Anthropology of Imaginary

« Que le cinéma aille à sa perte, c’est le seul cinéma. Que le monde aille à sa perte, qu’il aille à sa perte, c’est la seule politique. » (Le Camion, premier projet). Si l’on a beaucoup glosé sur la vocation politique de cette double déclaration, autant peut-être que sur le projet cinématographique d’ensemble qu’elle semble supposer, d’aucuns parlant de cinéma impossible ou de mort du cinéma (Madeleine Borgomano, Sarah Gaspari), l’on n’a jamais vraiment comparé la structure des deux propositions : elles apparaissent rigoureusement parallèles, mais elles ne le sont pas. Aux yeux de Duras, le cheminement vers la perte est une politique par rapport au monde, mais le cinéma est déjà en soi un cheminement vers la perte, intrinsèquement, essentiellement.
En ce sens, il faut interroger à nouveaux frais l’aspect apocalyptique du cinéma de Duras, non plus au départ de sa réflexion politique littéraire (Détruire, dit-elle, Abahn, Sabana, David) mais bien plutôt à l’aune d’un pouvoir qu’elle accorde singulièrement à l’image et non au texte. Si elle réécrivait la plupart de ses textes, parfois de manière obsessionnelle, Duras n’a jamais déclaré un livre raté (tout au plus L’homme menti et Theodora Katz n’ont-ils jamais été achevés, mais ils n’ont pas été publiés non plus). Par contre, selon son propre et fier aveu, son cinéma est un ensemble de films ratés ou d’échecs, ce qui n’empêche pas l’écrivain de les donner à voir. L’apocalypse du cinéma durassien est thématique (tous les spécialistes l’ont constaté), mais elle est également structurelle, elle est conditionnée par le matériau : l’image est apocalyptique. L’image est un révélateur (au double sens photographique et apocalyptique), mais la révélation n’annonce que la perte et la destruction par l’opération même de la monstration. Ce qui est montré est toujours déjà irrémédiablement perdu et détruit.
Cette réflexion globale se décline selon deux axes qui sont autant de questions : d’une part, quelle est cette essence singulière que Duras attache à l’image ?, et d’autre part, pourquoi Duras ne considère-t-elle pas le texte sur le même plan que l’image ? Le premier axe permet ainsi de reparcourir l’ensemble de la production cinématographique durassienne : les délabrements du décor et la disparition des personnages de Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta désert, le ratage sur lequel reposent Le Camion et Le Navire Night, le reniement de Baxter, Véra Baxter, le noir abyssal de L’homme atlantique, mais aussi la perspective de la perte qui s’insinue dès les propositions de traitement de l’image dans le scénario de Hiroshima mon amour.

Mémoire présenté par :
Erwan MOREAU
en vue de l'obtention du diplôme de :
MASTER 2 RECHERCHE
Domaine : Sciences humaines et sociales
Mention : Ethnologie-Sociologie
Spécialité : SOCIOLOGIE
Préparé sous la direction de M. Jean Bruno RENARD, professeur de Sociologie
Juin 2014
Mention obtenue : très bien


Abstract (French) :

Le synonyme le plus proche du terme "monstre" est l'expression « contre-nature » (Aristote, Saint Augustin, Canguilhem, Lascault, Cuny Le Callet, Valton, etc.). Sentence paradoxale s'il en est quand on sait qu'au niveau biologique, il est entendu que rien de ce que produit la Nature ne peut voir le jour indépendamment du respect de ses lois et qu'il est le propre de l'imagination de pouvoir y créer des exceptions.

Mais parallèlement à la Nature, objet de la biologie et de la physique, se trouve une autre « nature » : la « connaissance ordinaire » (Aristote employait pour sa part le terme de « cours ordinaire », « ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πολύ » en parlant du statut contre-nature du monstre), cette « chose que l'organisme construit dans le but de créer un ordre dans le flux de l'expérience »

Ainsi, tout monstre peut être traduit comme étant ce qui apparaît contraire à une  « connaissance ordinaire », à une réalité sensible, dans son acception la plus large, c'est-à-dire orientée vers l'esthétique (le plus couramment rattaché à une vision anthropocentrée) et/ou vers l'éthique (intolérance idéologique).

