Imaginary (sociology)

Last updated

The imaginary (or social imaginary) is the set of values, institutions, laws, and symbols through which people imagine their social whole. It is common to the members of a particular social group and the corresponding society. The concept of the imaginary has attracted attention in anthropology, sociology, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and media studies.

Contents

Definitions

The roots of the modern concept of the imaginary can be traced back to Jean-Paul Sartre's 1940 book The Imaginary: A Phenomenological Psychology of the Imagination in which Sartre discusses his concept of the imagination and the nature of human consciousness. Subsequent thinkers have extended Sartre's ideas into the realms of philosophy and sociology.

For John Thompson, the social imaginary is "the creative and symbolic dimension of the social world, the dimension through which human beings create their ways of living together and their ways of representing their collective life". [1]

For Manfred Steger and Paul James "imaginaries are patterned convocations of the social whole. These deep-seated modes of understanding provide largely pre-reflexive parameters within which people imagine their social existence—expressed, for example, in conceptions of 'the global,' 'the national,' 'the moral order of our time.'" [2]

John R. Searle uses the expression "social reality" rather than "social imaginary". [3]

Castoriadis

In 1975, Cornelius Castoriadis used the term in his book The Imaginary Institution of Society, maintaining that 'the imaginary of the society ... creates for each historical period its singular way of living, seeing and making its own existence'. [4] For Castoriadis, 'the central imaginary significations of a society ... are the laces which tie a society together and the forms which define what, for a given society, is "real"'. [5]

In similar fashion, Habermas wrote of 'the massive background of an intersubjectively shared lifeworld ... lifeworld contexts that provided the backing of a massive background consensus'. [6]

Lacan

"The imaginary is presented by Lacan as one of the three intersecting orders that structure all human existence, the others being the symbolic and the real". [7] Lacan was responding to "L'Imaginaire, which was the title of the 'phenomenological psychology of the imagination' published by Sartre in 1940, where it refers to the image as a form of consciousness". [8] Lacan also drew on the way "Melanie Klein pushes back the limits within which we can see the subjective function of identification operate", [9] in her work on phantasy—something extended by her followers to the analysis of how "we are all prone to be drawn into social phantasy systems...the experience of being in a particular set of human collectivities". [10] "While it is only in the early years of childhood that human beings live entirely in the Imaginary, it remains distinctly present throughout the life of the individual". [11]

The imaginary as a Lacanian term refers to an illusion and fascination with an image of the body as coherent unity, deriving from the dual relationship between the ego and the specular or mirror image. This illusion of coherence, control and totality is by no means unnecessary or inconsequential. "The term 'imaginary' is obviously cognate with 'fictive' but in its Lacanian sense it is not simply synonymous with fictional or unreal; on the contrary, imaginary identifications can have very real effects". [8]

Taylor

Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor uses the concept of modern social imaginaries to explore the Western transition from the hierarchical norms of pre-modern social imaginaries to the egalitarian, horizontal, direct access social imaginary of modernity. [12] He sees the Renaissance ideal of civility and self-fashioning as a sort of halfway house [13] on the road to modernity and modern morality. The modern social imaginary he considers comprises a system of interlocking spheres, including reflexivity and the social contract, [14] public opinion and Habermas' public sphere, the political/market economy as an independent force, and the self-government of citizens within a society as a normative ideal. [15]

Taylor has acknowledged the influence of Benedict Anderson in his formulation of the concept of the social imaginary. [16] Anderson treated the nation as 'an imagined political community...nation-ness, as well as nationalism, are cultural artifacts of a particular kind'. [17]

Ontology

While not constituting an established reality, the social imaginary is nevertheless an institution in as much as it represents the system of meanings that govern a given social structure. These imaginaries are to be understood as historical constructs defined by the interactions of subjects in society. In that sense, the imaginary is not necessarily "real" as it is an imagined concept contingent on the imagination of a particular social subject. Nevertheless, there remains some debate among those who use the term (or its associated terms, such as imaginaire) as to the ontological status of the imaginary. Some, such as Henry Corbin, understand the imaginary to be quite real indeed, while others ascribe to it only a social or imagined reality.

