Imaginary worlds are extremely successful. The most popular fictions produced in the last few decades contain such a fictional world. They can be found in all fictional media, from novels (e.g., Lord of The Rings and Harry Potter) to films (e.g., Star Wars and Avatar), video games (e.g., The Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy), graphic novels (e.g., One Piece and Naruto), and TV series (e.g., Star Trek and Game of Thrones), and they date as far back as ancient (...) literature (e.g., the Cyclops Islands in The Odyssey, 850 BCE). Why such a success? Why so much attention devoted to non-existent worlds? In this paper, we propose that imaginary worlds co-opt our preferences for exploration, which have evolved in humans and nonhuman animals alike, to propel individuals toward new environments and new sources of reward. Humans would find imaginary worlds very attractive for the very same reasons, and under the same circumstances, as they are lured by unfamiliar environments in real life. After reviewing research on exploratory preferences in behavioral ecology, environmental esthetics, neuroscience, and evolutionary and developmental psychology, we focus on the sources of their variability across time and space, which we argue can account for the variability of the cultural preference for imaginary worlds. This hypothesis can, therefore, explain the way imaginary worlds evolved culturally, their shape and content, their recent striking success, and their distribution across time and populations. (shrink)

Moira Gatens investigates the ways in which differently sexed bodies can occupy the same social or political space. Representations of sexual difference have unacknowledged philosophical roots which cannot be dismissed as a superficial bias on the part of the philosopher, nor removed without destroying the coherence of the philosophical system concerned. The deep structural bias against women extends beyond metaphysics and its effects are felt in epistemology, moral, social and political theory. The idea of sexual difference is contextualised in _Imaginary (...) Bodies_ and traced through the history of philosophy. Using her work on Spinoza, Gatens develops alternative conceptions of power, new ways of conceiving women's embodiment and their legal, political and ethical status. (shrink)

This reflection on the topic of emancipation stems from an ongoing project in tune with a wider development in pragmatic philosophy. Specifically, the project aims to piece together some of the consequences of pragmatism’s reconstruction of the tradition of philosophical inquiry, from the angle of human imagination. More recently this project has taken a different direction, in light of our critical situation under intensifying anti-democratic forces in the US, but also in many parliamentary democracies. Emancipation from forces that undermine democratic (...) transformation is arguably a goal that anyone gathering under the banner of pragmatism shares. The use of the pronoun ‘our’ in modifying ‘critical situation’ above is intended. It points to the scope of the problem. The problematic situation of ‘intensifying anti-democratic forces’ that sets the agenda for pragmatic inquiry is most aptly termed ‘neoliberal global hegemony’. Neoliberalism is a much-used technical term and its meaning is hotly contested. For the purposes of this paper, then, I would like to lift out several features common to almost all parties in the contest to provide a definition. This description will then be employed for the purposes of determining the character of the contemporary social context in which emancipatory practices take place. Second, by tying this description of the ‘background’ of our practices to the primacy of practical reason thesis, and specifically the role of imagination in practical reason, the pragmatic conception of agency comes into relief. A pragmatic conception of this social context of agency, the contemporary neoliberal imaginary, contributes to articulating prospects for emancipatory practice in a non-abstract sense. An example of experimentalist democratic practices of emancipation responding to crises generated by neoliberal practices is provided by recent efforts in worker co-operatives in Argentina. (shrink)

By “case,” I mean a proxy for some state of affairs, event, sequence of events, or other fact. A case may be as short as a phrase (“a promise to your dying grandfather”) or (in principle, at least) longer than War and Peace. A case may consist of words (as in the typical philosophical example) or have a more dramatic form, such as a movie, stage performance, or computer simulation. Imaginary cases plainly have an important role in contemporary ethics, (...) especially in applied or practical ethics. This paper is a systematic critique of imaginary cases in ethics (what Kant would have called a “prolegomenon” to their use). There are two main parts. The first explains what it is to imagine a case and what limits there are to what can be imagined. The limits of imagination are, in general, determined by the purpose to which the case is to be put. The second part distinguishes nine uses of imaginary cases: rhetorical; probative (subdivided into counterexample, proof of possibility, and pattern-proving); and heuristic (subdivided into illustrative, experiment in theory, insight-sharpening, commitment-mapping, and exploring reasoning process). Some of these uses are (more or less) unobjectionable (whether the particular case succeeds or fails in its objective) but some require special care or outright avoidance. I give examples of how philosophers and other ethicists would be better off if they were more cautious in their use of imaginary cases (including some classic examples, such as Nozick’s book thruster and Thompson’s famous violinist). This paper is especially concerned with the use of imaginary cases in contemporary defenses of torture. (shrink)

