Imaginary

Definition

The concept of imaginary is Polysémique, it returns to a multiplicity of the directions, according to the adopted points of view, the authors who use it or the theoretical fields which refer to it. When one speaks about social Imaginaire , or about imaginary personnel one calls upon an appreciably different concept that what one generally hears in the common direction by the word Imagination. One refers to the capacity of a group or an individual to represent the world using a network of association of images which give him a direction. One can speak about imaginary medieval, rebirth, traditional age etc as one can evoke imaginary Dogon, Massaï, Tibetan, Inuit, Vendean etc One will speak also readily about imaginary about Rene Magritte, Jerome Bosch or Salvador Dali or brilliant the Facteur Horse. Jacques Nimier does not hesitate to speak about imaginary about mathematics and one could also go so far as to mention imaginary science which in is not deprived, of Jules Verne, with Doctor Folamour while passing by all science fiction. The imaginary one, much more than the " insane of the logis" rationalist tradition seems a central function of psyché human. Function of vital creation, the biologists to describe the process of metamorphosis of the caterpillar to the butterfly speak about a process which they name " imaginal". Production of images of the dream, one does not know clearly which is its function, but it is known that it is vital. If one awakes a cat during the phases of paradoxical sleep of oneiric production, at the end of a few days this one dies. On a collective level, the production of the myths also answers a crucial need for the group to amalgamate its values in a Récit of the origins and ends which makes hold the world in a coherent narration.

Each human group builds imaginary which is clean for him. The sociologist Eugene Enriquez studied the imaginary managerial one for example. For this sociologist, the imaginary one can be driving as it can be deluding or source with illusion. Pascal Galvani in his work, Self-training and function of trainer, delivers himself to the " radiographie" the imaginary one of a group of trainers of adults using a method developped at the point by Andre de Peretti: the workshop of blazon. The study of this author makes it possible to release the tension fields which can structure an imaginary professional in terms of identification, values, symbols etc

On the individual level, the imaginary one testifies to the subjectivity of the person. The images which live to me are present before even as I do not try to register them in normalcy symbolic system of the language. They belong to the singularity of my history. The psychoanalytical step and its technique of free association constitute one of the ways of privileged investigation of the imaginary personnel which it is a question of devoting to his archeology or to leave with the Sujet the free expression of a Sens that he founds.

Great designs of the imaginary one

Anthropological structures of imaginary of Gilbert Durand

Gilbert Durand was devoted since the Sixties to an anthropological reading of the imaginary one. Being located in the continuity of the work of Gaston Bachelard and that of C.G. Jung, it works to give again with the symbolic system and the image a place which refused to him various the " iconoclasmes" of which positivism. For this author, the genius of the human cultures passes by the creation of the languages symbolic which let the direction be established in the network of the images which theirs are clean. The exhaustive study that it carries out near mythologies of the whole world enabled him to detect structures which take shape and underlie them, whatever is their place of origin. Thus it does his the assertion of Gaston Bachelard who declares: “Our membership in the world of the images is stronger, constitutive of our being than our membership in the world of the ideas” Its work is based for that on the reading of the symbolic system of all the great human traditions. This immense work of decoding leads to diagrammatic very largely begun again since, as well by the literature as by the cinematographic art and even publicity. Gilbert Durand gave to this diagrammatic name of modes of imaginary the . “Very imaginary human is articulated by structures irréductiblement plural, but limited to three classes revolving around the matric designs of “separating” (heroic), “to include it” (mystical) and of “dramatizing” - to spread out in time the images in an account - (disséminatoire). ” (Durand, 1994, p. 26.). These modes which are three enracinent in the gestural fundamental one of the human being, like in its cosmological environment. The cosmological reading proceeds by a duelle division or diurnal/night polarity : A diurnal mode and Two night modes.

