The Imaginary

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

Imaginary companions in childhood and adult creativity.

Abstract: Case material is presented to illustrate the thesis that the ability to create an imaginary companion during childhood is an early expression of the special ego aptitudes found in creative individuals in adult life. Such "companions" allow these children to attempt to master creatively a variety of narcissistic mortifications suffered in reality and to displace unacceptable affects. In creative adults who had imaginary companions in childhood, the early fantasies serve as an organizing schema in memory for the childhood traumata. Stimuli in adult life which evoke the earlier traumata may revive the original imaginary companion fantasies. These then serve as nodal bases for the creation of specific adult works of art.

De-Westernizing Film Studies

Abstract: Foreword: Graeme Harper Introduction: De-Westernizing Film Studies Part 1: (Dis-)continuities of the Cinematic Imaginary: (Non-)Representation, Discourse and Theory Chapter 1: Imagi[ni]ng the Universe: Cosmos, Otherness and Cinema Chapter 2: Questioning Discourses of diaspora: "Black" Cinema as Symptom Chapter 3: Affective Passions: The Dancing Female Body and Colonial Rupture in Zouzou (1934) and Karmen Gei (2001) Chapter 4: African Frameworks of Analysis for African Film Studies Part 2: Narrating the (Trans)Nation, Region and Community from Non-Western Perspectives Chapter 5: De-westernizing national cinema: re-imagined communities in the films of Ferid Boughedir Chapter 6: Banal Transnationalism: On Makhmalbaf's "Borderless" Filmmaking Chapter 7: Griots and Talanoa Speak: Storytelling as Theoretical Frames in African and Pacific Island Cinemas Chapter 8: The Intra-East Cinema: the re-framing of an East Asian Film Sphere Part 3: New (dis-)continuities from 'within' the West Chapter 9: "A double set of glasses": Stanley Kubrick and the Midrashic Mode of Interpretation Chapter 10: Situated Bodies, Cinematic Orientations: Film and (Queer) Phenomenology Chapter 11 Has film ever been Western? Continuity and the question of building a "common" cinema Part 4: interviews Editors' note on interviews Chapter 12: "There is No Entirely Non-Western Place Left ": De-Westernizing the moving image, an interview with Coco Fusco Chapter 13: De-Westernizing Film through Experimental Practice: an interview with Patti Gaal-Holmes Chapter 14: "With Our Own Pen and Papers": an interview with Teddy E. Mattera Chapter 15: "To Colonize a Subject Matter is to Learn Nothing from it": an interview with Jonnie Clementi-Smith Chapter 16: "Isn't It Strange that 'World' means Everything Outside the West?": an interview with Rod Stoneman Chapter 17: Beyond Stereotypes and Preconceptions: an interview with Farida Benlyazid Chapter 18: "About Structure, Not about Individual Instances": an interview with Daniel Lindvall Chapter 19: "Still Waiting for a Reciprocal De-Westernization": an interview with Mohammed Bakrim Chapter 20: "Moving Away from a Sense of Cultures as Pure Spaces ": an interview with Deborah Shaw Chapter 21: Nu Third Queer Cinema: an interview with Campbell X Chapter 22: "To Start with a Blank Slate of Free Choices": an interview with Kuljit Bhamra Chapter 23: "The Crazy Dream of living without the Other": an interview with Olivier Barlet Chapter 24: "De-Westernizing as Double Move": an interview with John Akomfrah