Aussi par le partage des affects que met en œuvre une communauté d'esprits (religieuse, laïque, révolutionnaire, impérialiste, etc.), des éléments « contre-nature » peuvent apparaître à un niveau macrosociologique. Éléments émergeant de l'esprit gnostique et de son succédané l'esprit dogmatique, chacun ayant pour spécificité de mettre en exergue le dualisme entre bien et mal, connaissance et ignorance les entraînant ainsi vers l'ère de la déliquescence, de la décadence, en somme vers les temps eschatologiques et leurs abominations monstrueuses.


Abstract (English) :

The best synonym for the word ‘monster’ is the expression ‘unnatural’’ (Aristote, Saint Augustin, Canguilhem, Lascault, Cuny Le Callet, Valton, etc.). That is a paradoxical sentence - if any - when we know that biologically speaking nothing produced by Nature can exist regardless of the respect of its laws. It is among the characteristics of imagination to create exceptions.

But parallel to the Nature as objet of biology and physic is another kind of ‘nature’: the ‘ordinary knowledge’. (Artistote named it the ‘ordinary course’ (ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πολύ) to mention the unnatural aspect of monster), this ‘thing that is produced by the organism to create an order within the experience’s flow’.

Then any monster can be understood as what appears in contrary to an ‘ordinary knowledge’, a ‘sensitive reality’ in every sense, that is to say aesthetics- (mostly associated to an anthropocentred vision) and/or ethicspositioned (ideological intolerance).

And the sharing of affections made by a minds’ community (religious, lay, revolutionary or imperialist, etc.) can reveal some ‘unnatural’ elements at the level of macrosociology. Elements that are emerging from the Gnostic spirit and its substitute: the dogmatic spirit. Each specifically brings out the dualism between good and evil, knowledge and ignorance that leads towards the decay, decline age - in other words towards eschatological times and their monstrous abominations.

From "Weltschmerz" to Valentinian "Kakia": Eminescu's Dualistic-Gnostic Imaginary
Hans Jonas (2001) found striking similarities between Antique Gnosticism and Western Existentialism, foreshadowed since the late 19th century, but continued into the next. In our opinion, the historical parallelism identified by Hans Jonas (2001) may be extended over the relation between the Romantic generation and Gnostics (particularly Valentinians) who had preceded them by more than fifteen centuries. On the one hand, we may note the similitude between Weltschmerz, the “evil” of the Romantic century, and Kakia, used by Valentinian Gnostics to designate, in a way different from that of their contemporaries, followers of the Christian canon, “what is evil”:  “particularly emotional evils – fear, confusion, grief” (Irenaeus). On the other hand, for both Romantics and Gnostics, healing lies in inner truth: the hidden, luminous, extremely subjectivized God of the Gnostics; the absolute of the Romantics, also accessible through subjectivity, emotions and visionary imagination; or, that “truth” which, several centuries before the Romantics, but influencing them, was sought by alchemists, not so much “within ourselves”, but in an “image of the divine that lies within us” (Dorn). Our finding is that Eminescu assumes this subjectivized, Romantic and Gnostic-alchemic understanding of divinity in an explicit way. In a particular way, the characters – lyrical “voices” from Luceafărul (The Vesper) – are distributed precisely in the key-roles, as symptomatic actantial roles from the Gnostic mythology.

Keywords: Weltschmerz; Kakia; dualism; Gnosticism; Romanticism; Mihai Eminescu; Luceafărul (The Vesper).

It is hard to talk about human mobilities without taking into consideration how mobility is being shaped by and shaping processes of imagination. The key concepts of imagination and mobility have rich and complex genealogies. The matter is even made more complex because there are many related concepts surrounding them. Imagination is
associated with images, imagery and imaginaries, whereas mobility is connected to movement, motion and migration (not to mention its imagined opposite, immobility). To be able to see the forest for the trees, I focus in this critical reflection on a discussion of the concepts themselves. One of the analytical advantages of mobility studies, a
relatively novel field of study, is that it shows us how imagination (a dynamic psychological process) and imaginaries (products of the imagination) are crucial for very different forms of human (im)mobility.

