The Imaginary

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

Postnationalist African Cinemas

Abstract: List of images Acknowledgements Introduction: African cinema, nationalism and its discontents i African cinema and national(ist) constructions ii Wealth and poverty of nationalist scholarship iii Postnational(ist) imaginary and new paradigms 1. Comedy and film i Comedic archetypes ii Verbal and visual comedy 2. Choreographing subjects i Dance on stage ii Dance, syntax, and discourse 3. Crimes, society and the "commandement" i Africa and theories of (impossible) crime fiction ii Absent investigation and the triumph of the commandement iii Flawed investigations and the decline of the commandement 4. Myth, tragedy, and cinema i On African cultural "specificity" and tragic forms ii Oedipal conflicts, enemy brothers, and families in crisis iii Absolutism, oracles and the tragic 5. Epic constructions i Narrative performance ii Epic magnification 6. (Un)masked sexuality i African sexuality as category of analysis ii Sex in the nation and the trouble with representation iii Framing bodies and the temptation of pornography 7. Witchcraft and the postcolonial i From sorcery imaginary to the imaginary sorcerer ii Occult side of power, power of the occult Conclusion: What is African cinema (today)? Bibliography Filmography

Envisioning Autonomy through Improvising and Composing: Castoriadis visiting creative music education practice

Abstract: Do psychological perspectives constitute the only way through which the role of musical creativity in education can be addressed, researched and theorised? This essay attempts to offer an alternative view of musical creativity as a deeply social and political form of human praxis, by proposing a perspective rooted in the thought of the political philosopher and activist Cornelius Castoriadis (1922–1997). This is done in two steps. First, an attempt is made to place the pursuit of the concept of musical creativity within a larger educational and societal context of conflicting trajectories that run through (a) Modernity and (b) Education. Then, I revisit the issue of educational value of improvising and composing through creating conceptual links between the process of music-making through improvisation and composition and the project of political autonomy as conceived by Castoriadis. By foregrounding instituting imaginary over instituted imaginary, improvising and composing become active processes of positing new legitimacies, and of creating a music-making context that searches for its own foundations. It is in and through creative musical praxis that we can think about issues of hierarchies, musical values, social dimensions of different music-making processes, our relationship to past values and to historical dimensions of music. By arguing that improvisation and composition might be seen as ways of positing the issue of political autonomy in musical terms, this paper emphasises the role of improvisation and composition as a mode of potentially transformative educational practice that may foster the development of critical consciousness, linking music education to a larger project of re-discovering and at the same time re-defining democracy.

Lacan’s Construction and Deconstruction of the Double-Mirror Device

Abstract: In the nineteen fifties Jacques Lacan developed a set-up with a concave mirror and a plane mirror, based on which he described the nature of human identification. He also formulated ideas on how psychoanalysis, qua clinical practice, responds to identification. In this paper Lacan’s schema of the two mirrors is described in detail and the theoretical line of reasoning he aimed to articulate with aid of this spatial model is discussed. It is argued that Lacan developed his double-mirror device to clarify the relationship between the drive, the ego, the ideal ego, the ego ideal, the other and the Other. This model helped Lacan describe the dynamics of identification and explain how psychoanalytic treatment works. He argued that by working with free association, psychoanalysis aims to articulate unconscious desire, and bypass the tendency of the ego for misrecognition. The reasons why Lacan stressed the limits of his double-mirror model and no longer considered it useful from the early nineteen sixties onward are examined. It is argued that his concept of the gaze, which he qualifies as a so-called ‘object a,’ prompted Lacan move away from his double-mirror set-up. In those years Lacan gradually began to study the tension between drive and signifier. The schema of the two mirrors, by contrast, focused on the tension between image and signifier, and missed the point Lacan aimed to address in this new era of his work.