Qi Chuang and Zhao Hu: Overcoming the Dilemma of Social "Institution": A Critical Reading of Castoriadis
Cornelius Castoriadis was a Greek-French thinker imbued with intense revolutionary passion, once referred to by Axel Honneth as the "last Western Marxist." Proceeding from the dimension of Marxist praxis, he resisted theoretical dogma and sought an autonomous project of liberation. The thread of Castoriadis’s thought is not a philosophical reflection running purely from theory to theory; rather, it uses praxis to open the door to the deconstruction and construction of theory, ultimately hoping to pass through this door to return to the realistic vision of "changing the world." The entirety of his theoretical development can be governed by the concept of "institution" (建制, jianzhi).
I. The Logic of the Emergence of "Institution"
The concept of "institution" holds a central position in Castoriadis's theory. In his view, only by profoundly scrutinizing social institutions and elucidating their imaginary characteristics can people truly engage in continuous and effective praxis, thereby critiquing solidified social beliefs and ultimately proposing brand-new "figures of the thinkable." In a general sense, the term "institution" refers to systems or organizations in the Chinese context, and most domestic [1] academic understandings of Castoriadis’s concept follow this meaning. However, I believe that translating it as jianzhi (建制) better highlights its original intent. The reason is that jianzhi emphasizes a dynamic, sustainable process of construction, showing agency and temporality; whereas zhidu (制度, "system" or "institution" in the conventional sense) reflects more of an established, passively executed result, showing passivity and solidification. The French sociological tradition and Marx’s theory of alienation are important intellectual resources and points of dialogue for Castoriadis’s turn toward the study of institutions.
The core foundation and original contribution of Émile Durkheim’s sociological theory are embodied in the concept of "institution," which was also a major theme of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's late philosophical reflections. In The Rules of Sociological Method, Durkheim first defined "social facts." He pointed out that not all social phenomena can be subsumed under "social facts," otherwise sociology would have no object of study; social facts are actually "a category of facts which present very special characteristics: they consist of manners of acting, thinking, and feeling external to the individual, which are invested with a coercive power by virtue of which they exercise control over him." Durkheim referred to these various forms—which do not depend on human will but simultaneously constrain human thought and behavior—as "institutions": "One can, indeed, without distorting the meaning of this expression, designate as 'institutions' all the beliefs and all the modes of conduct instituted by the collectivity. Sociology can then be defined as the science of institutions, of their genesis and of their functioning." For Durkheim, using "social" as an attribute fundamentally highlights the universality and coerciveness of the institution. Castoriadis, however, transformed this attribute into "imaginary," emphasizing the illusory and mutable nature of institutions—much like the slogan of the May 1968 movement: "All power to the imagination." It is also in this sense (i.e., that institutions created by humans eventually come to control humans) that Castoriadis turned his gaze toward Marx’s theory of alienation.
Castoriadis argued: "The institution is a socially sanctioned symbolic network in which a functional component and an imaginary component are combined in variable proportions. Alienation occurs when the imaginary element in the institution becomes autonomous and plays a dominant role, leading to the institution's autonomous and dominant position relative to society." This process of institutional autonomization manifests in social life as an intense "material force" in the Marxian sense, thereby "turning the guest into the host" [2] and making society unaware that the institution is merely its own product. Marx undoubtedly recognized this. When he elucidated commodity fetishism and its importance to the operation of the capitalist economy, he had clearly transcended a purely economic perspective to reveal the alienating consequences of imaginary institutions. In specifically exposing how Germany suffered not only from the development of capitalist production but also from its lack of development, Marx further pointed out: "Alongside of modern evils, a whole series of inherited evils oppress us, arising from the survival of antiquated modes of production, with their inevitable train of social and political anachronisms. We suffer not only from the living, but from the dead. Le mort saisit le vif! [The dead seize the living!]" From this perspective, Georg Lukács’s "reified consciousness," Antonio Gramsci’s "cultural hegemony," Theodor Adorno’s logic of "identity," and Henri Lefebvre’s "mystified consciousness" all became specific alienated institutions within the capitalist context. At the same time, the solutions they respectively proposed—proletarian consciousness, the war of position, negative dialectics, and the critique of everyday life—are essentially various possibilities for renewing past institutions from an imaginary dimension in the Castoriadian sense. As Hans Joas pointed out, Castoriadis did not cast aside Marx’s thought; his theory of institutions directly confronts the concept of alienation. However, "what is decisive for the problem of alienation is not the nature of institutions as such, but the relation of a society to its institutions." Joas not only grasped the practical intent behind institutional phenomena from a holistic perspective of internal relations—namely, seeking to establish a new type of relationship between society and institutions—but also viewed Castoriadis as an "anti-structuralist" because of this. In short, what Castoriadis wanted to achieve was the continuous reshaping of all existing human institutions. Institutions are not determined once and for all; they always exist as the present and need to be constantly scrutinized. Based on this, Castoriadis followed psychoanalytic theory, entered into dialogue with Marx’s thought, inherited the French sociological tradition, and constructed a unique theoretical logic regarding the concept of institution.
