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)

The most widespread statement of political philosophy is presented here in the simplified and trivialised form of “man is X; he must become Y. ” Man must do so at the same time for himself, for his own survival, but also for the good of all, of the Community, of the City: the plurality must absolutely, in any way whatsoever, give way to unity, subject to [sous peine] and under threat of chaos. The essential question found confronting political doctrines, moreover (...) since the prominence of the idea of democracy is the following: how to bring about the existence of a united society across a heterogeneous social body? The response from philosophy articulates itself around three principle schemas: the theoretical construction of a unified community under the order of similar laws to those of nature (Platonic schema); the search for the best regime, which will have as its ultimate end the moderation and perpetual regulation of conflicts, by an optimal combination of freedom and stability (Aristotelian schema); and the theorisation of the “end of politics” by the locating of a “social wrong” inscribed in a structure doomed to collapse by the practical negation of its ideological foundations (Marxian schema and derivatives). The mode of thought which imposes itself here is decisional. Beyond the third schema which constitutes in some way a meta-political critique, and necessitates that it alone has a particular analysis, in the two preceding, man constitutes a kind of material – raw or primary, depending – that philosophy will work on, and sculpt to give it a form that harmonises fully with the Whole that it prescribes. In political philosophy, we always turn more or less around the “Let’s make man” of Hobbes, that is, around the technical transformation of a material given. Or to say it otherwise: the creation of an oeuvre from crude and imperfect elements, an oeuvre thought like a masterpiece – that is to say, one that contains within it an idea of perfection and permanence – but doomed here to serial reproduction. (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.

The social thought of Castoriadis and Lefort address Old World constellations. Yet both are positioned in a critical relationship to the Enlightenment and Romanticism, and pose questions about power, the political and citizenship relevant to different civilizational settings. Two political philosophies that emerged in the era of revolutionary critique are examined in this paper alongside Castoriadis and Lefort. Thomas Jefferson’s philosophy of republic and empire and Simon Bolivar’s creed of independence were American visions that connected with the political imaginary. Each (...) set down traditions open to interpretation and mythologisation. Both invoked an older rivalry of two images of the New World, as American or as Colombian, which was really a rivalry of Spanish and British Empires and their civilizational influences. Where earlier republican visions developed at the cusp of virtue and interest cultures had posed a particular range of questions about democracy, civic constitution and independence, American states now contained democratic and authoritarian potential. Even though Castoriadis and Lefort did not make these American contexts the centre of their work, each conceive the political and politics in ways that are relevant to American modernities. A key argument put in this paper with respect to Castoriadis and Lefort is that Castoriadis’s conception of creation is more salient to the republican revolutions more generally, while Lefort’s notion of political imaginary finds a strong case in the North American revolution. (shrink)

A critical appraisal of Chiara Bottici’s influential work on imaginal politics, this collection uses this rich theoretical framework for incisive analysis, within critical theory and political philosophy, psychoanalysis and sociology.

Offering a field-defining survey of the topic, this is the first book to engage all the key figures in the social imaginaries field. It offers new perspectives on the productive tension between social imaginaries and the creative imagination, providing the first programmatic approach to the field as a whole.

Civilization, Modernity, and Critique provides the first comprehensive, cutting edge engagement with the work of one of the most foundational figures in civilizational analysis: Johann P. Arnason. In order to do justice to Arnason's seminal and wide-ranging contributions to sociology, social theory and history, it brings together distinguished scholars from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds and geographical contexts. Through a critical, interdisciplinary dialogue, it offers an enrichment and expansion of the methodological, theoretical, and applicative scope of civilizational analysis, by addressing (...) some of the most complex and pressing problems of contemporary global society. A unique and timely contribution to the ongoing task of advancing the project of a critical theory of society, this volume will appeal to scholars of sociology and social theory with interests in historical sociology, critical theory and civilizational analysis. (shrink)

This authoritative survey offers a concise description of Middle English, the language of Chaucer, during the period from 1100 to 1500. Middle English is discussed in relation to both earlier and later stages in the history of English and in regard to other languages with which it came into contact. The book covers the principal features of Middle English spelling, pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary and also introduces Middle English textual studies.