A collaborative article by the Editorial Collective of Social Imaginaries. Investigations into social imaginaries have burgeoned in recent years. From ‘the capitalist imaginary’ to the ‘democratic imaginary’, from the ‘ecological imaginary’ to ‘the global imaginary’ – and beyond – the social imaginaries field has expanded across disciplines and beyond the academy. The recent debates on social imaginaries and potential new imaginaries reveal a recognisable field and paradigm-in-the-making. We argue that Castoriadis, Ricoeur, and Taylor have articulated the (...) most important theoretical frameworks for understanding social imaginaries, although the field as a whole remains heterogeneous. We further argue that the notion of social imaginaries draws on the modern understanding of the imagination as authentically creative. We contend that an elaboration of social imaginaries involves a significant, qualitative shift in the understanding of societies as collectively and politically-instituted formations that are irreducible to inter-subjectivity or systemic logics. After marking out the contours of the field and recounting a philosophical history of the imagination, the essay turns to debates on social imaginaries in more concrete contexts, specifically political-economic imaginaries, the ecological imaginary, multiple modernities and their inter-civilisational encounters. The social imaginaries field imparts powerful messages for the human sciences and wider publics. In particular, social imaginaries hold significant implications for ontological, phenomenological and philosophical anthropological questions; for the cultural, social, and political horizons of contemporary worlds; and for ecological and economic phenomena. The essay concludes with the argument that social imaginaries as a paradigm-in-the-making offers valuable means by which movements towards social change can be elucidated as well providing an open horizon for the critiques of existing social practices. (shrink)

Given an infinite Boolean algebra B, we find a natural class of equation image-definable equivalence relations equation image such that every imaginary element from Beq is interdefinable with an element from a sort determined by some equivalence relation from equation image. It follows that B together with the family of sorts determined by equation image admits elimination of imaginaries in a suitable multisorted language. The paper generalizes author's earlier results concerning definable equivalence relations and weak elimination of imaginaries for (...) Boolean algebras, obtained in 10. (shrink)

In the face of enduring crisis phenomena, quantitative evidence of the renewed salience of socio-economic agendas advanced by radical right populist parties calls for more qualitative research work and in-depth case studies. The present paper aims to contribute to filling this gap through a cultural political economy (CPE) investigation of the Italian League (Lega) party that foregrounds its socio-economic positioning by reconstructing the party’s ‘economic imaginary’. The suggested synergy between CPE and a critical discourse analysis of the League’s practical (...) argumentation in the 2013 and 2018 electoral manifestos points to a composite economic imaginary that prioritizes: 1) production (vs financialization); 2) support of internal demand; 3) lowering of fiscal pressure; 4) protectionism and 5) welfare. The analysis shows how, under Salvini’s leadership, the party’s practical argumentation in EU matters has become constitutive of its overall political strategy and so exacerbated the claims at the core of the respective economic imaginary. In this vein, the League’s Euroscepticism has also polarized the relationship between the party’s socio-economic and socio-cultural stance, thus urging to go beyond the focus on economic imaginaries and sketch out a CPE research agenda on the League’s more encompassing struggle for hegemony in the Italian political economy. (shrink)

What is the difference between a performance of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and the symphony itself? What does it mean for musicians to be faithful to the works they perform? To answer this question, Goehr combines philosophical and historical methods of enquiry. She describes how the concept of a musical work emerged as late as 1800, and how it subsequently defined the norms, expectations, and behavior characteristic of classical musical practice. Out of the historical thesis, Goehr draws philosophical conclusions about the (...) normative functions of concepts and ideals. She also addresses current debates amongst conductors, early-music performers, and avant-gardists. (shrink)

Within the Caribbean literature, the imaginary—a very often defined notion—is presented in a new light by the fictional and theoretic thought of Patrick Chamoiseau. The imaginary dimension can’t remain something abstract and essential full of invariants. Chamoiseau is mistrustful of the mythical imaginary, however he doesn’t put an end to it but he opens a literary space where everything has to be created. In Chamoiseau’s works, the imaginary dimension is of the highest importance in an ideological (...) battle-field where the main character is the Warrior of the imaginary. His ambition is to switch from monolingualism to multilingualism, therefore the French and the Creole languages—we can read in his writing—crystallize the new and always changing definitions of the imaginary. (shrink)

