The Imaginary

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

Music, film and gangsters in the Sophiatown imaginary: featuring Dolly Rathebe

Abstract: Theorizing the relationships between politics and the cultural topography of Johannesburg's townships during the 1950s, this article critiques the commonplace interpretation of the period's blackurban culture as lIgintentionall/Ig resistance against apartheid. It is proposed that a more complex interpretative model may be derived by reading the significance of such iconic figures as star women musicians and elite gangsters in relation to three fundamental dimensions that are understood in Lacanian psychoanalysis to structure the human universe: the "real", the "symbolic", and the imaginary". The derivative concept "social imaginary" is found to be salient, particularly a localized variant, the Sophiatown imaginary. Fundamentally shaped by Hollywood representations of American culture, the latter manifests in an inverted moral code and style that is expressed and constructed through dress, argot, and the production and consumption of music. Occupying a pivotal place at the fulcrum between the screen and the street, jazz singer, film star, fashion icon and gangster's moll Dolly Rathebe offers a revealing case study for an enquiry into the Sophiatown imaginary.

Unsettled Visions: Contemporary Asian American Artists and the Social Imaginary

Abstract: List of Illustrations ix Preface xiii Acknowledgments xix Introduction: Art, Asian America, and the Social Imaginary: A Poetics of Positionality 1 1. A Play of Positionalities: Reconsidering Identification 17 2. Othering: Primitivism, Orientalism, and Stereotyping 57 3. Trauma, Social Memory, and Art 120 4. Migration, Mixing, and Place 194 Epilogue: Toward an Ongoing Dialogue 271 Notes 283 Bibliography 321 Index 353