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The Imaginary

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


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01 Sep 2003
TL;DR: In this article, the authors trace the linguistic determination of subjectivity, in which the language of performance carves out a space for the subject in the organizational context, thereby eliciting a host of significations of what it means to perform.
Abstract: textThis study seeks to create an account of how the performing subject comes into being within a specific organizational context It looks at some of the ways in which managerial practices impact upon the selfhood of employees by means of the language in which they are couched Drawing heavily on the work of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, this study furthers insight into the ways in which language, power and subjectivity are connected in organizations The prime vehicle for exploring these linkages is Lacan’s conceptualization of the three registers of subjectivity: the Symbolic, the Imaginary and the Real It traces the linguistic determination of subjectivity, in which the language of performance carves out a space for the subject in the organizational context, thereby eliciting a host of significations of what it means to perform Although stringent in their effects, these significations nevertheless prove incomplete The author argues that this Symbolic chain of signifiers continues to function as something Other and alien to the subject, thereby putting into motion the processes of the Imaginary With respect to this register, the author demonstrates that managerial practices put forward particular images of performance, which form objects of identification for the performing subject These identifications are an important influence on the behavior of the subject at work In order to uncover resistance to these determining effects, instances are highlighted in which identifications are partially or fully interrupted within the speech acts of respondents The author argues that these instances indicate the possibility of "traversing the fundamental fantasy", which implies going beyond narrowly defined identifications with performance Their interruption allows the subject to glimpse the indeterminate nature of the signifying network For this reason, the traversal indicates the possibility for the subject to change its position with regard to the Other, in which it engages in more partial and fragmented forms of identification rather than being caught in a narcissist fantasy of autonomy and rationality Hereby, the fantasy of self-actualization, as propagated within HRM practices, is exposed as flawed and exploitative

92 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The resurgence of the commons from an anti-capitalist perspective is due to a confluence of two streams coming from opposing perspectives as mentioned in this paper, and the main aim of this change was to save capitalism from its self-destructive totalitarian tendencies unleashed by neoliberalism.
Abstract: In the tale as told by Power, the happening that is worth something is the one that can be recorded on a spreadsheet that contains respectable indices of profit. Everything else is completely dispensable, especially if that everything else reduces profit. Don Durito, Neoliberalism: Hutory as a tale. . .badly told. (Subcommandante Marcos 2005) The 'commons' has undergone a remarkable transformation in the last fifteen years, from a word referring rather archaically to a grassy square in the centre of New England towns to one variously used by real estate developers, 'free software' programmers, ecological activists and peasant revolutionaries to describe very different, indeed conflicting, purposes and realities. I believe that this resurgence of 'commons' thinking is due to a confluence of two streams coming from opposing perspectives. The revival of the commons from a capitalist perspective comes in the 1980s and 1990s with the development of a related set of concepts like 'social capital,' 'civil society,' 'associational life' that werejoined with the even vaguer and older all-pervading concepts like 'community,' 'culture,' and 'civilization'. A good index of this conceptual change can be noted in the substitution of the warm and fuzzy phrase 'business community' for the sharply delineated 'capitalist class' in the terminology of the social sciences. The main aim of this change was to save capitalism from its self-destructive totalitarian tendencies unleashed by neoliberalism. For example, who would commit themselves to defend capitalist society 'to the death,' if everyone acted like a perfect neoliberal agent aiming to maximize his/her own private utility function? After all, such beings, in a pinch, would not rationally bargain away their own lives to 'save the system.' The commons from this perspective was an additional concept that made it possible both to criticise the theoretical pillars of neoliberal thought (Hardin's 'tragedy of the commons' and the socalled 'Coase Theorem') and to propose other models for participating in the market, beside individualism or corporatism. The revival of the commons from an anti-capitalist perspective also develops in the 1980s and 1990s to deal with the crisis of socialism, communism and Third World nationalism. This crisis put into question the ideologies that claimed to provide an alternative to capitalism and/or imperialism through the use of the state and the expansion of state property. For the crisis of the division between state and private property is reflected in the so-called 'collapse of communism' and the 'withering away of the nation state' in the face of neoliberal globalisation. Both the ideology of official socialism/communism and nationalism created the imaginary impression of a sharing and co-management of social wealth by the citizens. The reality, of course, was that most of the 'sharing and co-management' of these resources was done by a ruling class whose restricted membership was defined by either bureaucratic or capitalist criteria. Critics of capitalism recognised that though communism (and nationalism) had little of the commons, they had much of the enclosures in them. In other words, history showed that the promise of communism - that 'economic' decisions would be made by a 'free association' of producers and reproducers - had not been fulfilled in actually existing states ruled by communist parties. On the contrary, though these states legitimised themselves on the basis of the sentiments and behaviour appropriate to the commons, they undermined the development of the humus of coordination that is absolutely essential for the functioning of a commons. In response to this political crisis, the commons has been used by anticapitalists to show that collective non-capitalist forms of organizing material life are alive and struggling throughout the world in two senses: (1) the precapitalist commons still exist and the subsistence of billions of people depend on them (indeed the forms of social cooperation implicit in these commons make it possible for all those 'living' on $1 a day - a literal impossibility - to actually live); (2) the rise of a new commons, especially in ecological-energy spaces and in computational-informational manifolds. …