Mobile technologies and networks facilitate the delocalization of traditional power structures within an economic frame. This shift usually incorporates the discourse of the body creation as well. Our bodies are constructs in which individuals as well as and social perceptions and projections, reality and fiction fuse together. In a similar way, we doubt about the representation of reality and highly editable and generative images. Nonetheless, some forms of bio-power can be identified in contemporary constructed mental images such as race or (...) ethnicity usually linked to religious or linguistic differences that are traditionally used as borderline zones. Many examples can be traced back to representations of both fauna and populations of the new world in colonial America. This phenomenon has also emerged in representations of cyberspace even though Internet is advertised as a place in which traditional distinctions and imbalances in power between individuals have been effaced. If Zizek's statement is true that in order to capture the spirit of an age you should not look to explicit social structures but rather to the ghosts that haunt us, and live in a region of nonexistent entities, the topic of globalization should not put aside issues of immigration and multiple representations of race. This situation is inherent to the present and future construction of both cyberspace and public physical space. Media imaginaries create a myriad of information that also includes artificial savages. This fact constitutes what some artists provocatively call a rather explosive universe of cultural misunderstanding under a new world border. (shrink)

This article seeks to situate pharmacological cognitive enhancement as part of a broader relationship between cultural understandings of the body-brain and the political economy. It is the body of the worker that forms the intersection of this relationship and through which it comes to be enacted and experienced. In this article, we investigate the imaginaries that both inform and are reproduced by representations of pharmacological cognitive enhancement, drawing on cultural sources such as newspaper articles and films, policy documents, and pharmaceutical (...) marketing material to illustrate our argument. Through analysis of these diverse cultural sources, we argue that the use of pharmaceuticals has come to be seen not only as a way to manage our brains, but through this as a means to manage our productive selves, and thereby to better manage the economy. We develop three analytical themes. First, we consider the cultural representations of the brain in connection with the idea of plasticity – captured most graphically in images of morphing – and the representation of enhancement as a desirable, inevitable, and almost painless process in which the mind-brain realizes its full potential and asserts its will over matter. Following this, we explore the social value accorded to productive employment and the contemporary (biopolitical) ethos of working on or managing oneself, particularly in respect of improving one’s productive performance through cognitive enhancement. Developing this, we elaborate a third theme by looking at the moulding of the worker’s productive body-brain in relation to the demands of the economic system. (shrink)

As technologies of ocean exploitation emerged during the late 1960s, science policy and diplomacy were formed in response to anticipated capabilities that did not match the realities of extracting deep-sea minerals and of resource exploitation in the deep ocean at the time. Promoters of ocean exploitation in the late 1960s envisaged wonders such as rare mineral extraction and the stationing of divers in underwater habitats from which they would operate seabed machinery not connected to the turbulent surface waters. Their promises (...) coincided with others' fears that nuclear weaponry would be placed on the seabed. Those who lacked the technological capability to extract minerals from the seabed also had concerns that other nations would exploit their resources. Scientific imaginaries caused uncertainty in the international community—especially in the “Global South.” The UN called the “Law of the Sea” conferences to mediate emerging geopolitical tensions caused by these imaginaries of exploitation of ocean resources. These conferences became a site where lawmakers projected futures rather than merely responding to past or present dilemmas. Diplomats' negotiations, with their basis in anticipation of the future uses of science and technology, reveal the role of scientific imaginaries within complex negotiations. Here, we see the impact of the distinction (or blurring) of the real and the imagined on the balance of relations between Global North and South increasing global imbalances of resources and power. This article's analysis of such scientific diplomacy provides a valuable example of the power of scientific imaginaries to have a global impact. (shrink)

In this paper I distil a concept of the imaginary with which to make good the claim that our mode of embodied subjectivity is an imaginary embodiment in an imaginary world. The concept of the imaginary employed is not one in which imaginary worlds are contrasted with the real, but one in which imagination is a condition of there being a real for us. The images and forms in terms of which our imagined bodies and (...) worlds are constituted carry, in an interdependent way, cognition and affects. Imagined configurations have a resilience which makes their displacement more than a matter of appealing to considerations of truth or falsity. It involves encounters with alternative imagined configurations which can be recognized as making both cognitive and affective sense. (shrink)

The imaginary has been inseparable, since prehistoric times, from technical artefacs, their forms, functions and uses. Gilbert Durand’s typologies can help to understand better the different technologies, their success, their effects, etc. Can we not go further by looking in the imaginary for one of the keys to technological innovation today which would allow an anthropological renovation of theoretical tools?

ABSTRACTThe concept of the social imaginary has been introduced as an alternative to theories of the imagination. Whereas the imagination tends to be conceived as a faculty that we possess as indiv...

This edited collection addresses the problem of how the creation of novel spaces of governance relates to imaginaries of connectivity in time.

