Open Access: Appreciating the relationship of the living to our dead is an aspect of human life that seems to be neglected in philosophy. I argue that living individuals can have ongoing, non-imaginary, valuable relationships with deceased loved ones. This is important to establish because arguments for such relationships better generate claims in applied ethics about our conduct with respect to our dead. In the first half of the paper I advance the narrower claim that psychological literature affirmative of “ (...) class='Hi'>imaginal relationships” with the dead is relevant to philosophical literature on metaphysical arguments for the dead as relata. The relevance of those psychological insights to philosophers’ metaphysical insights matters for understanding the value of relationships with deceased loved ones. In the second half of the paper I advance the wider claim that the importance of one’s most dearly held relationships with living individuals is best explained in terms of imaginal content, as well; in other words, some interpersonal relationships between the living are personally important because of their imaginal content. Once we appreciate this, it is clearer why recognizably real, imaginally informed relationships with the living are not necessarily cut off on the day someone dies, and permit the possibilities for ethical activities including forgiving the dead, honoring the dead, and carrying out their wishes after they are gone. (shrink)

Tarot use has become increasingly popular in contemporary society. However, unlike the position afforded divination in some cultures, it is not culturally consecrated as a legitimate way of knowing in the so‐called Modern West—in large part, due to the attempted disenchantment of the world by the colonial project of modernity. This paper posits that engagement with tarot divination can be a decolonizing methodology. I explore how divination's dependence on chance, the imagination, and engagement with spirits can heal the Cartesian mental (...) models that underly modernity's hold on our society. Academic writing on divination has, until recently, largely been authored by people who are not also practitioners of divination themselves. Writing as both a scholar and practitioner of tarot, I use the cards as a form of “imaginal research” to directly assist in the creation of this paper—allowing the tarot itself to speak (as much as me speak about it). (shrink)

A recent article in Anthropology of Consciousness entitled ‘Imaginal research for unlearning mastery: Divination with Tarot as a decolonizing methodology’ argues that the Western Tarot may be a useful tool to facilitate decolonization despite (or perhaps in spite) of the colonial and imperial imprints of the accumulating class. This response points out the Tarot is in fact a tool developed by the accumulating class, designed specifically to facilitate the imposition of elite master narratives. This letter calls into question the (...) appropriateness and effectiveness of using the Tarot as a tool for decolonization. (shrink)

This article places Henry Corbin’s concept of creative imagination in conversation with the French phenomenological tradition. Section I explores Corbin’s phenomenological method and his view of the imaginal world, drawn from his interpretations of Suhrawardī and Ibn ‘Arabī. Section II then places this concept in conversation with the early Jean-Paul Sartre’s “annihilative” imagination and Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s critique of it. This section argues that Corbin needs a strong distinction like Sartre’s between imagination and perception but also that he could be (...) seen as agreeing partly with Merleau-Ponty’s critique of Sartre. What Corbin ultimately maintains, as the article’s conclusion argues, is that our access to the distinctive imaginal world enables a characteristic duality to arise in all perceptual life, a duality that is required if we are to be able to relate to perception either critically or charitably. (shrink)

El artículo propone una interpretación de la teoría del Umwelt formulada por Jacob von Uexküll, en la que se desarrolla la posibilidad de estudiar lo que aquí se denomina la textura imaginal del mundo circundante de los animales, en tanto material que compone sus experiencias perceptuales, afectivas y motrices. Para ello, se defiende un realismo de las imágenes a través de un dialogo entre, por un lado, el esquema sensorio-motor de la biosemiótica, la síntesis entre fisiología y medio de (...) la ecología sensorial, los enfoques Eco evo devo y la teoría neurobiológica del self expuesta por Antonio Damasio; y, por el otro, parte de la filosofía del cine de Gilles Deleuze y de la filosofía de las imágenes de Gilbert Simondon. En este sentido, se plantea la posibilidad de una etología de la imagen-animal que sea capaz de estudiar los pliegues en movimiento de la materia bajo los signos del cine y la biología. Se hace especial énfasis en el problema de la subjetividad zoológica en tanto imagen biológica, a través de una crítica del sujeto animal en Uexküll, de raíces kantianas. Así como Uexküll propuso una imagen musical de la naturaleza que abrió su comprensión para el estudio de la conducta animal, aquí se propone activar otro tipo de potencias estéticas de su pensamiento, en aras a desplegar una imagen cinematográfica de la naturaleza que dé cuenta del estatuto etológico y ontológico de las imagenes-vivas que son los organismos. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to investigate the relation between perceptual and imaginal space. I argue that, notwithstanding the differences between acts of imagining and acts of perceiving, common structures in the spatial appearance of perceived things, physical images, and imagined or phantasized objects should be recognized. In the first section, some controversial issues concerning the spatiality of images in the so-called mental imagery debate are introduced. One of the most problematic aspects in this debate is the ambiguity (...) in the use of the concept of ‘space’ which does not allow us to distinguish between spatial form and existence in space. The distinction between spatial form and existence in space will be further discussed in the second section by means of a reassessment of the spatiality of perceptual things, considered independently of their material features. The third and final section is devoted to the inquiry into imaginal space. It focuses on both the spatiality of physical images and the spatiality of phantasized objects, and considers both in relation to perceptual space. It is argued that, with relevant variations, the essential features characterizing the spatiality of purely perceptual objects (considered independently from their materiality) also characterize the spatiality of images and phantasized objects. This will eventually provide a phenomenologically grounded argument supporting the ideality of space, understood as ‘intuitive space of possibilities’. (shrink)

