The End of Democracy: Castoriadis and the Heteronomization Process

How can a democratic society forget its autonomy and fall back into heteronomy? This article adds to the existing literature on the end of democracy by critically examining what changes in the imaginary of a society such a transition entails. It does so by revisiting Cornelius Castoriadis’s social ontology and theory of radical democracy to create the concept of ‘heteronomization’. It then explores the ontological stakes and affective dimensions of the heteronomization process. The analysis reveals two tensions between autonomy and enjoyment on the one hand, and between autonomy and mastery on the other, which inscribe the risk of heteronomization at the heart of the project of autonomy. Understanding the process of heteronomization stresses the crucial role of affects in the transition from autonomy to heteronomy and highlights that, because of these two tensions, the democratic society always carries within itself the possibility of its reversal.