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} Ioan Petru Culianu has written a book about the emergence of modern science and religious behavior starting from the Aristotelian concept of phantasia. An essential premise for discussing problems of modern cultural and religious importance is the proper understanding of memory and philosophical grounds for such concepts as memory and (...) recollection. Aristotelianism has been repeatedly mentioned as a main source of memory concepts, along with Plato, later Roman tradition and then mediaeval reconsiderations of Aristotelian texts. In my study I am following in parallel both Aristotle’s theory of memory and imagination and modern theories concerning Aristotelian epistemology and build arguments for the thesis that modern theories concerning the importance of induction in Aristotle’s epistemology miss an important link, namely, the key function of memory techniques for understanding the whole of Aristotle’s theory of knowledge. Memory is the domain of technique or art ( techne ) but not the grounding site for science. Truth and false are not an issue for Aristotle’s theory of knowledge because sensibility and theoretical intellect cannot be false. Memory, imagination and recollection as functions of an intermediary link are the most fluid and uncontrollable parts of the cognitive psyche, as they function as necessary bridges from corporeal sensitive knowledge to intellectual formal understanding. Memory is still corporeal as a function but delivers images for the intellectual activity. The whole process of knowledge depends on such a fluid and non rigorous function. Aristotle suggests natural memory can be pointed as the very cause for imperfection of knowledge. Human being is thus an insolvable epistemic duality since science needs memory but memory itself is rather the object of custom, art and technique. Science and religion have, according to such Aristotelian premise, a necessary common imaginary. (shrink)

Political Imaginaries in Question Content Type Journal Article Pages 5-11 Authors Suzi Adams, School of Social and Policy Studies, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia Jeremy C. A. Smith, School of Education and Arts, University of Ballarat, Victoria, Australia Ingerid S. Straume, University of Oslo Library, University of Oslo, Norway Journal Critical Horizons: A Journal of Philosophy & Social Theory Online ISSN 1568-5160 Print ISSN 1440-9917 Journal Volume Volume 13 Journal Issue Volume 13, Number 1 / 2012.

Le Dœuff investigated the philosophical imaginary primarily of classical philosophy, but her discussion about the philosophical image is open enough to allow an extension into the contrasting area of contemporary analytic philosophy. The flexibility of her method will be demonstrated first by attention to the function of specific images in analytic philosophy. Further possibilities of her method will be displayed by a reading of the general ‘imaginary’ of analytic philosophy —a system that I shall call the ‘analytic (...) class='Hi'>imaginary’. (shrink)

This reflection contrasts the dominant imaginary underlying ‘lawofthe Anthropocene’ with an imaginary reaching towards ‘law/sforthe Anthropocene’. It does so primarily by contrasting two imaginaries of human embodiment—law’s existing imaginary of quasi-disembodiment and an alternative imaginary of embodiment as co-woven with the lively incipiencies and tendencies of matter. It draws on ‘transcorporeality’ and ‘sympoiesis’ as inspiration for ‘sympoietic normativities’ as ways of co-living and co-organizing in the face of the catastrophic implications of the Anthropocene emergency.

We give an example of an imaginary defined in certain valued fields with analytic structure which cannot be coded in the ‘geometric' sorts which suffice to code all imaginaries in the corresponding algebraic setting.

Our senses provide us with information about the world, but what exactly do they tell us? I argue that in order to optimally respond to sensory stimulations, an agent’s doxastic space may have an extra, “imaginary” dimension of possibility; perceptual experiences confer certainty on propositions in this dimension. To some extent, the resulting picture vindicates the old-fashioned empiricist idea that all empirical knowledge is based on a solid foundation of sense-datum propositions, but it avoids most of the problems traditionally (...) associated with that idea. The proposal might also explain why experiences appear to have a non-physical phenomenal character, even if the world is entirely physical. (shrink)

Genetic testing has become a vehicle through which basic constitutional relationships between citizens and the state are revisited, reaffirmed, or rearticulated. The interplay between the is of genetic knowledge and the ought of government unfolds in the context of diverse imaginaries of the forms of human well-being, freedom, and flourishing that states have a duty to support. This article examines how the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States governed testing for Alzheimer’s disease, and how they diverged in defining potential (...) harms, benefits, and objects of regulation. Comparison before and after the arrival of direct-to-consumer genetic tests reveals differences in national understandings of what it means to protect life and citizenship: in the United Kingdom, ensuring physical wellness through clinical utility; in the United States, protecting both citizens’ physical well-being and freedom to choose through a framework of consumer protection; and in Germany, emphasizing individual flourishing and an unburdened sense of human development that is expressed in genetic testing law and policy as a commitment to the stewardship of personhood. Operating with their own visions of what it means to protect life and citizenship, these three states arrived at settlements that coproduced substantially different bioconstitutional regimes around Alzheimer’s testing. (shrink)