92 citations

Book
01 Jan 2002
TL;DR: The Semiotics of children's drawing practices are discussed in this article, with a focus on the Hermeneutics of Visuality and the Problem of Interpretation, as well as the Semiotic Semantics of Visualities of Difference.
Abstract: Acknowledgements. About the Author. Introduction. Memory Seed. Theories of Learning. Learning Theory in Art Education. Representation and Signification. Identity and Difference. The Idea of Experience. Outline of the Book. Part One: Interpretation and Practice. 1. Semiotics and Hermeneutics. Introduction. Semiotics. Hermeneutics and the Problem of Interpretation. Hermeneutic Strategies. Post-Structural Hermeneutics. 2. Semiotics, Hermeneutics and Observational Drawings. 3. The Semiotics of Children's Drawing Practices. Language Games. Drawings From Australia. Children Drawing Objects. Mystery. Summary. 4. Experience and the Hermeneutics and Semiotics of Visuality. Perspective and Visual Representation. Visualities of Difference. Part Two: Identity and Practice. 5. Constructions of Identity. The Truman Show. Changing the Subject. Althusser. Foucault. Normalisation. Discourse. Discourses of Normalisation and Identification in Art Education. Power-Knowledge. Video Sequence. 6. Identity and Psychoanalysis. Lacan: The Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real. 7. The Field of Art in Education. Recent Pedagogies for Art Education in England. The National Curriculum for Art in England. Bourdieu's Notions of Field and Habitus. Change in the Field. Chreods and Epigenetic Landscapes. Teacher and Learner Identities in the Field of Art Education. Part Three: Difference and Practice. 8. Forms of Life. Two Narratives. Practice and Change. Experience and Experiencing. Difference. Student's Work. 9. Experience and Practice: Theorising New Identifications. Consequences of the Critique of Experience for Art in Education. References. Subject Index. Name Index.

91 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The concept of the American romance was introduced by Lionel Trilling's essay "Morals, Manners and the Novel" as discussed by the authors, which summarized what was more or less the standard view of American literature in English departments on both sides of the Atlantic: While the European novel traditionally focuses on society and its manners (in the wide sense of the whole array of social relations and its determinants), American writers shy away from this social reality, and, thus, from the complexity and fullness of social life.
Abstract: I N THE EMERGENCE of the study of American literature and the formation of a separate discipline called American Studies, the "invention" of the concept of an "American romance" has played a crucial role. The 1940s and 50s were the period in which the search for a national, specifically "American" literary tradition took on a new urgency. This search was fueled by post-World War II visions of a new world power and the arrival of what Henry Luce called "the American century." F. O. Matthiessen's study American Renaissance (1941) had identified a literary tradition of great intellectual power and artistic originality and had provided it with a name that stuck.1 Perry Miller had transformed the perception of American culture-still widely considered provincial and without a strong cultural tradition of its own-by recovering an imposing "Puritan tradition."2 However, his redefinition tied the interpretation of American culture to this Puritan legacy in a way that seemed too restrictive on regional and historical grounds. Similarly, Matthiessen's book limited America's unique cultural achievement to a particular period and to a small group of writers. It was the concept of the American romance which solved this impasse in matters of cultural self-definition. Ironically enough, the solution was suggested by an essay which developed the claim of a different tradition in American literature in order to describe this literature's shortcomings, Lionel Trilling's essay "Morals, Manners and the Novel."3 Trilling's essay summarizes what was more or less the standard view of American literature in English departments on both sides of the Atlantic: While the European novel traditionally focuses on society and its manners (in the wide sense of the whole array of social relations and its determinants) , American writers shy away from this social reality, and, thus, from the complexity and fullness of social life. Trilling's argument was developed in the context and service of his own liberal critique of political radicalism and its narrow views of the purpose of literature. However, his argument that reality, in contrast to the epistemologically

90 citations


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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
2023563
20221,296
2021145
2020180
2019178
2018199