The ability to judge spatial relations from perspectives that differ from one's current body orientation and location is important for many everyday activities. Despite considerable research on imaginal perspective taking, however, detailed computational accounts of the processes involved in this ability are missing. In this contribution, I introduce Smart (Spatial Memory Access by Reference Frame SelecTion) as a computational cognitive model of imaginal perspective taking processes. In assuming that imaginal perspective taking is governed by reference frame selection (...) for memory access and subsequent motor activation, Smart is able to explain and simulate key findings on human imaginal perspective taking. In addition to providing novel insight into the mechanisms underlying imaginal perspective taking, Smart also has several implications for our view on spatial memory, more generally. In particular, Smart supports the idea that enduring spatial representations are essentially orientation-free and that spatial representations are best viewed as flexible combinations of representation structures and reference frames. (shrink)

The phenomenological term “imaginal” was coined and introduced into the French language by Henry Corbin (1903-1978). Throughout his work, Corbin used the “imaginal” as his fundamental concept, as the very foundation of a Weltanschauung. Etymolo-gically, this new term was derived from the Latin phrase mundus imaginalis. As for its meaning, it is synonymous with several Persian and Arabic technical terms, such as alam al-mithal (the world of images, archetypical ideas), malakut (the subtle world of the souls), barzakh (interworld), (...) hurqalya (the world of the celestial Earth, of celestial corporeality), na-koja-abad (the land of nowhere). These technical terms taken from theosophical literature have a meaning very close to that of the term “imaginal.” They translate contemplative experience arising from the theophanic imagination or agent imagination (imaginatio vera). From the point of view of location, they designate the qualitative space of this imagination (mundus imaginalis). (shrink)

Lo scopo fondamentale di questo saggio è affrontare il nesso tra politica e immaginazione per mezzo del concetto di immaginale, inteso come ciò che è fatto di immagini. La strategia è quella di aggredire l’intreccio di politica e immaginale attraverso un duplice movimento, dal con­cetto di immaginale a quello di politica e viceversa, per poi passare a un’analisi delle sue tra­sfor­mazioni nell’epoca globale.The aim of this article is to tackle the nexus of politics and imagination through the concept of (...) class='Hi'>imaginal, understood as simply what is made of ima­ges. The main strategy consists then in tackling such a nexus through a double movement, from the concept of imaginal to that of politics and vice versa. In conclusion, I also analyse their transformations. (shrink)

Estudo teórico-conceitual que procura desenvolver uma análise contemporânea da cultura e das relações sociais a partir de imagens. Com motivo das mudanças nas sociedades capitalistas, interessa-nos refletir sobre as inter-relações entre essas transformações e o surgimento de novas práticas culturais que produzem novos exercícios do visual, da estética e do imaginal. Em suma, propomos um exercício teórico que tenta produzir novos conceitos para pensar e refletir criticamente sobre a estética e a produção visual das imagens no mundo social. Palavras-chave: (...) Visualidade; Consumo; Identidades. (shrink)

The concept of the social imaginary has been introduced as an alternative to theories of the imagination. Whereas the imagination tends to be conceived as a faculty that we possess as indiv...

