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
Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors address the dilemma of ethical relativism faced by psychotherapists and suggest that certain aspects of Jacques Lacan's psycho-analytical theory provide the resources to overcome the obstacle of arbitrariness or relativism.
Abstract: This article addresses the thorny issue of the psychologist or psychotherapist's values or ethical orientation. The suggestion is made that certain aspects of Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytical theory provide the resources to overcome the obstacle of arbitrariness or relativism faced by psychotherapists who unavoidably have to take an ethical stance - implicitly if not explicitly - in relation to clients' or analysands' lives and decisions. The dilemma faced by the psychotherapist is recontructed and specific aspects of the poststructuralist psychoanalytical theory of Lacan are addressed. These include the function of the subject's position in the symbolic register (in contrast to the imaginary register of the ego), the role of the unconscious as the 'discourse of the Other', of narrative and of repressed signifiers as ethical 'anchoring points'. Crucially, however, the implications of the register of the 'real' for the ethics of the psychoanalyst as psychotherapist are added. These, offer invaluable means of overcoming the dilemma of ethical relativism faced by psychotherapists.

34 citations

Book
01 Jan 1995
TL;DR: In this article, Imaginary Maps presents three stories from noted Bengali writer Mahasweta Devi in conjunction with readings of these tales by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.
Abstract: Imaginary Maps presents three stories from noted Bengali writer Mahasweta Devi in conjunction with readings of these tales by famed cultural and literary critic, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Weaving history, myth and current political realities, these stories explore troubling motifs in contemporary Indian life through the figures and narratives of indigenous tribes in India. At once delicate and violent, Devi's stories map the experiences of the "tribals" and tribal life under decolonization. In "The Hunt," "Douloti the Bountiful" and the deftly wrought allegory of tribal agony "Pterodactyl, Pirtha, and Puran Sahay," Ms. Devi links the specific fate of tribals in India to that of marginalized peoples everywhere. Gayatri Spivak's readings of these stories connect the necessary "power lines" within them, not only between local and international structures of power (patriarchy, nationalisms, late capitalism), but also to the university.

34 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyze how hunger and guillotines, revolution and food, butchers and protests are connected in the Spanish collective imaginary during the current temporality of crisis (2008-2013), with the aim of establishing its cultural grammar.
Abstract: This article analyses how hunger and guillotines, revolution and food, butchers and protests are connected in the Spanish collective imaginary during the current temporality of crisis (2008–2013), with the aim of establishing its cultural grammar. By examining different representations of the crisis by means of gastronomy – including examples of graffiti and slogans, cooking TV shows and horror movies – I will describe the existing tensions between practices of resistance and collective imaginations of violent political change. I will propose that the social circulation of food and food images is a decisive contributing factor in the symbolic landscape of the crisis, shaping divided political economies according to the role of the citizens, the state or the corporations in control and the management of the collective access to nutritional goods. Pig slaughter versus the supermarket of the gods: two political universes offer their opposing poetic poles. On one side we will find (i) the subaltern lo...

34 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
Will Brooker1
TL;DR: Fan pilgrimage can be an act of creation, performance, disguise and carnival that symbolically transforms the location in question, temporarily inverting social structures and making the city into a liberating, playful space as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: This article discusses fan pilgrimage, using as a case study the city of Vancouver, Canada — a location that has been used as the basis for several cult television series. It draws on theories of urban geography, particularly of postmodern suburbia (Edward Relph, Jean Baudrillard, Umberto Eco, Fredric Jameson, Edward Soja) to argue that while Vancouver may be valued by film and television producers as a generic, anonymous, `flat' environment, to fan pilgrims who bring their own imaginary maps (based on the fictional geographies of Smallville, The X-Files and Battlestar Galactica ), the city is a rich intersection of possible worlds. The article uses science fiction and superhero metaphors of parallel universes and `infinite earths' to explore this fan experience, arguing finally that pilgrimage can be an act of creation, performance, disguise and carnival that symbolically transforms the location in question, temporarily inverting social structures and making the city into a liberating, playful space. •

34 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