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Showing papers on "The Imaginary published in 1975"



Journal ArticleDOI
01 Dec 1975-Africa
TL;DR: For instance, this article argued that the history of religion has no transcendental privilege: it is simply a particular language, a system of communication with a phantom universe, the imaginary, which is a phenomenon sui generis, whatever relation it might sustain with other aspects of the total culture.
Abstract: VWVESTERN scientific culture finds itself in a singular position with respect to the magico-religious system embodied in medieval culture from which, after strenuous resistence from the contemporary ecclesiastical authorities, it originally broke free. That is to say, it has still not succeeded in forming a theory concerning that very class of phenomena with which it was sometimes obliged violently to struggle in order to constitute itself as an autonomous discipline. And we, despite the proliferation of ethnographic and historical studies of extremely high quality, are hardly more advanced than in I902, when Marcel Mauss and Henri Hubert (I950: 138) wrote: 'Until now the history of religions has relied on a rag-bag of vague ideas ... the science of religions does not yet possess a scientific nomenclature'. Half a century later, Levi-Strauss was indeed to note the progressive disaffection of anthropology with the systematic study of religious phenomena. It is true that in England Frazer's great breakthrough gave impetus to the study of comparative mythology, but that trend was abruptly to be interrupted by the triumph of Functionalist doctrine. Now, however, there does at last seem to be a revival of interest both in France and in England. The reawakening concern with religious anthropology is evidenced in Great Britain by the publication of a number of important studies which attach due importance to symbolic systems, even if all attempt, more or less successfully, to preserve a link with the social order. There seems to me here imperceptibly to be a return to the position of the great master of British anthropology Evans-Pritchard, to whose memory I here pay homage. In the declaration with which he prefaced Nuer Religion (1950: viii) this author maintained that religion was a phenomenon sui generis, whatever relation it might sustain with other aspects of the total culture. No doubt in opposition to Evans-Pritchard, however, I would maintain that this phenomenon has no transcendental privilege: it is simply a particular language, a system of communication with a phantom universe, the imaginary. My intention here is to try to demonstrate how myth and ritual, the two poles of this symbolic system, are linked in the form of an autonomous dialectic, something much more than a simple concern to document or validate the social order. I should like to refer to my work Le Roi ivre (I972), whose central theme is the cycle of myths concerning the founding of the State in Central Africa. I think that ethno-historians, particularly Jan Vansina, have too readily believed themselves able to interpret the legendary chronicle of the Luba kingdom as a historical text, portraying the arrival of an invading people endowed with what is presented in the legend as a superior civilization. The function of this crucial text is thus said simply to be the legitimation of the sacred power of a new dynasty. It is a curious fact that no field-worker, not even Father Tempels, even though he claimed (albeit dubiously) to have constructed a Bantu philosophy from Luba belief, has noted that all the mythical thought of the Luba is condensed in this one narrative. We will therefore outline some of its implications.

10 citations


Journal Article
TL;DR: The distinction between fiction and fantasy is either nonexistent or else a matter of good versus sloppy technique as mentioned in this paper, and the distinction between them is rooted in two opposed functions of literature, and ultimately in two opposing functions of fantasy, and the fact that James himself often reverted to this distinction in his later criticism is a partial proof of its authenticity.
Abstract: merely, as Henry James contended in " The Art of Fiction," either nonexistent or else a matter of good versus sloppy technique. Rather, the distinction between them is rooted in two opposed functions of literature, and ultimately in two opposed functions of fantasy. The fact that James himself often reverted to this distinction in his later criticism (for instance, in the preface to The American) is a partial proof of its authenticity. " Romance " implies wish-fulfillment, and is bound up with dreams and illusions. The chivalric romances which Cervantes attacks are full of " enchantments, knightly en counters, battles, challenges, wounds, with tales of love and its torments, and all sorts of impossible things " which turn Don Quixote's head. And later romances—those of Anne Radcliffe and of Hawthorne, for example—combine the "real" with the "marvelous" in "a neutral territory," like the moonlit parlor where Hawthorne conceived The Scarlet Letter, " somewhere between the real world and fairy-land, where the Actual and the Imaginary may meet, and each imbue itself with the nature of the other."

2 citations