II. Signification, Meaning, and Language
In Castoriadis’s view, "institutions" are actually formed by the condensation of "social imaginary significations." In The Imaginary Institution of Society, Castoriadis views signification as "an indefinite mass of infinite pointings toward an 'other'." The emphasis here is on the terms "indefinite" and "infinite," as they indicate the continuous flow of meaning. In fact, both "signification" (意指, yizhi) and "meaning" (意义, yiyi) denote a symbolic function, and are sometimes even interchangeable. However, signification is closer to the ontological level of meaning than meaning itself. If "meaning" is a specific sense, then "signification" is meaning as such, or meaning in general. Meaning is a static thing that temporarily stops at a certain "suture point" [3], while signification is always in that state of "not-yet" described by Ernst Bloch—that is, always in a state prior to "suturing," yet capable of being sutured at any moment. From Jacques Lacan’s perspective, it conforms more to the qualities of a "floating signifier." Literally speaking, one can directly see signification as the "pointing toward meaning"; it is a state in the process of happening. We focus on the present moment, but this moment immediately becomes another moment. The flow of signification can be perceived through the four-way flow of time. Therefore, contrary to structuralist principles, signification does not provide a series of fixed relations, but rather gushes forth a "magma" that carries neither obvious elements nor clear limits. It constitutes the key term with which Castoriadis opposes holism with an open totality.
The reason Castoriadis introduced the concept of signification into theoretical analysis was fundamentally a return to revolutionary Marxism and a rebuttal of dogmatic Marxism. Signification functions to combine imaginary representation with social institutions, thereby helping Castoriadis complete the following transition: moving from the perspective of political economy and sociological analysis within the general framework of Marxism to interpreting the rational construction of society through psychoanalysis. This allows the representational process of the subject’s psyche to manifest at the social level in the form of significations, leading toward "Post-Marxism." In Castoriadis’s view, "History is the domain in which meanings 'emerge' and things become meaningful. However, these meanings can never be exhausted or closed in on themselves; every meaning points elsewhere, and no thing or particular historical fact can convey a meaning based entirely on itself. No unique thing can give rise to a decipherable meaning apart from the social context that produced it, nor can it impose a single and inevitable meaning on human activity." This interpretation and affirmation of indeterminacy is rooted in classical discourse analysis theory, while simultaneously proposing a decentralized view through the concept of signification.
Signification possesses two inseparable functions: finitude and infinitude. The dialectical relationship between the two allows signification to encompass all things within its own horizon in a commensurable way, enabling them to be grasped and developed within the same dimension. Finitude and infinitude can also be understood as concreteness and abstractness: reality is presented in the concrete, and essence is reflected in the abstract; their mutual transformation is precisely the operational mechanism of signification in society. Similar to how Marx explained the commensurability of value (i.e., using abstract labor as a medium to homogenize all commodities), signification completes this process primarily through language.
