Castoriadis in the Context of post-Socialist Eastern Europe It’s true that in Eastern Europe at the moment, people can’t think of anything else except a liberal capitalist society. Almost everything else has disappeared from the horizon. […] You can’t even pronounce a word which starts with ‘S’. – enough of it. Any word. This is the negative side of it.1 — Cornelius Castoriadis
This year marks the ninety-eight year since the birth of the philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis as well as twenty-three years from his death. This time represents a long period in which much has changed but somewhat his thought remains as relevant and as fresh as during those rebellious days and nights of May 1968 when the Parisian youth, influenced to a large extent by Castoriadis and his associates, challenged the dominant and bankrupt significations of that period, proposing instead a new and radical narrative rooted in one democratic tradition. But if drastic changes have taken place in the Western world, where Castoriadis lived and worked, such change has unfolded also, if not
1 Peter Osborne (editor): A Critical Sense: Interviews with Intellectuals (London: Routledge, 1996), pp18-19 18