Birgit Meyer's Sensational Movies brings together some of the signal themes that have defined her scholarly career at the intersection of Pentecostalism in Africa and the material mediation of religious life. Her ethnographic study of the burgeoning Ghanaian film industry focuses on the ways in which film not only reflects the local moral imagination at a time of social change but also helps to shape and literally produce new forms of imagination that combine, for example, the dualistic Pentecostal ethos with self-conscious stylistic modernism and contested nostalgia for the rural African past. Meyer carefully details both the market forces that constrain film-makers to produce certain kinds of films and the contested cultural politics of African self-representation. The result is a model ethnography for dealing with the complexities of modern cultural production while managing to avoid the all-too-easy collapse into fashionable postmodern solipsism. Meyer does not ignore the films or the filmic imaginary, but she pays attention to the people and sociopolitical contexts behind film production as well. This is crucial, because it allows Meyer to weigh in on some of the major theoretical issues running through today's anthropology of religion. Sensational Movies is the work of a mature scholar who has learned to cut through the Gordian knots of protracted scholarly debate in just a few elegant sentences. While she clearly is interested in the lived experience that transcends mere interpretation of cultures, for

From a reflection on Saussure's theory of language and psychoanalysis, the article shows how an anthropological and social imagination is one of the bases of the nomination process. The examples given are borrowed from the Ticuna language in West Amazonas, the spoken language of coal miners in northern France and some french slang designations, including those linking sexuality and food.

Si Marguerite Duras se montre réticente à dévoiler les secrets de ses influences littéraires avant les années 1970, elle les proclame avec vigueur après 1980, mettant particulièrement en valeur les trente dernières années du XVIIe siècle, Racine et Mme de La Fayette en tête. La façon dont Duras use de la littérature du Grand Siècle allie une posture iconoclaste à un ethos discursif où l’inscription dans la tradition classique démontre un « souci de l’avenir » qui ne soit pas exclusivement tourné vers le désir égocentrique de postérité : il s’agit surtout de réinvestir le rôle prophétique de l’écrivain, qui ne va plus de soi dans la société contemporaine.

If Marguerite Duras proved herself reluctant to unveil the secrets of the literary texts that influence her own work, she suddenly decided to highlight them after 1980, claiming her admiration for the last 30 years of the 17th Century, especially Racine and Mme de La Fayette. The way Duras make use of the literature from the Grand Siècle combines an iconoclastic posture to a very distinct discursive ethos. By claiming her due to the most classical tradition in French Literature, she shows a “care for the future” that is not entirely oriented toward a self-centered desire of posterity: Duras also aims to reinvest the prophetical role of the writer, which is not taken for granted anymore.

The Mekong River has undergone vast infrastructural changes in recent years, including the construction of dams across its main stream. These projects, along with the introduction of new fish species, changing political fortunes, and international migrant labor, have all made a profound impact upon the lives of those residing on the great river. It also impacts how they dream. In Mekong Dreaming, Andrew Alan Johnson explores the changing relationship between the river and the residents of Ban Beuk, a village on the Thailand-Laos border, by focusing on the effect that construction has had on human and inhuman elements of the villagers' world. Johnson shows how inhabitants come to terms with the profound impact that remote, intangible, and yet powerful forces—from global markets and remote bureaucrats to ghosts, spirits, and gods—have on their livelihoods. Through dreams, migration, new religious practices, and new ways of dwelling on a changed river, inhabitants struggle to understand and affect the distant, the inassimilable, and the occult, which offer both sources of power and potential disaster.