Castoriadis pointed out that the process by which society presents and organizes the world is actually a process of "speaking" (legein), namely: "distinguishing-choosing-positing-assembling-counting-speaking." Language, as a system or relationship of aggregation, refers to "speaking" (speech) on the one hand, and points toward the "magma" of signification on the other. These two aspects correspond to finitude and infinitude. "The aggregation of the world by society through institutions is not simply accomplished by language as a code, as 'legein'—that is, as an instrument acting on things external to it. On the contrary, it is embodied and realized in language itself; it is presented in 'legein' as the product of a self-mechanism. Only through such aggregation can language become a code." That is to say, language itself reflects the process of social aggregation; as a self-mechanism, it reflects the self-construction of the human world. This is highly consistent with Martin Heidegger’s late understanding of logos. According to Heidegger’s research, "logos" evolved from "legein." Aristotle defined man as a speaking animal, which is the most basic and important definition of man, because truth must be expressed through "legein." "Legein" first took over the function of revealing truth. "Human existence is simultaneously the activity of revealing truth, namely the activity of unconcealment, and unconcealment is achieved through language. The way language reveals truth is first and foremost the 'logos' of things." This basically reflects Heidegger’s early perspective on the interpretation of logos, but in his later period, he no longer emphasized the "synthetic" and unconcealing power of logos, instead viewing logos as the power of "gathering" or "collecting." "Since his early thought, 'Being' has referred to the presence of the present in the sense of a clearing-concealing gathering, and logos was thought and named as this gathering." This process of bringing Being from "manifestation" to "concealment" is also the process of transition from the natural world to human society; the former clears Being by way of unconcealment, while the latter aggregates Being by way of concealment. Castoriadis believed that this aggregation is precisely the signification function exerted by "legein" itself from the dimension of language.
Thus, Castoriadis not only opposes the view that the signified can only present a dimensional meaning through the "real," but he also rejects the deterministic structuralist framework presented in the relationship between a series of signifieds. Language as a code cannot bestow signifying content upon itself, nor can objects exist outside of symbolic relations. Contrary to the telos of meaning, the object can neither be fully determined by nor be thoroughly identical to its reference; this is the very manifestation of signification. The object is not instituted as a universal form capable of fully grasping that which it references. On the contrary, compared to its reference, it appears as "something less," or as a simple point de repérage (point of reference), so as to function appropriately within its use. Yet, precisely because of this looseness, it is also able to indicate "something more" beyond its reference, or to indicate that which cannot be directly spoken and the intended object. Castoriadis explains signification from the perspective of language:
In a fundamental sense, language always offers the possibility of treating the meaning it conveys as a whole, comprised of terms that are certain, strictly delimited, identical to themselves and different from others, separable, and independent. Just as importantly, it always offers the possibility for new terms to emerge and for the relationships between existing terms to be redefined, thereby allowing these existing terms to be redefined without departing from their relationships. Conversely, the realization of this possibility depends on the fact that the relationships between many previously established terms are inexhaustible, and these terms themselves are indeterminate. At any moment, the emergence of a new signification cannot be represented as an external addition that leaves what already existed intact and complete. Signification is not a set, except for any set that can be extracted or constructed from it; their mode of being resides in another dimension: the magma.
Therefore, the magma of signification contained in language presupposes a plasticity—the drive to see more in a thing than the thing itself. This is a capacity to mold new representations, or the possibility of molding new links between inexhaustible representations. Castoriadis notes: "Every signification in language is analogous to a phantom of the soul, referring back to an infinite number of other significations or other phantoms. Here, this referential structure is fundamental; it finds effective expression in the soul and within the field of psychoanalysis, though this is a process of free association." From the perspective of discourse analysis, language establishes a discourse, much like Jacques Derrida's claim that "there is nothing outside the text." Everything must be analyzed within the relational existence of discourse, just as everything must be analyzed within the referentiality of signification. As a direct expression of a universal human characteristic, linguistic capacity makes infinite creation possible.