This article explores the implications of Balibar’s strategic decision to add Freud to the series of the thinkers of the transindividual. This move, I argue, both illuminates the other philosophers’ contribution to our understanding of transindividuality, but also creates some tensions within the triad Spinoza, Marx, Freud. After exploring both aspects, the reciprocal tensions and the reciprocal illumination, I will move on to analysing the relationship between the transindividual and the imaginal, as both concepts signal a questioning of the (...) dichotomy ‘individual versus society’ and thus can be seen as the result of the same movement of thought. (shrink)

The Hollywood fiction places the spectators in an imaginal world, allows to actualize the mythologies which crossed the ages and to approach the representation of the dreams. The cinematographic device puts the spectators in an intermediary position between the sensible and the intelligible and creates, from this in-between, a new vector of fiction. Hollywood brings the public back to an original world where the moving image of reality pushes the creation of a mythological and dreamlike narrative. Thanks to psychoanalysis (...) and cinema, mythology and dreams, which are fundamental properties of the human mind, have been revisited and their representation has taken new forms. Hollywood has made an aesthetic adaptation of them by inscribing them in a new form of fictional narration that adds a space of communication between men outside the senses and the word in an attempt to approach and circumscribe what could constitute the inexpressible dimension of the human condition. (shrink)

This article explores the effect that communications technology has on hegemonic power. The first section establishes a theoretical framework combining Foucault’s carceral archipelago theory with Chiara Bottici’s concept of the social imaginal describing the medium through which inter- and trans-subjective imagination occurs. The remainder employs this framework to examine how four technological innovations (print media, radio, television and Internet) impact the (re)production of discursive hegemonic ideology, integrating a variety of historical and contemporary theories on public discourse and ideological dominance. (...) I conclude by arguing that each case demonstrates a dialectic pattern that explains the techno-social evolution of the carceral archipelago. (shrink)

El siguiente ensayo tiene por objetivo concentrarse en determinados gestos de la filosofía contemporánea que propician una alteración y desplazamiento en el estatuto discursivo, conceptual y disciplinar de la filosofía a la hora de pensar la política. Para poner de relieve dichos gestos, hace falta en primer lugar esbozar la manera en que el estatuto teórico de la filosofía tradicional resulta ser un impedimento para pensar la política en su rasgo excesivamente conflictivo y adversarial, pues al subsumirla bajo sus representaciones (...) y conceptos, no hace otra cosa que reducirla, neutralizarla y finiquitarla. Sobre ese fondo, en segundo lugar, propongo hilvanar una serie de pensadores contemporáneos (Arendt, Badiou, Rancière, Derrida, Cavarero, Didi-Huberman) para apostar por otra manera de pensar e imaginar la política. Si esta escena contemporánea se aviene con la tonalidad escandalosa de la política, lo hace precisamente porque asume la alteración e inadecuación conceptual que permite sopesar la política en tanto que inestabilidad, aporía e inquietud, y cuyo ejercicio in-disciplinado de pensamiento se despliega como aventura y pasaje de fronteras. Es allí que se apuntala la chance de un saber político-imaginativo, cuyo conocimiento por figuras y contradicciones se abre paso desde y con los conflictos, al alero de revueltas y emancipaciones. Palabras clave: teoría, política, imaginación, conflicto. (shrink)

This chapter explores the techniques and artistic procedures that Mukherjee applied to integrate her Indian legacy with Western postmodernity—thus setting the example for establishing a border-crossing “global imaginary” through art.

Open peer commentary on the article “Cybernetics, Reflexivity and Second-Order Science” by Louis H. Kauffman. Upshot: This commentary reflects broadly on the concept of eigenform and reflexive domains, focusing on the idea that second-order science is neither the same as nor completely distinct from ordinary living.

The point of this Special Issue of _Philosophies_ and of this essay is to look deeply into Merleau-Ponty’s _Phenomenology of Perception_, published in 1945, and to “read backwards” from the later works (whether published, transcripts of the later lectures, or the unpublished notes) in order to find the inchoate ideas that were already present in the _Phenomenology_ that was to be developed into the series of ideas of the later ontology of the flesh of the world. The presence of these (...) inchoate ideas is subtle and not as clearly developed as in the later works, but now we can see them more clearly. The dispersed, decentered, and intermittent sense of self, the circulation of sense into the depth of the world, the radical temporality of institution, the latency of sense, the imaginal lining of all perception and its role in Being, the invisibility of the visible and the poetic flesh ontology will be touched upon in this essay as all of them are developments of the initial move in the _Phenomenology_ to make perception the access to the real. This essay will go further than the many recent interpretations that look at some of these developing ideas to articulate that this is a _necessary trajectory_ from Merleau-Ponty’s starting point in the Phenomenology of Perception and that all these phenomena to which these ideas point _can only come forward in their interrelated interwovenness_. This would mean that all these strands are integral to the chiasmatic nature of the flesh of the world. (shrink)

