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 published on a yearly basis
Papers
More filters
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined the course of planning in Latin America, long four last decades and through the three registers: real, imaginary and symbolic, after Lacan, compared with the "worlds" one, two and three, after Popper, describing its modifications and interactions and its transformation and complication.
Abstract: Venn's diagram and borromean knot are used as examples of growing complexity than can be applied to the development of planning, beginning with its critic in both the technical and political sides. The three registers: real, imaginary and symbolic, after Lacan, are compared with the "worlds" one, two and three, after Popper, describing its modifications and interactions and its transformation and complication. With that background, the course of planning is examined in Latin America, long four last decades and through the three registers. The need of deepen the dialog is concluded, emphasizing the symbolic component and its imperative integration with the others components of the problem.
16 citations
16 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a discursive and visual analysis of the covers and articles in Maclean's (from January, 1960 to May, 2006), and to a lesser extent in L'Actualite (from 1976 to May 2006), reveals a dualistic pattern depicting multicultural and immigrant representations as either the successful, contributing, and model "other" or the threatening, oppositional, and problematic "other."
Abstract: How have images of immigration and mutticulturalism been depicted on Canadian magazine covers and what do they say about the national politics of immigration and multiculturalism? A discursive and visual analysis of the covers and articles in Maclean's (from January, 1960 to May, 2006), and to a lesser extent in L'Actualite (from 1976 to May 2006), reveals a dualistic pattern depicting multicultural and immigrant representations as either the successful, contributing, and model "other" or the threatening, oppositional, and problematic "other." Our analysis goes beyond this binarism and exposes the intersections of age, class, status, sexuality, and racialization as integral to the multicultural context. Yet, as a concept, multiculturalism has hot necessarily been evident in the public and media imaginary of Canada. Resume Quelles sont les images vehiculees par les couvertures de revues canadiennes sur l'immigration et le multiculturalisme et que disent-elles a propos des politiques nationales sur ces questions? Une analyse discursive et visuelle des couvertures et des textes de Maclean's (de janvier 1960 a mai 2006) et, a un moindre degre, de L'Actualite (de 1976 a mai 2006) revelent un motif dualistique des representations multiculturelles et immigrantes en tant qu'un > presente soit comme un modele de contribution sociale et de succes, soit comme une menace, une opposition et un probleme. Notre analyse va au-dela de ce binarisme et met en lumiere l'interconnection de la classe, du statut social, de la sexualite et de la racialisation comme faisant partie integrante du contexte multiculturel. Cependant, au Canada, le multiculturalisme n'est pas un concept evident dans l'imaginaire public ni dans celui des medias. INTRODUCTION Stuart Hall (1996, 613) has argued that "[a] national culture is a discourse--a way of constructing meanings which influences and organizes both out actions and our conceptions of ourselves" Media plays a central role in producing and reproducing a national culture. Media is often said to "either inhibit or advance the aims of producing more democratic, egalitarian and truly multicultural societies" (Kellner 1995, 10). The discursive relation between national culture and media was clearly articulated in the celebratory centennial edition of Maclean's magazine. Senior Contributing Editor Peter C. Newman (2005, 7) writes about being "struck by the parallels between the magazine and the country. "Both" Newman remarks, "have journeyed from primitive to possible to prosperous to postmodern" (ibid). Characterizing such mutation, Newman states that "[o]nce an impregnable WASP stronghold, the country was transformed into the most multicultural cultures" (ibid). And, according to Newman, Maclean's "has chronicled every leap and twitch of the country's dramatic sea change ... woven into the dreams and memories of its readers" (ibid). Media do not simply chronicle or report events. News is the product of a complex process where "newsworthiness" is established according to the organizational practices and ideological values of the media (Hall et al. 2000). Indeed, national news media do not only attempt to inform the largest possible audience, they also socialize their readers by purveying hegemonic ideals that ascertain a shared national culture (Jiwani 2005). However, a national audience misleadingly conceals and reflects divergent interests and a multitude of regional, cultural, and structural differences. This representational challenge is also compounded by the intense concentration of news and entertainment media into a few conglomerates. A handful of large corporations such as Rogers Communications Inc., CTVglobemedia, CanWest Global, Astral Media, Quebecor, and Shaw hold a wide-range of television, cable television, radio, newspapers, magazines, internet, and/or other communication and entertainment operations. Of particular interest here is Rogers Communications Inc. …
16 citations
Posted Content•
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the potential of Science Fiction (SF), and in particular radical SF from the 1960s and 1970s, for figuring a break with a hollowed-out present.
