Castoriadis and economic theory

Hello,

I just joined academia.edu and added Castoriadis as a sub-topic under philosophy. I'm pretty lonely there right now.

I wanted to turn people's attention to the political economic work of Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler (bnarchives.yorku.ca). They have made some use of Castoriadis in their new theory of capital.

There is now a discussion group based on their theory (http://www.yorku.ca/cmass/forum/index.php). I have posted two papers I wrote on Castoriadis. One is linking Castoriadis and Veblen in more deeply explicating how the pair relate to N&B's 'power theory of capital.' The other is using Castoriadis to critique a little discussed, but vital (and ridiculous) component of neoclassical economics, the representative agent.

I hope others who work with Castoriadis will consider the work of N&B as an alternative to Marx's labour theory of value and capital.

Thanks,
Troy Cochrane

Castoriadis and Derrida

I have been invited to write a chapter on Castoriadis and the imaginary for an anthology on postmodern thinking in pedagogy. This is of course a challenge, but an interesting one. First of all, I do not want to miss an opportunity to present Castoriadis' thought in my own part of the world (Norway), but more substantially, it is interesting to investigate in what sense he worked on the same issues as his postmodern contemporaries, though his approach and "answers" were quite different.

Right now I would like some advice on the following: Castoriadis taught at École des Hauted Études en Sciences Sociales from 1981 (starting there in 1980). Was Derrida already teaching there at that time? Did they acknowledge each other at all? In my view, they were concerned with many of the same questions, such as the relationship between language and meaning, ontology and more. If anyone wants to share some reflections on the (non-)relationship between the two, it would be most interesting.

Thanks!

Ingerid S.

Athens Symposium

The Nordic Summer University's Winter Symposium in Athens, March 27-29, has received several interesting abstracts that can be viewed here.

Videos on democracy and integration

Dominique Bouchet just released 5½ hours of video material about integration and democracy, inspired by Castoriadis, Morin, Lefort, and more. This material is available on the net and on 2 DVDs. See this webpage (language: Danish). Please feel free to pass this information to people who might be interested. Dominique Bouchet is also planning Spanish, French and English versions… Let’s see ..