Alain Finkelkraut has interrogated contemporary Jewish identity in terms of how a Jew reckons with the heavy impact of the Holocaust and in fact with the entire history of the Jewish people. Finkelkraut takes issue with Sartre's 1947 essay, Anti-Semite and Jew, not for its content but the effect that it has had on him. "Let there be no misunderstanding: I am not attacking the book that Sartre wrote on the Jewish problem," asserts the author in a footnote (JI 17, (...) my translation). Instead, he shows how the philosopher aids in the creation of what Finkelkraut terms "the imaginary Jew." He compares this process of fossilization to Genet's treatment in Saint Genet. Finkelkraut's metaphoric language captures the pernicious effects that the public act of naming and thus essentializing can have on a person or group of people. (shrink)

Editorial - Dossier: IMAGERY AND INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE Imaginary and Inter-Faith Dialogue - Michael Amaladoss Horizonte, Vol. 15, No. 45, Jan./Mar. 2017.

A cornerstone of Sartre’s philosophy, _The Imaginary_ was first published in 1940. Sartre had become acquainted with the philosophy of Edmund Husserl in Berlin and was fascinated by his idea of the 'intentionality of consciousness' as a key to the puzzle of existence. Against this background, _The Imaginary_ crystallized Sartre's worldview and artistic vision. The book is an extended examination of the concepts of nothingness and freedom, both of which are derived from the ability of consciousness to imagine objects both (...) as they are and as they are not – ideas that would drive Sartre's existentialism and entire theory of human freedom. (shrink)

In manuscripts and unpublished articles written in the 1950s, Foucault developed a notion of myth that was intimately linked to what he called “imaginary forces,” a notion that he framed as a new critical approach. Its most important functions lie in exposing how mythological narratives naturalize social processes, and in developing a skeptical stance towards the allegedly liberating function of truth. This notion of myth is central in History of Madness, but it features most prominently in a passage that (...) was omitted from the first English translation. Here, Foucault criticizes the narrative that Enlightenment psychiatry told about its own origins, which naturalized social processes. The young Foucault’s notion of myth is strikingly similar to the Marxist notion of second nature. (shrink)

The prospect of human societies being made anew on other planets is a powerful recurring theme in popular culture and speculative technoscience. I explore what Science and Technology Studies offers to analyzing how the future is made and contested in present-day endeavors to establish humans as multiplanetary subjects. I focus on the case of Mars One—an initiative that aims to establish a human settlement on Mars in the 2020s—and discuss interviews undertaken with some of the individuals who have volunteered to (...) be the first humans to live on Mars, drawing on STS work on futures and sociotechnical imaginaries and scholarly discussions of utopia. Seeing themselves as part of a project that would start to “establish what it means to live on another planet,” I discuss how interviewees talked about how sociotechnical relations could be remade in the future, both on Earth and on Mars, through the pursuit of this technoscientific project. I conclude that this project is an expression of a multiplanetary imaginary of human beings no longer subject to Earth—but, through sociotechnical inventiveness, able to live on other planets. (shrink)

We received several commentaries both challenging and supporting our hypothesis. We thank the commentators for their thoughtful contributions, bringing together alternative hypotheses, complementary explanations, and appropriate corrections to our model. Here, we explain further our hypothesis, using more explicitly the framework of evolutionary social sciences. We first explain what we believe is the ultimate function of fiction in general (i.e., entertainment) and how this hypothesis differs from other evolutionary hypotheses put forward by several commentators. We then turn to the proximate (...) features that make imaginary worlds entertaining and, therefore, culturally successful. We finally explore how these insights may explain the distribution of imaginary worlds across time, space, age, and social classes. (shrink)

The relationship between the imaginary and the political has many aspects and it is not possible to address them all in this paper. We will choose to focus on the relationship between myth and national idea, on the one hand, and myth and political ideologies on the other. Before considering these questions, we will first present the work of Gilbert Durand from his articles “Le social et le mythique” and “La cité et les divisions du royaume” ; then we (...) will focus on the study of the two axes announced. This paper thus emphasizes the importance of the imaginary in politics and society. We will conclude with the current development, particularly in Western Europe, where myth no longer plays its unifying role for society. (shrink)

Many students feel despair when addressing systemic issues of ethical significance, such as climate change, and student despair has been exacerbated by the circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic. This creates an unwelcoming space for authentic student engagement. To address the problem, we present an imaginary of radical hope, a pedagogical tool informed by trauma, for developing a brave space for class discussion. It is psychologically beneficial to acknowledge negative emotions, clearing the emotional space for students to engage. Therefore, we (...) frame ethics courses with an uncomfortable discussion, asking students to draw from their positionality and share their feelings of hope and despair, related to course material. In this paper, we explain the problem of despair motivating the project, describe the pedagogical and ethical support of our strategy, share the assignment, activity, and examples, and discuss takeaways. (shrink)

"The Philosophical Imaginary teaches us how to read philosophy afresh. Focusing on central, but often undiscussed, images, Le Doeuff's patient, perspicacious, and always brilliant readings show us how to uncover the political unconscious at work in great philosophy. Le Doeuff's contribution to philosophy and feminism is unequalled. This book is a classic.".