Imagination has always been a mysterious issue for modern philosophy and psychology. In this paper, however, I will not deal with modern theories of imagination; instead, I will suggest an alternative notion of imaginal power by stepping back toward Persian illuminative thought within which we may glimpse a hint of a transcendent concept of imagination as the source of human subjectivity and its power to create the object and the world. My objective here is to extend some noetic aspects (...) of this concept and extract further conclusions theoretically. To this end, I will first introduce a brief account of the noetic characteristic of the Illuminationist perspective of the imagination, then I outline aspects of its efficiency which may shed some light on the modern debate on the subject and its relation to the object. (shrink)

This chapter describes the perspectives of Mukherjees idea of “imaginal politics”, including her envisaged integration of literature and science, and the resulting character of multiculturalism conceived more as an artistic-scientific process than a final goal.

According to Rorty, philosophy is most of time the result of a contest between an entrenched vocabulary, which has become a nuisance, and half-formed new vocabulary which vaguely promises great things. In this paper, I will explore the contest between the entrenched vocabulary of imagination (and ‘the imaginary’ as its necessary counterpart) and a half-formed vocabulary that promises a lot of interesting things: the vocabulary of the ‘the imaginal’. After introducing the concept of the imaginal, I will move (...) on to show its force and, in particular, the role it plays in contemporary politics and in so-called post-Fordist capitalism. (shrink)

Right brain-damaged patients with unilateral neglect, who ignore left-sided visual events, may also omit left-sided details when describing known places from memory. Modulating the orienting of visual attention may ameliorate imaginal neglect. A first step toward explaining these phenomena might be to postulate that space-related imagery is a cognitive activity involving attentional and intentional aspects.

This book describes what an “art of multiculturalism” could be and how in turn multiculturalism could be conceived as a form of art. It focuses on the early and middle work of Indian-born U.S. writer Bharati Mukherjee, in particular on her understanding of the “fusion” of literature and painting as a tool to inspire the creation of a “new global society” by empowering minorities through fostering and multiplying “differences in unity” and “unities in difference”. The book includes, in condensed ways, (...) an explanation of Mukherjee’s use of ancient Indian painting techniques for postmodern writing; and it provides a short introduction to the relation between multiculturalism, postmodernity and “imaginal politics”. The book is written in an easy to read style accessible to all interested in the topic: high school and university students and teachers; those generally interested in the interface between literature, the arts and politics; and specialists in multicultural studies and global and international studies. The book is particularly suited to use in teaching. (shrink)

In the past, biblical scholarship has neglected the hermeneutical contribution that an imaginal engagement with the text may make. The author’s aim in this article was to develop theological imagination as a hermeneutical device. This was done by briefly considering the concurrence in the hermeneutic contributions of three interpreters of biblical texts, with specific regard to their understanding of biblical imagination. These were Walter Brueggemann, Paul Ricoeur and Ignatius of Loyola. Their hermeneutical contributions concur in their understanding of a (...) biblically informed imagination, and it is specifically this aspect of the concurrence of their thought that was explored. An illustration from Proverbs 14:27, which draws on the metaphor and biblical motif of the fountain or source of life, was put forward to demonstrate how the concurrence in the contributions of these biblical interpreters may influence an imaginal engagement with the text.Keywords: Old Testament; Proverbs; Hermeneutics; The fear of the Lord/Yahweh; Walter Brueggemann; Paul Ricoeur; Ignatius of Loyola; Imaginal engagement. (shrink)

This paper deals with the theoretical concepts of image and imagery as used by the foremost imaginal psychologists. Attributing primary epistemological status to image and imagery, imaginal psychology school developed a new theory of image and imagery, questioning the older thesis on the derivative and secondary epistemological status of the image. Using Jung’s concept of the autonomous psyche of an essentially archetypal nature, Hillman started to question Jung’s concept of the Self as a central archetype symbolizing a sort (...) of disguised traditional monotheism (the Christian God, the Jewish Yahweh etc.) like Freud’s sexuality (id) or central cultural myth (the Oedipus myth). Imaginal psychology defends essential sovereignty and the equality of all images and the resultant polytheist psychology. Jungian studies set out it this direction, giving birth to parallel developments to imaginal psychology in various fields. Derrida’s and Feyerabend’s rejection of an ultimate referential frame was not identical to but corresponds to Hillman’s and Vannoy Adam’s discovery that it is fantasy that rules the psyche. (shrink)