Heteronomy and autonomy

 By Electre Mauche

Heteronomy and autonomy constitute two key concepts in our understanding of contemporary capitalist societies. These concepts have been isolated and developed by Cornelius Castoriadis throughout his work, under the influence of both Marxism and psychoanalysis. 

Heteronomy and autonomy lie on the same characterization of human societies as self institutionalized objects. What Castoriadis calls the self-institution of the society refers to the idea that far from constituting an already given, essentialist order, social and political institutions are the result of an institutionalizing, constructivist process, where the values and the norms they promote constitute and generate imagined narratives, created imaginaries. These instituted imaginaries become the underlying narratives of our whole societies on the collective level - as social and political structures -, as well as on the individual level of the social individuals who constitute a society. 

Yet, this process of institution of the society, as far as it gets forgotten by the social individuals who were born in its already existing structures, tends to become heteronomous. The self-instituted imaginaries of the societies autonomize themselves from this constructivist process, so that they get perceived as unchallenged truths. Thus, the heteronomous individual is the individual who lives in and obeys to a society whom he does not challenge the norms. 

Among these institutionalized heteronomous imaginaries, the neoliberal one constitutes the prominent imaginary of our societies. Hand to hand with this imaginary, technical progress and technology belong to the less challenged and less democratic narratives, as far as they have been depoliticized and presented as neutral processes of knowledge.

Challenging heteronomous narratives constitutes the condition of autonomy -understood as being able to inhabit the society and the world we are living in in a conscious, chosen and democratic way. In the context of degrowth, this means challenging the growth and development narratives while de constructing the society’s imaginaries and producing new pathways for understanding and inhabiting our world.