General Information
Course Description
The Imaginary and Its Use - Daniel Vaillancourt
This seminar will re-open the case of the Imaginary which has impacted the fields of Social Science (History, Sociology, Anthropology), Psychoanalysis, and Literary Studies. Opposed to the truth, and the real, complement to the fictional and the ideological, the Imaginary transfigures what it touches, creating a cognitive, phenomenological and poetic space. The Imaginary will be examined according to two axes of research. First, I intend to establish the relation between the Imaginary and the image (eidos, eikon) through its philosophical history. Secondly, I will examine the role of imagination in Imaginary processes. More than being a container or a repertoire of “curious objects”, the Imaginary presupposes a relationship, a vector or a link between a subject and its virtual assemblage. Its presence raises questions about the configuration of the subject, the construction of reality, the fashioning of cognitive styles. While considering the interface between the Imaginary, imagination and images, we will reflect upon the modes of imaginary institutionalization of diversified objects and practices (political, cultural, esthetic). Symbolic systems like food, clothing, money, iconophilia or iconoclasm, and the life of everyday objects are all embedded in the complexity of imaginary relations and representations. In order to represent oneself as a living organism, a group, a football club, a city, or a nation creates an imaginary self-portrait. The seminar aims to unfold the multiple aspects of the Imaginary.
Selective Bibliography
Althusser, L., Writings on psychoanalysis : Freud and Lacan, New York : Columbia University Press, 1996.
Besancon, A. The forbidden image : an intellectual history of iconoclasm, Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2000.
Brann, E., The world of the imagination : sum and substance, Savage, Md. : Rowman & Littlefield, 1991.
Casey, E., Imagining : a phenomenological study, Bloomington, IN : Indiana University Press, 2000.
Castoriadis, C. The imaginary Institution of Society, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1987.
Lacan, J., Ecrits : The first complete edition in English, New York, NY : W.W. Norton & Co., 2006.
Mondzain, M.J. Image, icon, economy : the Byzantine origins of the contemporary imaginary, Stanford, Stanford U.P., 2005.
Rancière, J. The Future of the Image, London, Verso, 2007.
Sartre, J.P., The imaginary : a phenomenological psychology of the imagination, London, Routledge, 2004.
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