The Des-institusionalization of the Self as a Perspective of a Social Crisis

Abstract

The popular revolt in Chile that begins on October 18, 2019 is the result of a deep political and social crack showing a crisis of the representativeness of the traditional institutions. Inspired by this historical juncture, the current text explores a philosophical analysis about what characterizes an institution: an abstract entity that emerges on the human relationships from a symbolic decoding of the world according to shared rules and customs. However, the institutionality takes a particular modern condition from what I call a legislative-architectural
reason. Since Descartes and his architectonic metaphor of knowledge, the subject institionalizes itself as self-sufficient reason that legislates on both itself and nature under the ideals of control and order. Nevertheless, the self in crisis cannot avoid the leaks of its own self-regulation as a process of des-institusionalization of itself. This, underlying on the social crisis in Chile, has triggered a popular resignification of the traditional institution and the open possibility in the self to reconfigure the pre-institutionalized world that precedes it as a form to reborn.