The Imaginary

About: The Imaginary is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 4807 publications have been published within this topic receiving 87663 citations.

Anshen Liming or the Religious Dimension of Confucianism

Abstract: There is no doubt that the signs of "Confucian revival" in China have been manifold since the beginning of this century; less clear, however, is the actual significance of contemporary aspirations toward reactivating Confucianism's religious dimension. Given the abolition of the imperial cult of Heaven, the transformation of the traditional academies into modern institutions of learning, the reduction of ancestor worship, and the refashioning of Temples of Culture (wenmiao) into tourist destinations, one can wonder to what extent Confucianism-inspired religiosity might be today more imaginary than real. Could it not be said that contemporary discourses rooted in Confucianism have less to do with the present than with the past or the future, both in terms of commemorating ancient rituals and of dreaming up utopian schemes for their possible restoration? In fact, the modern perspectives claiming such a prestigious past can only be properly understood within the context of a turbulent history that has seen the internal transformation of society and Western influences interact and alter the overall religious landscape. Nevertheless, despite a century's worth of massive destruction, there is still room for the recomposition currently taking place in full view, a process that reveals, most notably, the problematic nature of applying the modern Western concept of "religion" to the Chinese cultural context.(1)The question now is how we can identify, within the current upheavals in Chinese society, phenomena that legitimately attest to a renewal of "religious" Confucianism. The fieldwork conducted in conjunction with this study can provide only an imperfect response to this question. In an environment still profoundly marked by state policy concerning religion, it is best to momentarily suspend use of the familiar categories of the sociology of religion and pay closer empirical attention to a variety of discourses and practices that are ambiguous by virtue of their multiple meanings and the rapid societal changes affecting them.As an example of this new situation, consider the symptomatic proliferation of the multivocal term xin ("trust"). This value denotes a variety of meanings ranging from "trust" to "belief," and its fading or absence in social intercourse is commonly lamented today.For example, a worker who left his home in Hubei to work in one of the new industrial loci along the Pearl River Delta decides one day to quit his job with a state-run shoe manufacturer in Dongguan. He opts to take a job in a restaurant run by a young woman who has embraced Confucian ideals. Through study of Confucius's Analects every morning, both on his own and in groups, he finds a source of daily fulfilment.The working conditions were hard in that factory, " he explains, "but the problem wasn't material; in fact, I made more money there. But at that factory all people thought about was money, there was no trust (xin). I'm much happier here...{2)At the other end of the social scale, a Guangdong-based entrepreneur who is equally committed to the notion of a Confucian renewal also brings up the need for trust, both within his business, where employees are encouraged to take the teachings of the classics to heart, and within the larger social and economic environment.(3)In noting the various contexts in which this term comes up, it would be possible to outline a veritable "general economy" of xin that draws its effectiveness from the resources of traditional Chinese culture and the imperatives of the new capitalist society. Thus, one could highlight three possible realms for this collective virtue: the dimension of "trust" expressed in social interactions; the dimension of "credit" praised in economic relations; and the dimension of "creed" that permeates religious relations in general.

"Baraka": World Cinema and the Global Culture Industry

Abstract: Honey, They Shrunk the Planet. Ever since Marshall McLuhan's celebrated proclamation that communications technology had "electrically contracted" the world to the dimensions of a global village, it would seem, the earth has been shrinking: satellite TV, frequent flyer miles, and, of course, The Web are making the world a smaller place. Thirty years after Understanding Media, the global village has become a commonplace, with McLuhan himself hailed as a visionary prophet of a world in which distance no longer matters. ATT IBM commercials show African tribesmen happily using laptop computers. This article considers the impact of these developments in the domain of film. On the one hand, the history of the cinema has been entangled from the outset with global processes, from colonialism to its postcolonial aftermath. Cinema today, most would agree, has become a global cultural form, however different its local manifestations. At the same time, McLuhan's trope of the global village both reflects and has lent further momentum to the emergence of an imaginary idea of "the world," and this global imaginary, we will see, has assumed increasing prominence in contemporary cinema. In turn, film today plays a significant role in articulating and perpetuating what might be called global mythologies: ideological discourses about the world and humanity's relationship to it. The growing attention to what is variously called "World Cinema" or "global cinema" in recent years might seem curious, given that film production, distribution, and consumption have long been a global affair. Studies of non-Western film industries abound, and "World Cinema" has long been approached much as "world

Gulliver's Voyage to the Houyhnhnms

Abstract: It has long been recognised that the fourth Voyage of Gulliver's Travels, far from being the outburst of a misanthrope who delighted in " degrading human Nature," is the culmination of Swift's lifelong attack on the pride of man, especially the pride which convinces him that he can live by the light of his unaided reason, the pride that Swift himself sums up, in the title of one of his imaginary discourses in A Tale of A Tub, as " An Universal Rule of Reason, or Every Man his own Carver." In particular, he is taking up a position opposed to the doctrines of natural goodness which pervade eighteenth century thought and which find systematic expression in the writings of " Toland, Collins, Tindal, and others of the fraternity," who, as Swift remarks, all talk much the same language and whose ideas are dismissed in the Argument against A bolishing Christianity as " Trumpery." It is clear, both from the satires and the religious writings, that Swift was hostile to all doctrines of the natural self-sufficiency of man, whether they were expressed in Deistic terms or in the related pride of neoStoicism; and the Fourth Voyage of Gulliver's Travels embodies that hostility. But while the object of attack is established, it is not immediately clear, from the Voyage itself, whether any positive position is implied in the Houyhnhnms or in the other characters. The Yahoos, clearly, embody the negative intention, and are to be condemned. This is what happens to man when he tries to live by reason and nature; he falls, as has been pointed out,1 into a " state of nature " nearer to that envisaged by Hobbes than that of Locke's Two, Treatises of Government. It is significant that, according to one Hounyhnhnm theory, the Yahoos were descended from a pair of human beings, driven to the country by sea: " coming to Land and being forsaken by their Companions, they retired to the Mountains, and degenerating by Degrees, became in Process of Time, much

Ideology, Fiction, Narrative

Abstract: In ideology men do indeed express, not the relation between them and their conditions of existence, but the way they live the relation between them and their conditions of existence: this presupposes both a real relation and an "imaginary," "lived" relation. Ideology, then, is the expression of the relation between men and their "world." that is, the (overdetermined) unity of the real relation and the imaginary relation between them and their real conditions of existence. In ideology the real relation is inevitably invested in the imaginary relation, a relation that expresses a will (conservative, conformist, reformist or revolutionary), a hope or a nostalgia, rather than describing a reality. Louis Althusser, For Marx