Ralf Obernau [4] argues: "The term 'discourse' refers not only to language and speech structures in the narrow sense, but also to the total structure of representational and affective references that constitute the socialized world of the soul." Thus, Castoriadis's "linguistic" turn was not merely due to the semiotics and structural linguistics popular in France at the time, but—as Merleau-Ponty pointed out—because language provides an opportunity to completely transcend the classical dichotomy between subject and object, thereby providing a path for thinking through the problem-field of social institution. Insofar as the most important aspect of "institution" for Castoriadis is its capacity to produce signification, language can establish a priority relationship with it. This possibility of indicating signification through language brings us to a critical zone: signification exists as the hinge of the social-historical [5] and its theory, enabling the former to look back upon itself through the reflection of the latter. Thereby, signification provides a common foundation upon which society, social theory, and reflection on theory itself can achieve multiple levels of communication. It is in this sense that Castoriadis believes "language does not enslave me; it liberates me."
Although Castoriadis's analysis of linguistic signification is similar to the correspondence between signifier and signified in linguistics or discourse analysis, he demonstrates at a deeper level why the signified perpetually slides beneath the signifier—that reason is the imagination. Therefore, if language provides us with the material of reality, the imagination manifests as its indeterminate category. Our analysis of material is for the sake of stipulating the form of categories. Kevin Olson [6] concludes: "Castoriadis carefully shows that the imagination must be seen as intertwined with the symbolic. Because the imagination is a non-linguistic mode of thought, while the symbolic is its linguistic counterpart. The imagination alone does not possess the capacity for articulation, and it lacks an intersubjective dimension. Language, however, provides a solution for this. Thus, in any given society, these two modes together produce a shared field of meaning—a field that links words with the imagination." Consequently, by virtue of the openness and creative dimension manifested by the imagination through language, Castoriadis helps us break the slavery of fixed meaning.
III. The Essence of Institution: Social Imaginary Significations
Despite the importance of language at the level of the occurrence and manifestation of signification, linguistics cannot replace the analysis of signification. Ultimately, language is the result and application of signification; to fundamentally understand the construction of society itself, one must understand the "signifying power" hidden behind it. Thus, while a "linguistic" turn appeared in Castoriadis's philosophical reflections, it does not mean that linguistic analysis became the final goal, nor can signification be reduced to language. Olson objectively points out: "Castoriadis offers a flexible and non-dogmatic reading of the roots of our collective beliefs. He cautiously maps the continuous lines between the shared forms of thought, intuition, and praxis, emphasizing their common figurative, linguistic, and material characteristics. In this sense, he does not uphold an idea derived solely from words or solely from praxis. Instead, his view integrates words, imagination, and praxis, ultimately providing a rational explanation for all complex forms of thought." When we perceive the cohesive force of signification and the many meanings it evolves from language, we have in fact entered the level of social imaginary significations. Signification both depends on reality and transcends it; it both relies on logic and transcends it. Intuitively, we think that social discourse, historical laws, symbolic signifiers, linguistic rules, and economic structures are at work, but ultimately it is human imagination that makes them so. Regarding this, Suzi Adams [7] points out: "Castoriadis's view is that the role of meaning in social life is incomprehensible unless the imagination is fully exercised." Therefore, in Castoriadis's view, all forms of social-historical existence are the results of the social imaginary, and the historicity, temporality, and uncertainty of these results highlight the role of signification. Conversely, the expansionist tendency of signification is precisely what the imagination promotes. Thus, social imaginary significations can explain the existence and development of society from a more universal perspective, rather than forcibly constructing a social plane in a linear fashion purely from the perspectives of economics, history, and anthropology.
Feuerbach once revolutionary pointed out that it is not God who created man, but man who created God. Castoriadis specifically analyzes how man created God: through social imaginary significations, which are transmitted by an institutional body such as the church. From this perspective, all social existences—politics, economy, culture—are the same. Marx began from abstract labor to commensurately analyze the sphere of economic production; Castoriadis begins from the social imaginary to commensurately analyze the whole of society. As Johann Arnason [8] said: "Introducing imaginary significations into the social-historical world is to raise questions and express views from a broader ontological or even cosmological level of analysis." Social imaginary significations lay down various representational supports in the broadest form; they are both the creation of significations and the creation of images that support these significations. Castoriadis believes that the society we live in presents a totality of institutions; the reason these institutions can coalesce is that they always present a magma of social imaginary significations.