Tre componimenti poetici – di Ana Blandiana, Lucian Blaga e Yves Bonnefoy – vengono interpretati secondo la metodologia della mitocritica: in essi si può riconoscere il Dio della vegetazione, categoria archetipale che da sempre risiede nell’immaginario dell’umanità, e della quale si è a lungo occupata e si occupa la mitologia comparata.
Il capitolo I («La Rivoluzione neolitica e la nascita dell’immaginario agrario») indaga l’immaginario religioso del Neolitico, età preistorica durante la quale l’uomo inizia a contemplare assiduamente il ciclo di morte e rinascita della vegetazione. Durante il Neolitico l’Unità primordiale costituita dalla Terra e dalla Vegetazione – sua manifestazione o ipostasi – viene obliata. La Terra è assimilata a una Dea Madre, e la Vegetazione, di contro, è assimilata a un Dio protagonista di un “dramma”: egli si distacca dal grembo tellurico vivendo, ritorna al grembo tellurico morendo, e si distacca nuovamente dal grembo tellurico rinascendo, secondo uno schema triadico-ciclico (vita, morte e rinascita). Il Dio della Vegetazione, frutto del processo di “alienazione” della Terra da se stessa, è un “Dio Figlio” in quanto non è autonomo
dalla Dea Terra; ma è, simultaneamente, un “Dio Sposo”, poiché il ritorno del seme all’utero tellurico della Dea può essere inteso come una “penetrazione” della sua stessa Madre, sicché esso possa autoprocrearsi e rinascere uguale a se stesso.
I capitoli II, III e IV («Il Dio della Vegetazione nella mitologia mesopotamica: Dumuzi/Tammuz»; «Il Dio della Vegetazione nella mitologia greca: Demetra e Persefone»; «Il Dio della Vegetazione nella mitologia norrena: Baldr») concernono i miti riguardanti alcuni degli “dèi della Vegetazione”, o “dèi che muoiono e risorgono”, classificabili come “eredi” del Dio della Vegetazione neolitico. Di ogni mito viene esposta la sinossi – sovente ricostruita attraverso la comparazione di più fonti – e vengono illustrati i temi e i mitemi principali. Il sostrato agrario è ancora riconoscibile in tali miti, sebbene esso non sia più puro, in quanto adombrato da sedimentazioni simboliche posteriori. Il capitolo V («Costellazione simbolica del Dio della Vegetazione») espone i cinque principali archetipi inerenti al “Mito della Vegetazione”. I primi due archetipi, il “Descensus ad Inferos” e lo “Hieros Gamos”, incarnano il duplice rapporto – erotico e mortuario – del Dio della Vegetazione con la Dea Terra, al tempo stesso sua Madre e Sposa: nel momento in cui la Vegetazione ritorna al grembo della Terra, essa muore nel ciclo corrente (“Descensus ad Inferos”) e, contemporaneamente, la feconda per il prossimo ciclo (“Hieros Gamos”). Il terzo archetipo, la Luna, regola il rapporto ciclico tra la Vegetazione (Dio) e la Terra (Dea): essa, nel corso del suo ciclo crescente-decrescente, si presta a simboleggiare, a turno, il Dio della Vegetazione (quando è “parziale”, in forma di quarto, corno, fallo) e l’Unità ancestrale Vegetazione-Terra (quando è “totale”, nelle fasi di luna piena e di luna nera). Il quarto archetipo, il Tempo ciclico, costituisce l’impalcatura ontologica essenziale del rapporto Vegetazione-Terra: questo, infatti, si sviluppa nel ciclo stagionale, che eternamente si ripete. Il quinto archetipo, l’Acqua, figura sottoforma di Lacrime o di Sangue: le Lacrime non sono altro che un’eufemizzazione delle Piogge, essenziali affinché la Vegetazione, sepolta nel ventre della Terra, possa ricrescere; il Sangue è l’emblema della morte violenta del Dio: quest’ultimo viene “sacrificato” (in senso eliadiano) alla Terra, onde permettere una nuova Creazione, ossia la sua rinascita.
I capitoli VI («Ana Blandiana, "Dealuri": echi del Mito della Vegetazione nello “spazio mioritico”»), VII («Lucian Blaga, “Cîntecul spicelor”: i misteri di una luna al maschile») e VIII («Yves Bonnefoy, “Et je pense à Coré l’absente” : Angoscia del movimento e Desiderio d’immobilità») propongono l’analisi di testi poetici del XX secolo. Essi vengono interpretati mediante il riconoscimento, nel corpo degli stessi, dell’archetipo del Dio della Vegetazione (o di uno o più dei suoi mitemi).
I componimenti ivi proposti costituiscono alcuni esempi esplicativi di come l’obliato “Mito del Dio della Vegetazione”, perfino nella prosaica età contemporanea, continui a dar voce all’inconscio, custode dei sogni e delle speranze dell’uomo, da sempre alienato dalla Natura, dall’Eterno e dall’Uno.

Chile's geographical remoteness has largely defined the imaginaries people share about this Latin American country. Despite its historical image as finis terrae (“the end of the world”), migrants from all corners found their way to these isolated peripheral lands. Thanks to new means of transport and communication, Chile nowadays is as exposed to the global circulation of people, objects and ideas as the rest of the world. Based on a combination of archival research and ethnographic fieldwork, this article traces how old (and originally foreign) imaginaries about Chile as an inaccessible island keep on influencing how contemporary Chileans participate in and frame their perceived exclusion from a plethora of new transnational mobilities, regardless of whether they have the means and freedom to cross imaginary boundaries and real borders or not. Although increasingly under outside pressure, the value of immobility remains at the core of the Chilean social imaginary, geo-politics and cultural life.