John R. Searle considered the ontology of the social imaginary to be complex, but that in practice 'the complex structure of social reality is, so to speak, weightless and invisible. The child is brought up in a culture where he or she simply takes social reality for granted....The complex ontology seems simple'. [3] He added the subtle distinction that social reality was observer-relative, and so would 'inherit that ontological subjectivity. But this ontological subjectivity does not prevent claims about observer-relative features from being epistemically objective'. [18]

Technology

In 1995 George E. Marcus edited a book with the title Technoscientific Imaginaries which ethnographically explored contemporary science and technology. [19] A collection of encounters in the technosciences by a collective of anthropologists and others, the volume aimed to find strategic sites of change in contemporary worlds that no longer fit traditional ideas and pedagogies and that are best explored through a collaborative effort between technoscientists and social scientists.[ citation needed ] While the Lacanian imaginary is only indirectly invoked, the interplay between emotion and reason, desire, the symbolic order, and the real are repeatedly probed. Crucial to the technical side of these imaginaries are the visual, statistical, and other representational modes of imaging that have both facilitated scientific developments and sometimes misdirected a sense of objectivity and certitude. Such work accepts that 'technological meaning is historically grounded and, as a result, becomes located within a larger social imaginary'. [20]

Media imaginary

Several media scholars and historians have analyzed the imaginary of technologies as they emerge, such as early communication technology, [21] mobile phones, [22] and the Internet. [23] [24]

Serial imaginary

A recent research led by a team from the Université Grenoble Alpes offer to develop the concept of imaginary and understand how it functions when faced with serial works of art.

This research, published in Imaginaire sériel: Les mécanismes sériels à l'oeuvre dans l'acte créatif, (Jonathan Fruoco and Andréa Rando Martin (Ed.), Grenoble, UGA Edition, 2017), subscribes to Gilbert Durand's Grenoble school of thought and both questions the impact of seriality on our imaginary and defines the imaginary of seriality. [25]

The development of this concept allows a better understanding of the close link between the ability to condition and organize exchanges between an experience and its representation, and a procedure based on the rhythmical repetition of one, or several, paradigms in a determined and coherent body, which allows their reproduction and inflection. [26]

Serial works of art thus form a privileged field of studies since they turn this recursion and redundancy into structuring principles. This research tries to illustrate this serial conceptualization of the imaginary by analyzing serial literature, television series, comic books, serial music and dance, etc.

Architectural imaginary

Peter Olshavsky has analyzed the imaginary in the field of architecture. Based on the work of Taylor, the imaginary is understood as a category of understanding social praxis and the reasons designers give to make sense of these practices.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fantasy (psychology)</span> Mental faculty of drawing imagination and desire in the human brain

In psychology, fantasy is a broad range of mental experiences, mediated by the faculty of imagination in the human brain, and marked by an expression of certain desires through vivid mental imagery. Fantasies are generally associated with scenarios that are impossible or unlikely to happen.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jacques Lacan</span> French psychoanalyst and writer (1901–1981)

Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud", Lacan gave yearly seminars in Paris, from 1953 to 1981, and published papers that were later collected in the book Écrits. Transcriptions of his seminars, given between 1954 and 1976, were also published. His work made a significant impact on continental philosophy and cultural theory in areas such as post-structuralism, critical theory, feminist theory and film theory, as well as on the practice of psychoanalysis itself.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Structuralism</span> Theory of culture and methodology

Structuralism is an intellectual current and methodological approach, primarily in the social sciences, that interprets elements of human culture by way of their relationship to a broader system. It works to uncover the structural patterns that underlie all the things that humans do, think, perceive, and feel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social reality</span> Distinct from biological reality or individual cognitive reality

Social reality is distinct from biological reality or individual cognitive reality, representing as it does a phenomenological level created through social interaction and thereby transcending individual motives and actions. As a product of human dialogue, social reality may be considered as consisting of the accepted social tenets of a community, involving thereby relatively stable laws and social representations. Radical constructivism would cautiously describe social reality as the product of uniformities among observers.