Abstract: This paper turns around the key concern that it has become almost impossible to imagine a form of the future that is neither a prolongation of what already exists nor its apocalyptic demise. In trying to find ways of reconceiving the future in a more productive fashion, the paper relies heavily on Fredric Jameson's work. Jameson worries that the traditional realist novel, which has featured so prominently in discussions of 'literature' in the field of organization studies, has committed itself far too readily to what he terms 'ontological realism': the deliberate confusion of that which is meaningful with that which exists. He therefore explores the potential of Science Fiction (SF), and in particular radical SF from the 1960s and 1970s, for figuring a break with a hollowed-out present. This is achieved, for example, by transforming our own present into the past of something yet to come. It is as if Walter Benjamin's angel of history would stand in an imaginary future with its face turned back towards our present. Such revelatory time-slips find their clearest expression in the novels of Philip K Dick, and it is to them that this paper will turn when working through some concrete examples.
16 citations
TL;DR: In a series of letters written home about her daily life on a Cuban coffee plantation, where she traveled for a rest cure in 1833, Sophia Peabody describes Cuba as a realm of romance imbued by moonlight as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: In her "Cuba Journal," a series of letters written home about her daily life on a Cuban coffee plantation, where she traveled for a rest cure in 1833, Sophia Peabody describes Cuba as a realm of romance imbued by moonlight. Recounting an evening when she joined King Salvador, one of the plantation's slaves and a former African king, in conversation about his "former kingdom & subjects," she writes: I think the splendor of that evening surpassed anything I have yet seen in Cuba. The air was soft as the down of a dove's breast and delicately perfumed with the jessamine fragrance of the coffee blossom & the moon was so dazzling that to look straight at it gave me a shooting pain through the head--like that caused by the sun's direct rays.... It does indeed seem palpable & like an intelligent presence--Every object looked as if the heavens had snowed pearls & diamonds.... Even the ordinary share in the royal profusion & magnificence of beauty which showers down, & are for the lime [en]folded and robed in loveliness as in a mantle. The "disembodied spirit" of the moonlight, coupled with the fragrance of coffee blossoms, transforms the actual into the imaginary--simple objects into things of wealth, magnificence, and beauty, slaves into kings. Cautioned by her sister Elizabeth Peabody in an earlier letter to "drive slavery from [her] thoughts," Sophia mystifies the slave economy: she masks the power dynamic between master and slave behind polite conversation and detaches the labor of slavery, as figured by coffee, from its political and economic meanings by transforming it into a picturesque backdrop. Sophia's moonlit evening depends upon, even as it obscures, the economy of slavery. (1) The "magic moonshine" that produces Hawthorne's realm of romance in "The Custom-House" has much in common with Sophia's moonlit evening. (2) It also "spiritualize[s]" (CE 1:35) the everyday objects of domestic life, converting them into "things of intellect" (CE 1:35) and "snow-images" (CE 1:26). By translating the actual into the imaginary, Hawthorne's moonlight aestheticizes everyday life and transports it to the literary realm of romance. Like Sophia's description of Cuba, Hawthorne's formulation of romance converts a material economy into a symbolic one. Despite his efforts to obscure the relationship between these two economies, in order to establish his romance as separate from the commercial marketplace, Hawthorne recognizes their intimate relationship: he insists upon the "coal-fire" as an "essential influence in producing" the moonlight's effect (CE 1:36) and he repeatedly describes the scarlet letter as a "rag" (CE 1:31), thereby emphasizing its relation to the raw materials of the writer's trade in the 1850s--paper made of reconstituted cotton fibers (CE 1:25). (3) The traces of "gold embroidery" in the letter's "fine red cloth" figure Hawthorne's art in both aesthetic and economic terms: the golden needlework is meant to earn him cultural as well as commercial capital, a literary reputation as well as a livelihood (CE 1:31). Similarly, Hawthorne seeks to mystify the economics of his authorship in order to claim cultural prestige in an increasingly commodified and professionalized literary marketplace. Through the fiction of his early obscurity and the persona of the withdrawn writer, Hawthorne attempts, as Meredith McGill argues, to situate his authorship as free of the marketplace. Yet, as McGill shows, this withdrawal from the market is itself a market strategy, the way he "'renegotiates a relation to the reading public" and redeems his minor fiction "by the success of his later work." (4) Hawthorne finds his place in the literary marketplace by standing apart from it. He manipulates the literary marketplace even as he veils his commercial affiliations to it. While a number of critics have begun to disentangle the fictions of Hawthorne's authorial self-construction from the economic realities of his authorship, I want to pay particular attention to how the slave economy operates in Hawthorne's understanding of--and place within--the literary marketplace. …
16 citations