Infância, Memória e Imaginário constituem vocábulos
semanticamente densos nos vários ensaios que aqui se
apresentam. Com efeito, todos estes textos nos falam de
obras que têm como leitores preferenciais crianças e
jovens e que, dialogando intertextualmente com outras
vozes e outros suportes semióticos, presentificam
mundos possíveis onde a força agregadora dos símbolos e
das imagens exige uma hermenêutica plural.
Estes ensaios pertencem a investigadores das áreas da
Literatura Infantil, da Literatura Juvenil e do Imaginário,
oriundos de várias universidades e centros de
investigação de Portugal e Espanha.

0. Virtuality
0.1. What a Cat’s Life!
0.2. Imagine…

1. Between Visual Culture and Visual Thinking
  1.1. The Historical-Technological Level
  1.2. The Historical-Anthropological Level

2. Making Explicit: The Meta-Historical Level
  2.1. Creativity
  2.2. Identity
    2.2.1. Imaginary/Imaginal Subjectivity
    2.2.2. Imaginary/Imaginal Social Boundaries
    2.2.3. The Contagion in Civilization

3. Conclusions

Τhe study of Konstantinos Kakavelakis refers to the life and the work of the Hungarian postwar composer György Ligeti. Kakavelakis examines thoroughly especially the musical twofold dramatic act Aventures & Nouvelles Aventures (Libretto and Music) which marks an important crossroad in the history of avantguard music. The adventures and the new adventures of the human beings are tangled to the ambiguous woof of obscurity and underhandedness which are involved in human communication. The unrevealing intentions of the protagonists are divided into different networking scenes. The dynamics of conversation seem to be transfigured in the machination of competition springing out from a continuous keep ahead to eschaton. It occurs by their effort to impose their imaginary intellectual and emotional readjustment on reality innovating always new rhetorical strategies.This phenomenon is diagrammatized by a complex coded expression of verbal and non-verbal effectiveness. Their communicative energy-level and their transmission balance depend on the apocalyptic power of its interpretation. In this stage composition of György Ligeti the indication of a possible bothunderstanding but also the text´s canonicity is threatenig from an undetermined convention. The communicative tissue is based upon a self-invented system of exclamative figurations of an artificial language being constructed from 119 isolated vowels and consonnants (prima materia) of the IPA. As phonetic units or multiplex inexplicable toneconcoctions(emotionwords) and in connection with their scenical resurgence they function as enigmatical messages sending to the future, associating simultaneously with unexpected symbolical-dynamical reminescences of a farthest past. The actors take also the role of the listener actively contributing to the imaginary conversation through back channel communication. Ligeti prooves with this composition that imaginery words as second signals of primary signals are also a uniquely human possesion, and could assume a dominant role. The consequences of this effort come up to the last act. The particularities of this extraordinary difficult poetical speechcomposition and musical dramatic act become an imaginary audiovisual maze. It consummates to the morphological structure of a rudimentary daedalian postexpressionistic genre. Inside of this atmosphere coexist the daily synergetic handling of human communication between body, voice, and gaze with the complicated paralingusitic expressions and modalities of social-ritual habits.

Lorsqu’un auteur qualifie lui-même son œuvre de « merveilleux-scientifique », il semble naturel de le regarder sous le double regard de la philosophie de l’imaginaire et de la philosophie des sciences. Puisque nous vivons « une époque où la science prédomine sans que s’éteigne pour autant notre éternel besoin de fantaisie », la problématique et le traitement de Maurice Renard n’ont peut-être jamais été aussi pertinents. Nous voudrions donc ici associer deux types d’analyses. La première, épistémologique, porte sur les représentations de la science, de la recherche et des chercheurs qu’on trouve chez cet auteur. La seconde s’intéresse au traitement de l’imaginaire, analysé ici avec les outils de l’anthropologie de l’imaginaire de Gilbert Durand et surtout la philosophie de l’imaginaire des derniers ouvrages de Gaston Bachelard. Une telle étude se situe à l’opposée de la problématique étriquée qui ne conduit à juger de la littérature d’imagination scientifique (autrement dit la science-fiction) qu’au regard des critères de vérité scientifique. Elle ne correspond pas non plus à la problématique de l’anticipation. Elle tente plutôt d’appréhender les représentations de la science et les représentations suscitées par la science.