The mode " héroïque" or " schyzomorphe"

The reading resulting from gestural is as for it ternary: the ' act to rise or the station upright joins the diurnal mode and Durand qualifies it schizomorphe or of heroic. It is when the sun rises that the human one is drawn up on its legs, consequently feeling the dichotomy between the top and bottom, the sky and the ground. In this mode of imaginary, the objects appear distinctly under the sunlight. One can evoke here, to illustrate this design, the myth of the cave of Plato. Logic related with the diurnal mode is that of the excluded third and the suitable symbol is that of the sword of the knowledge which slices the darkness of the doubt and ignorance. (cf the Buddhist iconography, where Manjushri, divinity of knowledge is represented with a blazing sword). “Thus the structure schizomorphe first would not be other thing only this capacity of autonomy and abstraction of the ambient conditions which start as of humble the autocinèse animal, but is reinforced at the human biped by the fact of the vertical station liberator of the hands and the tools which prolong these last”.

The mode " synthétique"

The second design, night this time, enracine in the gestural copulative one, the act to couple . The night, the opposites meet, men and women become one in the union of the sex act. Gilbert Durand names this mode Synthétique or dramatic. Whereas in the diurnal mode it was a question of rising towards the heights, the synthetic design recalls us in the obscure depths of the cave. It is a question of plunging in oneself, of “touching the bottom”, the mountaineer becomes speleologist or plunger deep seas. “Plato himself knows well that one must again go down in the cave, take into account the note even of our condition mortal and make, as much as it may be a good use of time”. The logical principle is dominated here by causality and the diachronic representation which makes it possible to solve contradictions thanks to the factor time. One enters here a system of the thirds included, illustrated for example by the symbolic system taoist of the yin and the yang or by the coincidentia oppositorum of the alchemists. The systemic theories for example just like work in the synthetic night mode the Buddhist vision of interdependent coproduction of any thing

The mode " mystique"

The third design, night also, draws to him from the gestural digestive one or of lowering, the act to introduce . The human one becomes one with the food which it introduces (the food is lost in the dark depths of the human body). Durand qualifies it Mystique mode (or antiphrasic) of the imaginary one. Here play full principles with analogy and similarity. The dynamic principle in work is that of fusion. One can for example evoke the symbolic system of Holy Cène in Christianity to illustrate this mystical mode. The myth of Jonas also fits in diagrammatic mystical night mode. The research of the fundamental Unit of any thing is in the middle of the mystical mode.

The imaginary one according to Joel Thomas: it is “a system, an organizing dynamism of the images, which confers a depth to them by connecting them between them. The imaginary one is thus not a collection of added images, a corpus, but a network where the direction is in the relation; as said it, in a beautiful intuition, the painter G. Directs, “I do not believe in the things, but in the relations between the things. ” “That enables us to refine our definition of the imaginary one. The imaginary one then seems to us the organizing dynamism between various authorities founders. These authorities, like “alive system”, are of small number - these are the combinations which are infinite -, and find the “solutions” between which the possibilities of creative nature are distributed: the stable one, it driving, and the rate/rhythm which connects them. ”

The imaginary one instituting and the radical imagination of Cornelius Castoriadis

The imaginary one at Sartre

The diagram R of Jacques Lacan, or intrication Real imaginary symbolic system

Museum and writing

Malraux spoke about the imaginary Musée, which would gather referents common to a culture, a country, a continent. The Surrealist ones also briskly explored this " continent vierge" by the Unconscious , operating a second reading of the world resulting from the war by the released creativity of the traditional constraints, and by the automatic writing.

Authors resulting from the Colonisation regard this creative element as essential compensating for their situations undervalued in the Histoire.

Also authors as various as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, which did not cease exploring human spaces " since its bibliothèque" , the magic Réalisme invested, whereas others as Zadie Smith invests in the cultural diversity of London, following the example Caryl Philips and of David Dabydeen, which connects the England and its history in addition to Atlantique.

With the the Antilles, Maryse Condé, Gilbert Gratiant married imaginary opened on the world, just as Edouard Glissant, Raphaël Confiant and Patrick Chamoiseau.

This same concern is found in authors like Malcolm de Chazal, Robert Edward-Binder, Lindsey Collen or Khal Torabully in the Indian Ocean.

References

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