Imagination and the Imaginary

The concept of the imaginary is pervasive within contemporary writing concerning the self, the body and social groupings. This work explores the links between imagination, conceived of as some kind of faculty, the faculty of creating images or forms, and that of the imaginary, the domain of affectively laden images. A conception of the imaginary is distilled which characterises it not as a domain of illusion posited in opposition to the real, but rather as that by which the real is made available to us. Central to such an account is a recognition of the imagination working within perception, deriving from the insights of Kant and Merleau-Ponty. And this imaginary, at work in perception, yields a world with affective shape. The work of Sartre is also pivotal here, although his fundamental distinction between perceiving and imagining consciousness is rejected. In the resulting picture it becomes clear that the imaginaries interwoven in perception, and the imaginaries manifest in works of art, form a continuity. This concept of the imaginary is explored with reference to social imaginaries, imaginary selves and imaginary bodies.

Imagination and the Imaginary is essential reading for students and scholars working in phenomenology, philosophy of mind, and aesthetics.

Kathleen Lennon is Professor of Philosophy in the School of Politics, Philosophy and International Studies at the University of Hull, UK. Her most recent publications include the co- authored booksThe World the Flesh and the Subject (2005) and Theorizing Gender (2002), and the co-edited volumeEmbodied Selves(2013).