A society adrift : interviews and debates, 1974-1997 / Cornelius Castoriadis; edited by Enrique Escobar, Myrto Gondicas, and Pascal Vernay; translated by Helen Arnold.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Castoriadis, Cornelius, 1922-1997.

Contributor:

Escobar, Enrique.

Gondicas, Myrto.

Vernay, Pascal.

Standardized Title:

Société à la dérive. English

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Castoriadis, Cornelius, 1922-1997--Interviews.

Castoriadis, Cornelius.

Political science--Philosophy.

Political science.

Social sciences.

World politics--1985-1995.

World politics.

Economic history--1971-1990.

Economic history.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (275 p.)

Place of Publication:

New York : Fordham University Press, c2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This posthumous collection of interviews and occasional papers given by Castoriadis between 1974 and 1997 is a lively, direct introduction to the thinking of a writer who never abandoned his radically critical stance. It provides a clear, handy r sum of his political ideas, in advance of their times and profoundly relevant to today's world. For this political thinker and longtime militant (co-founder with Claude Lefort of the revolutionary group "Socialisme ou Barbarie"), economist, psychoanalyst, and philosopher, two endless interrogations--how to understand the world and life in society--were intertwined with his own life and combats. An important chapter discusses the history of "Socialisme ou Barbarie" (1949--1967); in it, Castoriadis presents the views he defended, in that group, on a number of subjects: a critique of Marxism and of the Soviet Union, the bureaucratization of society and of the workers' movement, and the primacy of individual and collective autonomy. Another chapter presents the concept, central to his thinking, of "imaginary significations" as what make a society "cohere." Castoriadis constantly returns to the question of democracy as the never-finished, deliberate creation by the people of societal institutions, analyzing its past and its future in the Western world. He scathingly criticizes "representative" democracy and develops a conception of direct democracy extending to all spheres of social life. He wonders about the chances of achieving freedom and autonomy--those requisites of true democracy--in a world of endless, meaningless accumulation of material goods, where the mechanisms for governing society have disintegrated, the relationship with nature is reduced to one of destructive domination, and, above all, the population has withdrawn from the public sphere: a world dominated by hobbies and lobbies--"a society adrift."

Contents:

Editors" note to the French edition

Ttranslator's postscriptum

Part I Itinerary

The Project of Autonomy Is Not a Utopia

Why I Am No Longer a Marxist

Imaginary Significations

Response to Richard Rorty

On Wars in Europe

Part II Interventions

On the Possibility of Creating a New Form of Society

What Political Parties Cannot Do

Present Issues for Democracy

These Are Bad Times

Do Vanguards Exist?

What Revolution Is

Neither a Historical Necessity nor Simply an "Ethical" Exigency: A Political and Human Exigency

When the East Swings to the West

The Market, Capitalism, and Democracy

"Democracy" without "Citizens" Participation

The Gulf War: Setting Things Straight

Gorbachev: Neither Reform nor Backtracking

On War, Religion, and Politics

Communism, Fascism, and Emancipation

Ecology against the Merchants

The Revolutionary Potency of Ecology

A Society adrift

On Political Judgment

Neither Resignation nor Archaism

A Rising Tide of Significancy? A Singular Trajectory

Chronology and Bio-Bibliography.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

0-8232-7514-0

0-8232-3095-3

1-4416-3737-0

OCLC:

592756203