Resumo O objetivo deste artigo é analisar o conto A hora e a Vez de Augusto Matraga a partir dos aportes teóricos propostos por Gilbert Durand na obra As estruturas Antropológicas do Imaginário (2002). Nossa proposta de leitura consiste em demonstrar que o protagonista Augusto Matraga insere-se dentro do arquétipo do herói solar da representação diurna do imaginário, enquanto o encadeamento narrativo estabelece-se na estrutura rítmica/dramática do imaginário noturno.

Abstract This article aims to analyze the A hora e a Vez de Augusto Matragashort story from theoretical contributions proposed by Gilbert Durand inThe Anthropological Structures of the Imaginary (2002). Our study purpose is to demonstrate that the protagonist Augusto Matragawas placed into solar hero archetype on the daytime imaginary representation, while the narrative sequencing was placed on rhythmic/dramatic structure of nocturne imaginary.

Phenomenology, Sociology, Hermeneutics and Psychoanalysis have accumulated different methods and knowledge on the imaginary. Nevertheless, the crucial connection between the social imagining and communication has not always been truly examined. In this article, we take the imaginary (seen as a symbolic thought of images) and communication (seen as a process of symbolic reproduction) as correlated notions, and work upon a communicational matrix of the imaginary. We emphasize three key elements of the imaginary: by pointing to the verbal-iconic, technical and mediatized dimensions we will be paying special attention to the media imaginary and the effects of its commemorative logic to the propagation of public imaginaries.

Le temps constitue l’un des points nodaux de l’œuvre de Jean-Philippe Toussaint. Parallèlement, le topique de la lumière a, comme il l’affirme dans /La main et le regard/, « toujours eu une place centrale dans [s]on travail » (p. 18). Partant de ces deux éléments, nous interrogeons leur articulation spécifique au sein de la tétralogie /Marie Madeleine Marguerite de Montalte/, afin de cerner la logique de l’imaginaire qui en résulte.

// Plan de l'article :
> Une temporalité pathétique
> La lumière, thanatale
> L'eau, la nuit, l'amour
> Vers le féminin

What does it mean to make a scene? The paper explores – in a historic and a theoretical dimension – the concept of scena. The argument is based on historical cases – such as the 'invention' of purpose built theatres in the 16th century, a reading of Kyd's "Spanish Tragedy" and concepts of a philosophical anthropology as represented by thinkers like Iser, Blumenberg or Jonas.

Nous examinerons au cours de cette journée la nature de la relation unissant les images mentales hallucinatoires -induites ou non par des substances psychotropes- aux motifs esthétiques prisés par certains groupes culturels tels qu’ils s’illustrent de manière récurrente dans leurs productions iconographiques. L’art hallucinatoire sera ici envisagé comme un art réflexif, qui déploie sa pertinence non seulement vis-à-vis de son référent mais aussi de son auteur et des modalités d’expérience propres au groupe social dans lequel il s’inscrit. L’anthropologie des images visionnaires proposée au cours de cette journée d’étude visera donc à sonder à la fois la vie sociale des images, la plasticité des consciences qui les engendrent et l’interaction dynamique entre ces deux pôles.

Abstract: Vintilă Horia associates the alchemic imaginary and the paradigm of quantic Physics by applying the result to the interpretation of social and ideological phenomena characteristic of postwar Eastern Europe. Like Dante’s Commedia, Persécutez Boèce! proposes a soteriology, but in a New Age formula, through an inter- and transdisciplinary transfer, at the intersection of atomic Physics and hermetism – an alternative to the imanentist ideologies of (post)modernity. Like his Florentine icon, Vintilă Horia reconsiders an ontology of redemption – of salvation from the “evil” of the history that has dissolved the luminous order of the world into an ideologically nourished entropy.

Keywords: Vintilă Horia; Imaginary; Ideology; Interdisciplinary; Transdisciplinary; Gnostic; Alchemy; Dialectic Materialism; Atomic Physics; Deconstruction.