This magma gushes forth and flows freely in a gelatinous, scorching state; its all-pervading posture eventually solidifies into all the institutions of society, and what these institutions constitute is society itself. Thus, it is precisely the social-historical institution that allows the social imaginary to be presented and made possible:
Every aspect of social institution is nothing more than the institution of the magma of social imaginary significations, which we can and must call a world of significations. This is equivalent to saying that society institutes the world as its world, or institutes its world as the world; it is also equivalent to saying that it institutes a world of significations, or that it institutes itself in the process of instituting a world of significations. In this regard, a world can and does exist solely for it. In the pre-social state of nature, the occurrence of a radical rupture—the emergence of representation as a social-historical alternative form—is to propose representation or a world of representation. Society makes a world of representation possible, and it exists closely centered around such a world. Hence, nothing exists for society if it is not related to that world of representation; anything that appears is something that can be directly grasped by this world—and only by being grasped by this world can it appear. The existence of society lies in taking signification as its universal and total requirement, and in presenting a world of significations as the satisfaction of this requirement.
Identifying society with the world is not a mere application of terms, nor is it an expansion of society or a contraction of the world; rather, it equates society with the world through social imaginary significations. From this perspective, what we possess is a social world or a world-like society. It explains how the society or the human world is formed and situates this mode of formation within social imaginary significations. Although social imaginary significations explain this generativity in essence, when entering a specific society, we are faced with various types of institutions.
Castoriadis endows "institution" (建制 jiànzhì) [9] with rich connotations. In his view, the social-historical projects many social imaginary significations and the relationships between these "figures" (指象 zhǐxiàng), as well as the relationship between the social-historical itself and these figures; this figure is the institution. It is what coalesces society into a whole, and can also be understood as the total composite of all specific institutions within society. Castoriadis calls this "the institution of society as a whole." In the broadest sense, institution encompasses "norms, values, language, tools, and the procedures and methods for handling and transforming things," including all social matters, whether at the level of hardware or software. Rather, institution is a product closely related to the social whole and every aspect within it, constituting the sum total of all social relations of man as a species.
For Castoriadis, institution, in its most primal and fundamental sense, is an irreducible mode of being—creation: a mode of social being that is both within the institution and is the completed institution itself. In other words, institution is presupposed in everything and in every object of our concern, but it must be that specific kind of institution that makes "instituting" possible. This statement is undoubtedly a circular expression, yet what it emphasizes is precisely the irreducible character of institution—that it is a creation ex nihilo [10]. It is its own cause as well as its own result. To some extent, this parallels "Being and Event" in the sense of Alain Badiou. We always look back for causes after an event has occurred, attempting to reconstruct the "brewing" process prior to the event's formation based on chronological order; yet logically speaking, it is precisely after the event occurs that we conclude the corresponding causes. From this perspective, who is truly the cause and who is the result? Castoriadis’s view, however, is even more radical: the occurrence of any institution in a true sense is a process from nothing to something. This "something" is not a reorganization of matter [11], but an innovation of form. Although "nothing" represents an abyss [12], it can be understood as the radical imaginary, because it is imagination that allows this process of creation ex nihilo to happen—or rather, it is through imagination that we can witness "being." Imagination thus becomes the source of institution and exhibits an unprecedented sanctity. It is the "Creator" of Castoriadis’s conceptual system.