Social philosophy examines questions about the foundations of social institutions, social behavior, and interpretations of society in terms of ethical values rather than empirical relations. Social philosophers emphasize understanding the social contexts for political, legal, moral and cultural questions, and the development of novel theoretical frameworks, from social ontology to care ethics to cosmopolitan theories of democracy, natural law, human rights, gender equity and global justice.

Globalism has multiple meanings. In political science, it is used to describe "attempts to understand all the interconnections of the modern world—and to highlight patterns that underlie them". While primarily associated with world-systems, it can be used to describe other global trends. The concept of globalism is also classically used to focus on the ideologies of globalization instead of its processes ; in this sense, "globalism" is to globalization what "nationalism" is to nationality.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antihumanism</span> Philosophical and social theory, critical of traditional humanism

In social theory and philosophy, antihumanism or anti-humanism is a theory that is critical of traditional humanism, traditional ideas about humanity and the human condition. Central to antihumanism is the view that philosophical anthropology and its concepts of "human nature", "man" or "humanity" should be rejected as historically relative, ideological or metaphysical.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lifeworld</span> Epistemological concept

Lifeworld may be conceived as a universe of what is self-evident or given, a world that subjects may experience together. The concept was popularized by Edmund Husserl, who emphasized its role as the ground of all knowledge in lived experience. It has its origin in biology and cultural Protestantism.

In continental philosophy, the Real refers to the demarcation of reality that is correlated with subjectivity and intentionality. In Lacanianism, it is an "impossible" category because of its opposition to expression and inconceivability. The Real Order is a topological ring (lalangue) and ex-ists as an infinite homonym.

[T]he real in itself is meaningless: it has no truth for human existence. In Lacan's terms, it is speech that "introduces the dimension of truth into the real."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Imaginary (psychoanalysis)</span> Term in Lacanian Psychoanalysis

The Imaginary is one of three terms in the psychoanalytic perspective of Jacques Lacan, along with the Symbolic and the Real. Each of the three terms emerged gradually over time, undergoing an evolution in Lacan's own development of thought. "Of these three terms, the 'imaginary' was the first to appear, well before the Rome Report of 1953…[when the] notion of the 'symbolic' came to the forefront." Indeed, looking back at his intellectual development from the vantage point of the 1970s, Lacan epitomised it as follows:

"I began with the Imaginary, I then had to chew on the story of the Symbolic ... and I finished by putting out for you this famous Real."

The Symbolic is the order in the unconscious that gives rise to subjectivity and bridges intersubjectivity between two subjects; an example is Jacques Lacan's idea of desire as the desire of the Other, maintained by the Symbolic's subjectification of the Other into speech. In the later psychoanalytic theory of Lacan, it is linked by the sinthome to the Imaginary and the Real.

Manfred B. Steger is an American academic and author. He is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

Engaged theory is a methodological framework for understanding the social complexity of a society, by using social relations as the base category of study, with the social always understood as grounded in the natural, including people as embodied beings. Engaged theory progresses from detailed, empirical analysis of the people, things, and processes of the world to abstract theory about the constitution and social framing of people, things, and processes.

Manfred Steger, professor of Global Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa argues that globalization has four main dimensions: economic, political, cultural, ecological, with ideological aspects of each category. David Held's book Global Transformations is organized around the same dimensions, though the ecological is not listed in the title. This set of categories relates to the four-domain approach of circles of social life, and Circles of Sustainability.

A. Kiarina Kordela (; is a Greek-American philosopher and critical theorist. She is a professor of German Studies and founding director of the Critical Theory Program at Macalester College in Saint Paul, MN.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cornelius Castoriadis</span> Greek-French philosopher (1922–1997)

Cornelius Castoriadis was a Greek-French philosopher, social critic, economist, psychoanalyst, author of The Imaginary Institution of Society, and co-founder of the Socialisme ou Barbarie group.

