Abstract

Having as a concern the symbolic construction of authoritarianism on the context of Chile's democratic transition,certain contents are analyzed that form an authoritarian imaginary coming from the teachers and students significations about power and authority and the ways in which they accept,criticize or resist authoritarianism on the micro-politics of high-school relationships and on the global political stage.I propose the concept of theimaginary by Castoriadis(1975,1999,2002,2005)and his insight for the understanding of therelationship between psyche and thesocio-historica lineach society, that allows us the exploration and analysis of the dynamics of creation and reproduction of symbolic content which sustain/form those relationships.As an articulating axis of the text,I have used the notion of radical democracy also by Castoriadis(2002)as acounter-position to heteronomous societies that forget their ownself-institution, where actors prohibit themselves any type ofchange limiting the construction of democracy.