If society is viewed as an established totality, then institution becomes the concrete link connecting the imaginary to society. In other words, the objectified result of the imaginary is the institution. Castoriadis once remarked: "When we discuss the state, we are also discussing an institution activated by imaginary significations." Here, "activated," while not as teleologically explicit as "objectified," highlights a process of dynamic activity. The imaginary does not lie in reifying the human, but in humanizing the thing—that is, making the institution operate according to the meaning endowed upon it. From this perspective, although the imagination, significations, and institutions we have discussed may seem abstract and floating above reality, they are in fact of a highly materialistic nature. Castoriadis consistently emphasized the material character of social imaginary significations, which encompass both material objects in daily practice and the linguistic symbols that endow them with social meaning. We are not only endowing meaning upon the objects and practices within shared institutions; conversely, the objects and practices within the institution condense the meanings they present for our reflection. Therefore, the social imaginary is inherently material, and the material world is generated by the collective action of the imaginary. Castoriadis’s theory of the imaginary fundamentally follows a Marxist materialist perspective, except that he expands that materiality from the perspective of production and needs to the level of society as a whole. Of course, this does not represent a "pan-materialism," but refers to an objective vitality [13] that plays a significant role in our social interactions. Thus, we can also understand institution as the most important aggregation where materiality and the imaginary meet in the sense of constituting a collective.
Castoriadis describes the values shared by the collective and its members as our collectively imagined institutions, and views society as an essential instance of this total institution. "In this sense, the institution becomes an important part of the social and material characteristics of our collective imaginary. The institution links the social aspects of the imaginary with its material aspects and brings people together in symbolic networks of communication. These networks, to a certain extent, exert great efficacy toward the goals people seek, while also largely becoming expressions of the shared imaginary of society. People establish communication networks in a certain form, a form shaped by a shared vision of an existing society—a widely accepted imaginary." A certain function of society cannot alone determine the operational form it will take. To add vitality to this creation and allow it to enter the life of a specific society, the actors within that society must allow the richness of significations to exert a corresponding practical effect. This, in turn, explains the irreducibility and self-causality of the institution and reflects that no institution can be immutable; it is always in a state of self-alteration. However, in the absence of activation by the imaginary, the institution itself maintains an inert, stable structure, manifesting the characteristics of the "instituted" (le constitué) and the "instituting" (l'instituant).
IV. The Instituted and Instituting Characteristics of Institutions
From the perspective of institution, the generation and alteration of the "social-historical" is a result of the imaginary. The reason this self-alteration is possible is that society does not reduce itself to fixed institutions but constantly transcends them. In other words, society as something instituted always depends on its instituting capacity, which places society in a state of permanent self-transformation. Therefore, if Marx to some extent explained the direction of social development, Castoriadis emphasizes social development itself. Although this does not seem to establish a clear goal as the former did, it stimulates more possibilities from the perspective of revolution. Perhaps we can say it this way: rather than explaining the rationality of revolution through a future necessity, it is better to explain the rationality of the future starting from the revolution itself. Because the radical imaginary can both continuously create new institutions and must continuously break old ones, this creation itself implies destruction, and destruction represents revolution. Thus, social existence completely jumps out of the level of determinism: in its fundamental temporality and historicity, it is not determined, but rather constantly impacts other determining factors. Castoriadis points out that society does not "contain" a system of interpretation for the world; on the contrary, "each society is itself a system of interpreting the world." While society creates its own world, it is also a product of that world. As mentioned earlier: "Society institutes the world as its world, or institutes its world as the world."
In fact, the dynamic dimension of institution's existence is the "magma" state possessed by social imaginary significations. Based on this continuous generativity, Andrew Edgar and Peter Sedgwick further point out: "The magma of social imaginary significations contains not only these already presented institutions but also a ‘surplus,’ and such a surplus can be reduced neither to consciousness nor to functionality in a natural or biological sense." From an ontological perspective and within Castoriadis’s context, Edgar and Sedgwick’s assertion indicates that every mode of social existence creates a world belonging to itself according to its own pattern. Therefore, this surplus, on the one hand, reflects the infinite potential and huge energy of imaginary significations, and on the other hand, explains that it will inevitably undergo a transition from "void" to "presence," as the search for meaning will continuously drive these surpluses forward. Edgar and Sedgwick further distinguish between the individual and the collective regarding this surplus: "At the individual level, it is the radical imaginary of the psyche; at the collective level, it is the instituting imaginary of society." The psyche is a naturally growing, continuously flowing signifiable existence, while society will forcefully limit the flow of the psyche through socialization within the scope of foreseeable imaginary significations and standards. Here, the conflict between the psyche and society is manifested. However, the surplus of social imaginary significations will not become an immutable institution at the collective level, because the surplus of the radical imaginary does not vanish due to the socialization of individuals. Castoriadis appeals to the creative dimension of the conflict between the psyche and society; this creativity ensures that social individuals are no longer confined to a state of repression but will also generate a new self through "self-revolution." This dimension becomes the basis for his practical reflection, combining social development with psychoanalysis.
