The Social Imaginary

Castoriadis's foundational concept: the web of shared significations, symbols, values and institutions through which a society creates and understands itself. It is not derivable from reason or nature but is posited ('instituted') by the society's own creative power. Castoriadis splits it into two registers — the radical imaginary (the instituting, creative source) and the instituted imaginary (its crystallised, taken-for-granted forms) — so the concept is at once dynamic creation and standing order. Architecture is one of the principal media through which a social imaginary is made into durable built fact.