In recent years, the notion of a ‘clash of civilizations’, first put forward by Samuel Huntington (1996), has been widely used to explain the contemporary dynamics of geo-political conflict. It has been argued that the fundamental source of conflict is no longer primarily ideological, or even economic, but cultural. Despite many trenchant and largely debilitating academic critiques of Huntington's argument, the popular appeal of the ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis remains undiminished. In many parts of the world, the binary it describes (...) is often taken to be self-evident, especially after the tragic events of September 11. This paper uses the ideas of ‘social imaginary’ (Taylor, 2004) and ‘political myth’ (Blumenberg, 1984) to understand the popular appeal of the idea of civilizational conflict, and suggests that this appeal is unlikely to be punctured by theoretical arguments alone, but by an equally plausible political narrative located in an alternative social imaginary, acquired through cosmopolitan learning. (shrink)

This paper considers the relationship between institutions and the “sexual imaginary,” understood as the set of affective and imaginative resources that produce certain forms of sexual subjectivity. Drawing on the work of Cornelius Castoriadis and Moira Gatens, I argue that institutions play an important role in shaping sexual imaginaries. Historically, institutions have been sites in which unjust sexual norms have been reinforced and legitimized. I analyse the growing trend of consent education at Australian universities to explore how institutions may (...) also represent potential sites for contesting and reimagining these norms. Feminist critiques of consent suggest that consent education may in fact reproduce a narrow and conservative vision of sexuality, one that aligns with the neoliberal politics of the contemporary university. This paper contributes to these critiques by exploring how both the neoliberal university and consent theory are premised on a distorted vision of the subject as a rational, disembodied being. I argue that transforming dominant sexual imaginaries requires recognizing and interrogating both how desire permeates institutional spaces and the role of desire in ethical sexual relations. (shrink)

This paper discusses the formation of Castoriadis’s concept of imaginary significations and relates it to his changing readings of Marx and Weber. Castoriadis’s reflections on modern capitalism took off from the Marxian understanding of its internal contradictions, but he always had reservations about the orthodox version of this idea. His writings in the late 1950s, already critical of basic assumptions in Marx’s work, located the central contradiction in the very relationship between capital and wage labour. Labour power was not (...) simply transformed into a commodity, as Marx had argued; rather, the instituted attempt to treat it as a commodity was a contradiction in itself, between the subjectivity and the objectification of labour. Castoriadis then moved on to link this claim to Weber’s analysis of the interconnections between capitalism and bureaucracy. The main contradiction of modern capitalism, whether wholly bureaucratised as in the Soviet model or increasingly bureaucratised as in the West, now seemed to be a matter of incompatible systemic imperatives: the need to control and to mobilise the workforce. Finally, difficulties with this model – and with the revolutionary expectations based on it – led to a more decisive break with classical theories and to the formulation of a bipolar image of modernity, where the vision of an autonomous society is opposed to the logic of calculation and domination, embodied in capitalist development. On both sides there is an imaginary component, irreducible to empirical givens or systemic principles. In this regard, Castoriadis remained closer to Weber than to Marx, but he also anticipated, in a distinctive way, later emphasis on the cultural dimension of modernity, and more specifi cally the notion of modernity as a new civilisation. (shrink)

STS research has devoted relatively little attention to the promotion and reception of science and technology by non-scientific actors and institutions. One consequence is that the relationship of science and technology to political power has tended to remain undertheorized. This article aims to fill that gap by introducing the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries. Through a comparative examination of the development and regulation of nuclear power in the US and South Korea, the article demonstrates the analytic potential of the imaginaries concept. (...) Although nuclear power and nationhood have long been imagined together in both countries, the nature of those imaginations has remained strikingly different. In the US, the state’s central move was to present itself as a responsible regulator of a potentially runaway technology that demands effective containment. In South Korea, the dominant imaginary was of atoms for development which the state not only imported but incorporated into its scientific, technological and political practices. In turn, these disparate imaginaries have underwritten very different responses to a variety of nuclear shocks and challenges, such as Three Mile Island (TMI), Chernobyl, and the spread of the anti-nuclear movement. (shrink)

The paper shows elimination of imaginaries for real closed valued fields to suitable sorts. We also show that this result is in some sense optimal. The paper includes a quantifier elimination theorem for real closed valued fields in a language with sorts for the field, value group and residue field.