The social-historical manifests as a form of temporality due to the creation of the imaginary; this is primarily reflected in the temporary fixation and condensation of social imaginary significations, as well as in the process of human creation, transformation, and Aufhebung [14] of institutions. Therefore, temporality can also be viewed as an "instituting-ness" that is always in the process of being instituted. This state of existence reflects the general development of society, or can be understood as an "ideal type" of society, because the radical imaginary is preserved throughout, causing social changes to proceed spontaneously and continuously. However, when we focus our gaze on a specific historical period or reflect on our actual society, this is often not the case. Although an institution is always its own creation, once created, it often manifests as a given, "classical" paradigm—such as the discipline left behind by ancestors or gods, or objective knowledge evolved in the name of reason and historical laws—thereby becoming solidified, rigid, or even fetishized [15]. That is to say, although the institution is objectified into a natural dimension, it does not manifest in its authentic normative dimension. It denies and rejects temporality, attempting to disguise itself as permanence. This precisely reflects the "instituted" characteristic of the institution: that the institution has become a frozen, solidified thing. John Thompson argues that "social imaginary significations must escape self-enclosed systems; they contain a magma of significations and thus cannot be organized by a totality constructed through logic"; however, "when we examine the core imaginary significations of a society, we cannot think of them through their mutually referential relationships, because it is precisely in their 'referring' to one another that their relationship becomes possible." Thompson presents a paradoxical view here: social imaginary significations possess a "magma" dimension, yet they can also be self-centered, thereby extinguishing the passion of the magma.
Does this mean, then, that there is an internal contradiction in the theory of the self-altering social institution? Certainly not, because "instituting-ness" possesses a more essential dimension than "instituted-ness." The failure of past thought lay in its "failure to grasp the instituted characteristic of society. But this is only one aspect, for behind this instituted characteristic lies precisely the historical instituting characteristic. If Castoriadis speaks of the 'social-historical,' he is emphasizing the indivisibility of synchrony and diachrony, of the instituted and the instituting. The problem with past thought was: how can society be seen as a determinate whole whose internal structure and mode of existence are in a state of continuous flux? The problem further becomes how to understand stability within change—that is, how to grasp the cohesion of society within the disorder of time." As the real carrier of significations and their relationships, institution thus becomes the presupposed premise of the social-historical. The emergence of the "instituting" does not depend on, nor can it be explained by, a holist logic. Therefore, the institution can neither be viewed as a logical relationship—because it consists of "things" presented in a disordered manner—nor as a "real" relationship, because it is a signifying postulate. At the same time, it is neither a necessary nor a contingent relationship in any determinate sense, nor can it be reduced to any "rationality." If one must explain this irreducibility and essential characteristic of the institution, one must conversely recognize it as "instituting"—that is, the creation ex nihilo of the radical imaginary.
Overall, the instituted and instituting characteristics of institutions not only demonstrate the necessity of change reflected in this dialectic but also affirm the revolutionary nature at the social-historical level through participation in this necessity.
(About the Authors: Qi Chuang, School of Philosophy, Renmin University of China; Zhao Hu, School of Marxism, Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture) Online Editor: Tong Xin Source: Foreign Theoretical Trends (Guowai Lilun Dongtai), 2024, No. 2