Lacanianism or Lacanian psychoanalysis is a theoretical system that explains the mind, behaviour, and culture through a structuralist and post-structuralist extension of classical psychoanalysis, initiated by the work of Jacques Lacan from the 1950s to the 1980s. Lacanian perspectives contend that the world of language, the Symbolic, structures the human mind, and stress the importance of desire, which is conceived of as perpetual and impossible to satisfy. Contemporary Lacanianism is characterised by a broad range of thought and extensive debate between Lacanians.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Signified and signifier</span> Concepts in linguistics

In semiotics, signified and signifier are the two main components of a sign, where signified is what the sign represents or refers to, known as the "plane of content", and signifier which is the "plane of expression" or the observable aspects of the sign itself. The idea was first proposed in the work of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, one of the two founders of semiotics.

Chiara Bottici is an Italian philosopher, critical theorist and historian of philosophy.

Jonathan Fruoco French historian

Jonathan Fruoco, FRHistS is a French historian who specializes in medieval English literature, with a specific focus on the polyphony of Geoffrey Chaucer's poetry, and historical sociolinguistics. In 2022, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

References

  1. ↑ John B. Thompson, Studies in the Theory of Ideology (1984) p. 6
  2. ↑ Steger, Manfred B.; James, Paul (2013). "'Levels of Subjective Globalization: Ideologies, Imaginaries, Ontologies'". Perspectives on Global Development and Technology. 12 (1–2): 23. doi:10.1163/15691497-12341240.
  3. 1 2 John R. Searle, The Construction of Social Reality (Penguin 1996) p. 4
  4. ↑ Quoted in Thompson, p. 23
  5. ↑ Thompson, p. 24
  6. ↑ Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms (1996)p. 322 and p. 22
  7. ↑ David Macey, "Introduction", Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis (London 1994) p. xxi
  8. 1 2 Macey, p. xxi
  9. ↑ Jacques Lacan, Écrits: A Selection (London 1997) p. 21
  10. ↑ R. D. Laing, Self and Others (Penguin 1969) p. 38-40
  11. ↑ J. Childers/G. Hentz eds., The Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism (1995) p. 152
  12. ↑ Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (2007) p. 164-5 and p. 209
  13. ↑ Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (2007) p. 112
  14. ↑ Michael McKeon, The Secret History of Domesticity (2005) p. 107
  15. ↑ Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (2007) p. 176-207
  16. ↑ Poovey, M. "The Liberal Civil Subject and the Social in Eighteenth-Century British Moral Philosophy." Public Culture 14.1 (2002): 125–45, p. 132
  17. ↑ Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London 1991) p. 6 and p. 4
  18. ↑ Searle, p. 12-3
  19. ↑ Marcus, George E. (1995-04-01). Technoscientific Imaginaries: Conversations, Profiles, and Memoirs. University of Chicago Press. ISBN   9780226504445.
  20. ↑ R. T. A. Lysioff et al, Music and Technoculture (2003) p. 10
  21. ↑ Marvin, Carolyn (1988-02-11). When Old Technologies Were New : Thinking About Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century. Oxford University Press, USA. ISBN   9780198021384.
  22. ↑ Vries, Imar de (2012-01-01). Tantalisingly Close: An Archaeology of Communication Desires in Discourses of Mobile Wireless Media. Amsterdam University Press. ISBN   9789089643544.
  23. ↑ Flichy, Patrice (2007-01-01). The Internet Imaginaire . MIT Press. ISBN   9780262062619.
  24. ↑ Mosco, Vincent (2005-01-01). The Digital Sublime: Myth, Power, and Cyberspace. MIT Press. ISBN   9780262633291.
  25. ↑ Jonathan Fruoco, Andréa Rando Martin, Arnaud Laimé, Imaginaire sériel: Les mécanismes sériels à l'œuvre dans l'acte créatif, Grenoble, UGA Editions, 2017, 174 p. ( ISBN   9782377470006), p. 10–15
  26. ↑ "Appel à communication".

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.