We are in places. Some places beckon us, some are to be avoided, and some are banal. However, this emplacement urges reflection. In this essay I consider the role of place in environmental experiences, beginning with analysis of the concepts of place and space that motivate the development of four environmental imaginaries (extractive, wilderness, managed, and reciprocal). Ultimately, through a discussion of fences, I aim to show how place-meanings are materially inscribed on the landscape while evidencing the value of place-based (...) analysis to understanding the ways these landscapes are shaped by and serve to shape experience. (shrink)

Caesar"s "imaginary geography" of Germania as an infinite extension without any patterns but simply endless forests contrasts with his presentation of Gallia as an overviewed space. Within these geographies different concepts of space prevail, all of which serve to explain why his celeritas ceases in Germania. Having crossed the Rhine and thereby entered terra incognita like Alexander and Pompey, he refrains from campaigning because of the geographical conditions. By alluding to Scythia"s similar space and Darius" failure, he shows himself (...) to act prudently. It is also a characteristic of the imperator optimus to know when a venture is too risky. (shrink)

This book sets out to clarify the nature of the aesthetic as a category within the theory of historical materialism. It opens with an analysis of Marx's brief discussion of Greek art in the Grundrisse, moves through a series of readings of specifically bourgeois texts, including those of Ruskin, G.M. Hopkins, Nietzsche and Henry James, and then to the terrain of Marxism in the concepts of history underwriting the work of Fredric Jameson and Jean-Paul Sartre. Sprinkler detours through the recent (...) works of Perry Anderson to set the stage for a systematic consideration of the theoretical itinerary and continuing relevance of the contributions of Louis Althusser. Imaginary Relations is a cogently argued attempt to shift the terrain of Marxist theorizing about art from the domain of ideology considered as simply false consciousness to a concept of art which makes aesthetic texts sources of empirical data about the real, historical world. (shrink)

Existe-t-il véritablement, du point de vue cognitif et épistémologique, une distance insurmontable entre grandes et petites mythologies, entre les récits fondateurs sur lesquels reposent nos références culturelles et littéraires et toutes ces métaphores qui façonnent et orientent en profondeur nos expressions langagières et les objets qui nous entourent et qui, elles aussi, racontent une histoire? Si aucune société ne peut vivre sans mythes, nul ne saurait vivre ni signifier sans métaphore. Et si Œdipe ou Philoctète sont des signifiants lourds de (...) sens capables de générer une pléiade de configurations poétiques sans cesse renouvelées, Levi’s, Coca-Cola ou Apple ne sont pas moins, bien qu’à une dimension et à un degré différent, des noms qui se sont progressivement érigés au statut de mythes contemporains grâce à une habile stratégie où image et récit fondateur se renforcent et se légitiment réciproquement. En tant que force qui harmonise l’ordre et le désordre, le chaos et le cosmos, la symétrie et la dissymétrie, la Loi et la dimension de la fête et du jeu, Apollon et Dionysos, la vie intérieure et l’expérience du monde ; bref, en tant que principe médiateur et réunificateur de l’univers, de la forme et du sens, la métaphore est ainsi l’un des noms possibles de l’imaginaire. L’autre nom, c’est évidemment l’Amour. En effet, du Moyen Âge à l’époque contemporaine, l’amour, en tant que construction à partir d’une image-écran médiatrice, est toujours une quête du sens, un acte de signification, c’est-à-dire un processus dynamique mettant en relation les éléments disjoints du monde et de notre expérience. From a cognitive and epistemological perspective, does an insurmountable distance really exist between big and small mythologies, between founding narratives on which our cultural and literary references are based, all of the metaphors that fashion and orient the depth of our linguistic expression, and the objects that surround us, which, in their own way, tell a story? A society cannot live without myths; nor would one know how to live or to signify without metaphors. If Oedipus or Philoctetus are heavily loaded with meaning and capable of generating a constellation of constantly renewing poetic configurations, Levi’s, Coca-Cola or Apple do no less. Despite being at a different dimension and degree, these names have been progressively built up to the status of contemporary myths by way of a clever strategy in which image and founding story provide reciprocal reinforcement and legitimization. As a harmonizing force of order and disorder, of chaos and cosmos, of symmetry and asymmetry, of the Law and the dimension of party and play, of Apollo and Dionysus, of interior life and the experience of the world, in short, as a mediating and reunifying principle of the universe, of form, and of meaning, metaphor is one possible name for the imaginary. Its other name is, obviously, Love. In fact, from the Middle Ages to contemporary times, love, as a construction growing forth from a mediating image-screen, has always been a quest for meaning, an act of signification, a dynamic process connecting the fractal elements of our world and of our experience. (shrink)

