Suzi Adams
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780823234585
- eISBN:
- 9780823240739
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823234585.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
The following two chapters address the creative imagination in its two, mutually irreducible poles: the radical imagination of the psyche and the radical imaginary of the social-historical, ...
More
The following two chapters address the creative imagination in its two, mutually irreducible poles: the radical imagination of the psyche and the radical imaginary of the social-historical, respectively. This chapter focuses on the radical imagination of the psyche. Castoriadis elaborates the radical imagination as the basis of an anthropology of subjectivity, leaning on—and reconstructing—Freudian psychoanalysis in the process. In elucidating the psyche, Castoriadis uncovers the psychic monad as a deeper, more primordial layer than Freudian unconscious. The radical imagination appears as the psychic flux of representations; the representations are elaborated as creations ex nihilo, which in turn presume the psyche to be defunctionalized. The psyche encapsulates Castoriadis's understanding of human modes of being as magma; indeed it was originally in relation to the psyche that he first used the term. Representations form (proto)meaning, which, through the process of social-sublimation encounter the other dimension of meaning: social imaginary significations.Less
The following two chapters address the creative imagination in its two, mutually irreducible poles: the radical imagination of the psyche and the radical imaginary of the social-historical, respectively. This chapter focuses on the radical imagination of the psyche. Castoriadis elaborates the radical imagination as the basis of an anthropology of subjectivity, leaning on—and reconstructing—Freudian psychoanalysis in the process. In elucidating the psyche, Castoriadis uncovers the psychic monad as a deeper, more primordial layer than Freudian unconscious. The radical imagination appears as the psychic flux of representations; the representations are elaborated as creations ex nihilo, which in turn presume the psyche to be defunctionalized. The psyche encapsulates Castoriadis's understanding of human modes of being as magma; indeed it was originally in relation to the psyche that he first used the term. Representations form (proto)meaning, which, through the process of social-sublimation encounter the other dimension of meaning: social imaginary significations.
