autonomy and 'pseudo' rational mastery
castoriadis elucidates modernity as the dual institution of autonomy and the infinite pursuit of rational mastery. for him, these imaginary signfications are not just different (or other!) but polar. yet is there not an overlap of the autonomist imaginary in that of rational mastery?
posted by suzi @ 4:23 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Definitely. But what are polar concepts? In my academic field, pedagogy, polar concepts means concepts that gain their meaning from each other, that is, you cannot leave out one side of the polarity without the other losing its central meaning. For instance, freedom and authority are considered to be polar concepts. Some think that polarity is an analytically weak term, poor thinking. Its' implication is that two phenomena are opposite and dependent on each other, but just how are they related? The notion of polarity does not seem to grasp this.
Another option is dialectics. I have often asked myself whether one could use this term for CC's concepts, for instance the individual and society. Aren't these cast in dialectic terms in Castoriadis's thought? I have never seen him use it. Do you think he used the term polarity instead for dialectics to avoid the Hegelian ring? (Or: chime).
Do you have a quote where he uses the term polarity; maybe we could investigate it together?
When searching blogger for Castoriadis-hits (which seem to be booming; too many to mention here), I found the page linked below, stating the simple point that Castoriadis's political concept of autonomy would render 'heteronomous' a tribe of Indians in the Amazonas who live by the laws of the ancestors, whereas many other thinkers would use the concept autonomy for such a community. This once more poses the question: What's so great about autonomy? In this case, it seems that heteronomy is preferable yet untenable in the face of the colonizing imagery of rational mastery (and 'autonomy')?
http://groupededecroisseursberrichons.hautetfort.com/archive/2006/09/02/autonomie.html
The question concerning the Amazon tribe was: Does Castoriadis's theoretical framework provide any arguments against intruding on this tribe with our autonomous ways of thinking?
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