Laura Mesina
The Medieval Imaginary: Structures and Theories

Resulting from a doctoral research, the present volume tackles its object, the medieval imaginary, from two different perspectives: a theoretical one (a survey of fundamental works in the field, followed by the advancement of a new possible interpretation of the vast phenomenon of collective mentality), and a case study of the Romanian Middle Ages, with a special focus on the collective mentalities and behaviors, the rites and rituals of power, and the artistic creations in the Romanian Principalities (14th-18th c.).
One of the aims of this research is the anthropological valorization of the complex symbolism of time and space as found in image and text, and in city planning, respectively. The same anthropological approach is used to deal with the relationship between imaginary and the representations, symbolism and ideology of Byzantine-shaped medieval Romanian authority. In such a light, this relationship proved to be instrumental in the memorization of history and self-image, and a decisive influence on the way Christian faith has been fused with local "mythology."
My analysis of the causal role of Orthodoxy and the Byzantine imperial model, respectively, in shaping the political and religious life in the Romanian Principalities builds upon a consistent bibliography in the field. My specific focus is on the identification and systematization of the various "echoes" of this model in Romanian works relevant both for the collective imaginary and for the politics of representation of local power in the Romanian public space and on the international diplomatic stage.
Hence, a special attention is given to the multiple paradox that presided at the construction of the Romanian medieval states in difficult historical and political circumstances, which ultimately led to their affiliation to the Orthodox Patriarchate in Constantinople and, therefore, to their inclusion in the Byzantine sphere of influence. The construction of the medieval states and their political options also figures prominently in the collective imaginary as a coordinated set of mythical structures relevant for the Romanian identity discourse.
Finally, another point of interest is a paradox at the core of the early modern European imaginary. Between iconoclasm and iconolatry, drawing from ancient texts and the writings of the Fathers of the Church, the collective imaginary never ceased to use image and representation as mnemonic practices even at times when theories, institutions and beliefs worked against them.

Acadêmicos brasileiros vêm dando atenção às relações entre o imaginário e o cinema na última década oferecendo pesquisas sobre filmes cinematográficos do ponto de vista da simbologia, do sonho, do mito, das metáforas, folclores ou fantasias. Entretanto, barreiras teóricas e metodológicas costumam se apresentar. Por vezes, esses estudos tomam o imaginário pelo senso comum. Já quando teoricamente definido (imaginário social, cultural ou midiático, por exemplo), surgem desequilíbrios com relação ao procedimento metodológico aplicado, como no caso de análises fílmicas semiotizadas dedicadas à observação do mito no cinema que se mostram inadequadas ao entendimento de simbolismos de ordem do imaginário. Na intenção de compreender a motivação simbólica e potencialmente mítica de narrativas cinematográficas, nos alinhamos aos Estudos do Imaginário na vertente da Escola de Grenoble.

Attempting to develop a communicational theory of the imaginary, this chapter considers the imaginary in its constitutive plurality. It suggests a good way to study the notion is to examine all the movement of its social uses and how different imaginaries are adopted, shared and re-created in meaningful (symbolic) activities. The imaginal trajectory names the path of successive imaginaries, a trail of moving and supple plurality of images-text travelling along societies. Some notes are advanced having in mind the ordering of a map or curve of the imaginal trajectory by pinpointing three landmarks or vectors on its course: publicity, sensibility and intensity.

Prikaz knjige: Reflections on Imagination: Human Capacity and Ethnographic Method, xvi+299 pages, bibliographical references,
figures, index. Edited by Mark Harris and Nigel Rapport. England: Ashgate Publishing Limited; USA: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2015.

El Apocalipsis describe el “Paraíso definitivo”
como un ambiente del cual estarán del
todo suprimidas ciertas “realidades” que integran
la existencia presente. Entre ellas se encuentra el
periodo nocturno, cuya abolición ha sido conectada,
a lo largo de la Edad Media, con la supresión del
tiempo, inferida de cierta interpretación del Ap 10,6.
Al partir de la recepción medieval del Apocalipsis,
este artículo pretende analizar en qué medida los
supuestos fines de la noche y del tiempo pueden
asociarse, sea por elementos presentes en las propias
fuentes bíblicas, sea por estructuras comunes del
imaginario y de la percepción.