Travelling through various historical and geographical contexts, Social Imaginaries of Space explores diverse forms of spatiality, examining the interconnections which shape different social collectives. Proposing a theory on how space is intrinsically linked to the making of societies, this book examines the history of the spatiality of modern states and nations and the social collectives of Western modernity in a contemporary light. Debarbieux offers a practical exploration of his theory of the social imaginaries of space through the analysis of a (...) number of case studies. Advanced geography scholars will find the analysis of space and its impact on societies a valuable tool in understanding the ways in which space, culture and behaviour interact. Historians of Western modernity will also benefit from Debarbieux's analysis of case studies that impact modern life. (shrink)

Western jihadism is a complex phenomenon in which the imaginary dimension, the subjectivity of the actors linked to their socio-economic condition but also to their ethnicity, and beyond that, what I call their subjectivation (the ability to empower oneself as a social actor), play a significant role. In Europe, among the Muslim offshoots of migrant workers, most of the psychological developments associated with Jihadism occurs in very specific urban structures, the poor districts or suburbs, where a high concentration of (...) urban poor live with a burden of social stigma linked to the high criminality rate. These settings are often de facto ghettoes. The development of a specific urban imagination often gives meaning to the jihadist commitment among young people living in this type of settlement. This imaginary often feeds on a feeling of stigmatization among these people. Jihadism is not a quest for meaning, but its discovery, the wielding of it through embracing death and inflicting it on the ‘infidels’. It is, in another way, a punishment of society, an act of vengeance against it, be it due to personal reasons (mainly for the young downtrodden of the immigrant origin who feel stigmatized by the society) or due to the lack of ideal, utopia and social justice in society (the case of the young middle class people). This study aims at underlining the fact that social imaginaries should be at the root of socio-anthropological analysis and without understanding the meaning of social action, quantitative views give us at best a unilateral, at most a distorted view of social action and social behavior. (shrink)

This paper aims to analyze social imaginary theoretical-epistemological basis. First, it defined the term social imaginary in relation to other similar or derivative, imagination, social representation and others. They settled their differences and finally developed the ideas of the most important authors on the subject, Moscovici, Abric, Castoriadis, Durand, Carter, Baeza, Pintos. It was concluded that the social imaginary are 1) interpretations in reality, 2) socially legitimized, 3) material manifestation as speech, symbols, attitudes, affective appraisals, knowledge legitimated (...) 4) historically developed and modified, 5) as matrices for social cohesion and identity, 6) distributed primarily through school, media and other social institutions, and 7) committed to the hegemonic groups. El presente trabajo tiene como propósito fundamental analizar los fundamentos teórico-epistemológicos de los imaginarios sociales. En primer lugar, se delimitó el término imaginario social con respecto a otros similares o derivados; imaginación, representación social y otros. Se establecieron sus diferencias y finalmente, se desarrollaron las ideas de los autores más relevantes sobre el tema (Moscovici, Abric, Castoriadis, Durand, Carretero, Baeza, Pintos). Se concluyó que los imaginarios sociales constituyen 1) esquemas interpretativos de la realidad, 2) socialmente legitimados, 3) con manifestación material en tanto discursos, símbolos, actitudes, valoraciones afectivas, conocimientos legitimados, 4) históricamente elaborados y modificables, 5) como matrices para la cohesión e identidad social, 6) difundidos fundamentalmente a través de la escuela, medios de comunicación y demás instituciones sociales, y 7) comprometidos con los grupos hegemónicos. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to characterise elimination of finite generalised imaginaries as defined in [9] in terms of group cohomology. As an application, I consider series of Zariski geometries constructed [10, 23, 24] by Hrushovski and Zilber and indicate how their nondefinability in algebraically closed fields is connected to eliminability of certain generalised imaginaries.

The human brain has long been misunderstood in its features. It is up to neuroscience to have shown that all its activities are connected, and understand each other only in this relationship between its different instances. To ascend, to merge, to connect are the basis of the organization of our psyche, including in its most elaborate symbolic productions. This is precisely the system highlighted by the Anthropological Structures of the Imaginary by Gilbert Durand, brilliant precursor.

Culture has been at the core of many recent developments in the social sciences, particularly after the so-called ‘linguistic turn’. This has also been seeping into discussions about the relation between culture and politics. The present paper proposes a specific theoretical approach in this respect. It mobilizes Castoriadis’s concept of the ‘imaginary’, as well as those of ‘collective subjectivity’ and ‘social creativity’. It also makes use of the rich case of ‘populism’, more generally, and Peronism, more specifically, so as (...) to make clear its workings in a sociological strategy that unfolds in both the theoretical and the empirically-oriented domains. The paper offers an alternative to Alexander’s and Laclau’s approaches to culture and politics. (shrink)