scispace - formally typeset
Search or ask a question
Topic

The Imaginary

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


Papers
More filters
Book
20 Jul 2000
TL;DR: The role of Kabylia in the Algerian War of Independence was explored in this paper, where the theory and poetics of practice were adapted to the role of the distinction between old wine in new bottles and the nouvel opium des intellectuels.
Abstract: Peasants into revolutionaries? - "between camps" during the Algerian War de-mythologising consumer society -class and culture in France, 1962-69 continuity, change and crisis in French higher education, 1964-70 returning to Kabylia - the theory and poetics of practice "an imaginary variation" - the role of Kabylia la distinction - old wine in new bottles? "le nouvel opium des intellectuels" - neo-liberalism and the defence of the universal

169 citations

Book
01 Feb 1984
TL;DR: Caughey as mentioned in this paper showed that the violent fantasies of such figures as Mark David Chapman, killer of John Lennon, and John Hinckley, would-be assassin of President Reagan, have commonly been interpreted, by professionals and public alike, as socially aberrant--as the result of psychological instability.
Abstract: The violent fantasies of such figures as Mark David Chapman, killer of John Lennon, and John Hinckley, would-be assassin of President Reagan, have commonly been interpreted, by professionals and public alike, as socially aberrant--as the result of psychological instability. John L. Caughey's provocative study shows not only that such fantasies are shaped by enculturation, but also that they are closely linked in content and form to the more benign imaginative constructs of "normal" Americans.A new departure in the study of American society, this book takes a cultural approach to imaginary social experience, viewing the imaginary social interactions in dreams, fantasies, memories, anticipations, media involvement, and hallucinations as social processes because they involve people in pseudo-interactions with images of other people. Drawing on his anthropological research in the United States, Pakistan, and Micronesia, Caughey explores from a phenomenological perspective the social patterning that prevails in each of these imaginary worlds. He analyzes the kinds of identities and roles the individual assumes and examines the kinds of interactions that are played out with imagined persons.Caughey demonstrates that imaginary social relationships dominate much of our subjective social experience. He also shows that these imaginary relationships have many important connections to actual social conduct. Moreover, cultural values dictate the texture of the mental processes: imaginary conversations both reflect and reinforce the basic beliefs of the society, imagined anticipations of the reactions of real other people can serve social control functions, and media figures affect actual social relations by serving as mentors and role models.Caughey's arresting reappraisal of the world of fantasy is, in the words of James P. Spradley, "an outstanding job of scholarship" and "a unique contribution to the field of anthropology in general, to the study of culture and cognition, and to the study of American culture specifically."

166 citations

Book
01 Jan 1990
TL;DR: In this article, Burch's singularly perceptive view of film and its origins will interest all who care about film theory and history "Life to Those Shadows" presents a critique of 'classical' approaches to film: the assumptions that what we call the language of film was a natural, organic development, and that it lay latent from the outset in the basic technology of the camera.
Abstract: Noel Burch's singularly perceptive view of film and its origins will interest all who care about film theory and history "Life to Those Shadows" presents a critique of 'classical' approaches to film: the assumptions that what we call the language of film was a natural, organic development, and that it lay latent from the outset in the basic technology of the camera, waiting for the prescient pioneers to bring it into being The view that film language was a universal, neutral medium, innocent of any social or historical meaning in itself, is also challenged here Burch's major thesis is that, on the contrary, film language has a social and economic history, that it evolved in the way it did because of when and where it was constructed - in the capitalist and imperialist West between 1892 and 1929 From this perspective, the book examines the emergence of what it defines as cinema's Institutional Mode of Representation and the sociohistorical circumstances in which it took place Central to the Institutional Mode are the principles of visualization - camera placement and movement, lighting, editing, mise-en-scene - that filmmakers and audiences came to internalize over the first three decades Special emphasis is laid on the all-important change that occurred in the placing of the spectator, from a position of exteriority to the film image - implicit in both film-form and viewing conditions during the primitive era (pre-1909) - to the imaginary centering of the spectator-subject - completed only with the generalization of lip-synch sound after 1929 Burch contends that this imaginary centering of a sensorially isolated spectator is the keystone of the cinematic illusion of reality, still achieved today by the same means as it was sixty years ago

162 citations

Book
01 Jan 2005
TL;DR: Pile as mentioned in this paper explores the dream-like and ghost-like experiences of the city and identifies four substantial phantasmagorias: dreams, magic, vampires and ghosts.
Abstract: What is real about city life? Real Cities shows why it is necessary to take seriously the more imaginary, fantastic and emotional aspects of city life. Drawing inspiration from the work of Walter Benjamin, Sigmund Freud and Georg Simmel, Pile explores the dream-like and ghost-like experiences of the city. Such experiences are, he argues, best described as phantasmagorias. The phantasmagorias of city life, though commonplace, are far from self-evident and little understood. This book is a path-breaking exploration of urban phantasmagorias, grounded empirically in a series of unusual and exciting case studies. In this study, four substantial phantasmagorias are identified: dreams, magic, vampires and ghosts. The investigation of each phantasmagoria is developed using a wide variety of clear examples. Thus, voodoo in New York and New Orleans shows how ideas about magic are forged within cities. Meanwhile vampires reveal how specific fears about sex and death are expressed within, and circulate between, cities such as London and Singapore. Taken together, such examples build a unique picture of the diverse roles of the imaginary, fantastic and the emotional in modern city life. What is "real" about the city has radical consequences for how we think about improving city life, for all too often these are over-looked in utopian schemes for the city. Real Cities forcefully argues that an appreciation of urban phantasmagorias must be central to what is considered real about city life.

161 citations

Book
01 Jan 1996
TL;DR: In/Different Spaces as discussed by the authors explores the construction of identities in the psychical space between perception and consciousness, drawing upon psychoanalytic theories to describe the constitution and maintenance of'self' and 'us' - in imaginary spatial and temporal relations to 'other' and "them' - through the all-important relay of images.
Abstract: Recent discussions about the culture of images have focused on issues of identity - sexual, racial, national - and the boundaries that define subjectivity. In this context Victor Burgin adopts an original critical strategy. He understands images less in traditional terms of the specific institutions that produce them, such as cinema, photography, advertising, and television, and more as hybrid mental constructs composed of fragments derived from the heterogeneous sources that together constitute the 'media'. Through deft analyses of a photograph by Helmut Newton, Parisian cityscapes, the space of the department store, a film by Ousmane Sembene, and the writings of Henri Lefebvre, Andre Breton, and Roland Barthes, Burgin develops an incisive theory of our culture of images and spectacle. "In/Different Spaces" explores the construction of identities in the psychical space between perception and consciousness, drawing upon psychoanalytic theories to describe the constitution and maintenance of 'self' and 'us' - in imaginary spatial and temporal relations to 'other' and 'them' - through the all-important relay of images. For Burgin, the image is never a transparent representation of the world but rather a principal player on the stage of history.

161 citations


Network Information
Related Topics (5)
Narrative
64.2K papers, 1.1M citations
80% related
Argument
41K papers, 755.9K citations
77% related
Feminism
27.5K papers, 649.7K citations
76% related
Ideology
54.2K papers, 1.1M citations
76% related
Politics
263.7K papers, 5.3M citations
76% related
Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
2023563
20221,296
2021145
2020180
2019178
2018199