Cornelius Castoriadis: The Imaginary Institution of Society (1975/1987)

This is one of the most original and important works of contemporary European thought. First published in France in 1975, it is the major theoretical work of one of the foremost thinkers in Europe.

Castoriadis offers a brilliant and far-reaching analysis of the unique character of the social-historical world and its relations to the individual, to language and to nature. He argues that the most traditional conceptions of society and history overlook the essential feature of the social-historical world, namely that this world is not articulated once and for all but is in each case the creation of the society concerned. In emphasizing the element of creativity, Castoriadis opens the way for rethinking political theory and practice in terms of the autonomous and explicit self-institution of society.

Castoriadis’ wide-ranging discussion deals with many issues which are currently topical in the English-speaking world: the critique of Marxism; the creative and imaginary character of language; the relations between action and social institutions; the nature of the unconscious and the reappraisal of psychoanalysis; and the role of symbolism on both the individual and the social levels. This book will be of great interest to anyone concerned with social and political theory and contemporary European thought.

First published as L’institution imaginaire de la société, by Les Editions du Seuil.
This English translation first published 1987 by Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
Translated by Kathleen Blamey
Publisher Polity Press, May 1997
Reprinted 2005
ISBN: 9780745619507, 0745619509
448 pages

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Raymond G. Stokes: Constructing Socialism: Technology and Change in East Germany, 1945-1990 (2000)

With a cloud of blue smoke and a high-pitched whine, Trabant cars carried many East Germans westward after the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989. The car’s 1950s design, obvious environmental incorrectness, and all-plastic body became a symbol of the technological limitations of East German communism. Though unfair and oversimplified, the famous image from the early 1990s of the rear of a Trabi protruding from a dumpster seemed to imply that the car, like the system which had produced it, had been consigned to the dustbin of history.

But as Raymond G. Stokes points out in Constructing Socialism, eastern Germany in 1945 was one of the most highly developed, technologically sophisticated industrial areas in the world. Despite the evident failings of its technology by the late 1980s, the German Democratic Republic maintained advanced technological capability in selected areas. If the system itself was fundamentally flawed, what explains successes under the very same system? Why could the successes not be repeated in other areas? And if examples of success are so isolated, how did East Germany last as long as it did?

To answer these questions, Constructing Socialism examines the system of innovation that delivered some minimal level of technological excellence into the East German economy and industry. Focusing on success rather than failure, Stokes offers a general history of East German technology between 1945 and 1990. He combines an overview and synthesis of emerging scholarly literature with an examination of newly opened archival material in order to explore issues that include automation, standardization, technology transfer and technological tourism, and espionage.Constructing Socialism investigates specific technologies and machines but also emphasizes the people who designed and implemented them and the cultural context and meanings of technological systems.

Publisher Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000
Johns Hopkins studies in the history of technology
ISBN 0801863910, 9780801863912
260 pages

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Félix Guattari, Antonio Negri: New Lines of Alliance, New Spaces of Liberty (1985/2010)

“The project: to rescue ‘communism’ from its own disrepute. Once invoked as the liberation of work through mankind’s collective creation, communism has instead stifled humanity. We who see in communism the liberation of both collective and individual possibilities must reverse that regimentation of thought and desire which terminates the individual….”

Thus begins the extraordinary collaboration between Félix Guattari and Antonio Negri, written at dawn of the 1980s, in the wake of the crushing of the autonomous movements of the previous decade. Setting out Guattari and Negri diagnose with incisive prescience transformations of the global economy and theorize new forms of alliance and organization: mutant machines of subjectivation and social movement.

Prefiguring his collaboration with Michael Hardt, Negri and Guattari enact a singular hybridization of political and philosophical traditions, brining together psychiatry, political analysis, semiotics, aesthetics, and philosophy. Against the workings of an increasingly integrated world capitalism, they raise the banners of singularity, autonomy, and freedom to search out new routes for subversion.

This newly expanded edition includes previously untranslated materials and a new introduction by Matteo Mandarini.

Main text originally published in French in 1985 as Les nouveaux espaces de liberté. First English edition, 1990, published under the title Communists Like Us.
Translated by Michael Ryan, Jared Becker, Arianna Bove, and Noe Le Blanc
Edited by Stevphen Shukaitis
Publisher: Minor Compositions, London / New York in conjunction with Autonomedia and MayFlyBooks
ISBN 978-1-57027-224-0
144 pages

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