Abstract

After sketching out the triad of destitution – institution – constitution, the text attempts to develop certain aspects revealed by the concepts of « instituent power » and of « instituent imagination » . On the basis of a brief examination of the latter’s contribution, this conceptual approach aims to adumbrate and partially elucidate the role of the affects in their double relation within the political field : their relation to representations and desires , and their relations to the collective sedimentations of past affects, veritable ghosts in the processes of institution, destitution and constitution. This is a philosophical text reflecting on politics and the political via a dimension that has long been discounted ; but nonetheless, the analysis of the roles of pathos and of aisthesis as core elements of the relations of power and domination is carried out from the perspective of group psychoanalysis. The approach proposed here is situated between the somatico-physical, intrapsychic, and interpsychic and political registers