of the agent, Castoriadis sees a covering of creation. The two

points are in essence the same: the covering of political creation.

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14. Castoriadis (1993). First edition in La Bre che, May 68 (1968, Paris: Fayard): a collection of essays together with Claude Lefort and Edgar Morin.

15. More precisely, in Marxism Arendt (1989) saw first a conflation of work and labour, and then

a further occultation of action.16. Arendt (1989) does not use the term individual in this connection, which for her denotes themass individual of the social sciences.

17. These movements have spread from Spain, starting in May 2011, when a square in Madrid wasoccupied for a whole month. Camps were then established in large and smaller cities and themovement spread to suburban areas and towns where coordinated assemblies wereestablished.

18. Castoriadis saw very little potential for autonomy in monotheistic and traditional societies of Eastern or Muslim origin. Autonomy is for him a Graeco-Western invention.

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About the author

Ingerid S. Straume is a philosopher of education based at the University of Oslo. The subject of her PhD thesis from 2010 is Castoriadiss thoughts on democracy and paideia . She has published articles on environmental politics, moral philosophy, political philosophy and education, and edi-ted the anthology Depoliticization: The Political Imaginary of Global Capitalism (with J.F. Hum- phrey, Aarhus University Press, 2011). Address: University of Oslo, University of Oslo Library,PO Box 1009 Blindern, 0315 Oslo, Norway [email: [email protected]]

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