Conversations with Salman Rushdie

Abstract: ""If there's an attempt to silence a writer, the best thing a writer can do is not be silenced. If somebody is trying to stifle your voice, you should try and make sure it speaks louder than before."" Acclaim, success, and controversy follow every one of Salman Rushdie's writings. His novels and stories have won him awards and made him both famous in the literary world and a catalyst for protests worldwide. For nearly a decade after publication of The Satanic Verses, he faced a bounty on his life. Although Rushdie has participated in a great number of interviews, many of his most revealing conversations were published in journals and newspapers throughout the globe -- not only in England and the United States, but also in India, Canada, and across Europe. Conversations with Salman Rushdie, the first collection of interviews with Rushdie, brings together the best and some of the rarest of the interviews the author has granted. Though many know Rushdie for his novels, what most do not realize is the breadth of Rushdie's writing and thinking. There are many other Salman Rushdies -- the travel writer, the crafter of short stories, the filmmaker, the ""children's"" story writer, the essayist and critic, and the unflinching commentator on contemporary culture, particularly on race and inequality. ""The speaking of suppressed truths is one of the great possibilities of the novel,"" he tells the Third World Book Review, ""and it is perhaps the main reason why the novel becomes the most dangerous of art forms in all countries where people, governments, are trying to distort the truth."" Rushdie talks extensively about the creative process, about his views on art and politics, and about his life before and after the fatwa. Articulate, witty, and learned, he shows the side of himself that sparks such controversy. While not necessarily seeking to provoke, Rushdie shows how controversy is often inseparable from the politically charged situations and issues that compel him to write. Rushdie takes risks in his writing, pushing both the novelistic form and language to its limits. ""Dispense with safety nets,"" he says in Imaginary Homelands. These interviews reveal a man with a powerful mind, a wry sense of humor, and an unshakable commitment to justice. Michael R. Reder is director of the Roth Writing Center and an instructor in the department of English at Connecticut College.

'A local habitation and a name A Kristevan reading of human growth in religion, with a reference to John and Charles Wesley'

Abstract: This study is concerned with the concept of human growth and change: it juxtaposes processes of growth and change in psychoanalytic therapy and those in a religious context. In both situations the relationship between growth and development and the idea of becoming 'good' is considered. Kleinian, Post-Kleinian and particularly Kristevan theory is used to elucidate facilitators of change in psychoanalytic therapy and in the context of Christian faith. The emphases in the theory used here differ from those of more traditional developmental theorists in the study of religion, which rely heavily on ego-psychology and self-psychology, and focus on the autonomous ego and the degree of maturity of forms of religion. By contrast, the emphases here are on the split self, on unconscious drives, phantasies and affects, and on the non-cognitive apprehension of truth. Through an examination of the lives of John and Charles Wesley, the thesis examines the possibility of growth occurring in the context of so-called 'immature’ forms of religion, the means by which this might occur, and the extent to which change is governed by an individual's mental structure and psychological defences. The Kristevan reading allows a less cognitive, 'ego-driven' study of the growth to 'goodness' than does that of the developmental theorists. It thus questions the validity of traditional classifications of forms of religion. It elicits differences between the historical subjects, which demonstrate the importance of personality factors in facilitating or hindering growth. Finally, it enables an exploration of Charles Wesley’s hymns which reveals evidence of erotic and imaginary elements, and the possibility of triadic openness in what some would see as an 'immature' form of belief. This examination also questions Kristeva's own assertion that religious symbolism cannot adequately 'sublimate' the 'abject'.

Imagination and the Imaginary

Abstract: The concept of the imaginary is pervasive within contemporary thought, yet can be a baffling and often controversial term. In Imagination and the Imaginary, Kathleen Lennon explores the links between imagination - regarded as the faculty of creating images or forms - and the imaginary, which links such imagery with affect or emotion and captures the significance which the world carries for us. Beginning with an examination of contrasting theories of imagination proposed by Hume and Kant, Lennon argues that the imaginary is not something in opposition to the real, but the very faculty through which the world is made real to us. She then turns to the vexed relationship between perception and imagination and, drawing on Kant, Merleau-Ponty and Sartre, explores some fundamental questions, such as whether there is a distinction between the perceived and the imagined; the relationship between imagination and creativity; and the role of the body in perception and imagination. Invoking also Spinoza and Coleridge, Lennon argues that, far from being a realm of illusion, the imaginary world is our most direct mode of perception. She then explores the role the imaginary plays in the formation of the self and the social world. A unique feature of the volume is that it compares and contrasts a philosophical tradition of thinking about the imagination - running from Kant and Hume to Strawson and John McDowell - with the work of phenomenological, psychoanalytic, poststructuralist and feminist thinkers such as Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Lacan, Castoriadis, Irigaray, Gatens and Lloyd. This makes Imagination and the Imaginary essential reading for students and scholars working in phenomenology, philosophy of perception, social theory, cultural studies and aesthetics. Cover Image: Bronze Bowl with Lace, Ursula Von Rydingsvard, 2014. Courtesy the artist, Galerie Lelong and Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Photo Jonty Wilde.