This book studies the diverse societies, cities, nations, economies, and regions of the Americas as they emerged in the Western hemisphere in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Drawing on the paradigms of social imaginaries and civilizational analysis, it explores regions of Central America, the Caribbean, the United States, and Latin America.

Postwar approaches to Japan’s modern era have functioned within a metanarrative of modernization. Contemporary comparative analysis approaches Japan from the vantage point of civilisational sociology and a paradigm of multiple modernities. The development of sociological thought itself in Japan could also be interpreted through this framework, although there has been little research to date along these lines. This paper explores how Japanese social thought coalesced in global encounters in the 1870s and 1880s. It analyses the radical reinterpretation of classical Western (...) sociology in the reception of Comte, Mill and Spencer by Japan’s scholars and modernisers in the nascent public spheres of Meiji society. Special attention is paid to the philosophy of Nishi Amane. (shrink)

In Voir l'invisible Michel Henry applies his philosophy of autoaffection (which is both inspired by, and critical of, Husserl) to the realm of aesthetics. Henry claims that autoaffection, as non-objective experience, is essential not only to self-experience, but also to the experience of objects and their qualities. Intentionality tempts us to experience objects merely from the 'outside', but aesthetic experience returns us to the inner life of objects as a lived experience. On the basis of an examination of Henry's aesthetic (...) theory in the light of Husserl's analysis of our experience of visible objects, I conclude that revisions are required in both Husserl's and Henry's approaches: Husserl's noema must be considered to be a lived-through experience, and non-objective lived-through experience must be recognized as primordial evidence; Henry's claim that intentionality makes unreal all that it objectifies must be replaced by a recognition of the interdependence between autoaffection and heteroaffection. (shrink)

This essay aims to examine metropolitan cities of Latin America with two aspects of the literature in anthropology, history, and sociology in mind. First, the essay addresses an imbalanced focus on cities in the USA and Canada by sketching the significance of migration, creation, and urban development in four major metropolises of Latin America. Second, in place of a framework of urban imaginaries, which has dominated the sociology of Latin American cities in recent years, I argue for a more precise (...) notion of metropolitan imaginaries that better frames the creativity of particular cities and their level of integration into international and regional networks. With this more precise notion, I distinguish southern cities as highly connected places, which attract migrants and bring economic and cultural traffic to their shores, ports, plazas, and streets. They are lively centers of Atlantic modernity with connections that generate greater magnitude for creativity and, as such, bear international significance as places of architecture and urban design. In their informal settlements, impulses of organic creation further distinguish southern metropolises from their North American counterparts. The quality of international and regional connections distinguishes these cities from other urban centers in Latin America, a point underestimated in the literature on urban imaginaries. In this essay, I examine 19th and 20th-century Buenos Aires, Mexico City, São Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro. Each is distinguished from most cities by the magnitude of migration, the diversity of their populations, and the connections they have to global and regional developments. Crucially, each one stands out for the quality and impact of their metropolis-making, particularly in creative architecture and urban design. (shrink)

Transforming Early English shows how historical pragmatics can offer a powerful explanatory framework for the changes medieval English and Older Scots texts undergo, as they are transmitted over time and space. The book argues that formal features such as spelling, script and font, and punctuation - often neglected in critical engagement with past texts - relate closely to dynamic, shifting socio-cultural processes, imperatives and functions. This theme is illustrated through numerous case-studies in textual recuperation, ranging from the reinvention of Old (...) English poetry and prose in the later medieval and early modern periods, to the eighteenth-century 'vernacular revival' of literature in Older Scots. (shrink)

Johann Arnason and Shmuel Eisenstadt's social theories have remarkably different origins. Yet each has moved onto common ground with the other over a period of time. They meet in historical sociology in dialogue over theories of state formation and images of civilisation. Each is engaged in a project of revising civilisations sociology that reaches an apex with the comparative study of Japan.Their groundbreaking contributions can be read critically against a wider background of debates about postcolonialism, the reputation of the notion (...) of civilisation and the state of area studies in the humanities and social sciences. (shrink)