Imaginary

Phase-synchronization is a manifestation of interaction between neuronal groups measurable from LFP, EEG or MEG signals, however, volume conduction can cause the coherence and the phase locking value to spuriously increase. It has been shown that the imaginary component of the coherency (ImC) cannot be spuriously increased by volume-conduction of independent sources. Recently, it was proposed that the phase lag index (PLI), which estimates to what extent the phase leads and lags between signals from two sensors are nonequiprobable, improves on the ImC. Compared to ImC, PLI has the advantage of being less influenced by phase delays. However, sensitivity to volume-conduction and noise, and capacity to detect changes in phase-synchronization, is hindered by the discontinuity of the PLI, as small perturbations turn phase lags into leads and vice versa. To solve this problem, we introduce a related index, namely the weighted phase lag index (WPLI). Differently from PLI, in WPLI the contribution of the observed phase leads and lags is weighted by the magnitude of the imaginary component of the cross-spectrum. We demonstrate two advantages of the WPLI over the PLI, in terms of reduced sensitivity to additional, uncorrelated noise sources and increased statistical power to detect changes in phase-synchronization. Another factor that can affect phase-synchronization indices is sample-size bias. We show that, when directly estimated, both PLI and the magnitude of the ImC have typically positively biased estimators. To solve this problem, we develop an unbiased estimator of the squared PLI, and a debiased estimator of the squared WPLI.

Accounts of the nation and national identity have tended to focus upon the transmission by cultural elites of authoritative culture, invented traditions and folk customs. Following Billig, I suggest that the national is increasingly located in the everyday and in the realm of popular culture; far more so than in ‘high’ and ‘official’ forms of culture. To exemplify this, I discuss national automobilities, specifically exploring the role of iconic models, mundane motorscapes and the everyday, habitual performances of driving. With a particular focus upon British and Indian car cultures, I further suggest that the ‘national’ is not a singular or monolithic entity but is constituted out of a vast matrix of interrelated elements, three of which are the models, geographies and performances identified above. As the national proliferates and expands, becoming globalized, it generates multiple forms of national identity, although consistencies and points of focus remain. Accordingly, as in o...

Este artículo explora los mitos e imaginarios sociales sobre Internet compartidos y vehiculados por el discurso académico y por los activistas de los nuevos movimientos sociales que utilizan la tecnología de forma intensiva como base de sus estrategias de organización y acción colectiva. Se indagan los discursos, imaginarios y mitos sobre la Red mediante una metodología cualitativa basada en la observación participante y en la entrevista activa a activistas de diferentes movimientos sociales. A través del análisis de los relatos de los ciberactivistas recogidos entre 2007 y 2020, se manifiesta una evolución de los mitos e imaginarios, que transitan desde una retórica ciber-libertaria utópica e idealizada hacia una creciente desmitificación de la Red como espacio distópico.

Contributing to an emerging debate that brings the mobilization of land rent as a financial asset to the heart of urban analysis, this article offers a narrative of land financialization as a ‘lived’ process. Focusing empirically on Bicocca (a post-industrial area north-east of Milan that traditionally hosted the activities of Pirelli, one of Italy’s most successful companies), the paper shifts the focus of enquiry on land financialization from global capital flows and real estate aggregate data to a qualitative analysis of the alliances and struggles between the elites and workers who animated the traditional manufacturing sector. Centring the analysis on these previously neglected actors permits an understanding of land financialization as a ‘lived’ and socially embodied process, and offers a complementary perspective to the discussion on the role of land rent in the making of financialized capitalism. First, it reveals the struggles and alliances between industrial elites, worker...

This article discusses the mediatization of politics and its theorization as a process of transformation in the making of (political) meaning through three different theses, presented as evolutionist, intended, and imagined transformation. These theses differ from each other not as much on what they describe as meaning-making transformation-the personalization, conversationalization, and dramatization of politics-as on what they consider to be the causes, extent, and consequences of this transformation. By examining their differences, the article argues that mediatization cannot be fully explained with reference either to a single-universal media logic (as in the thesis of evolutionist transformation) or actor-perceived media logics (as in the thesis of intended transformation). It is seen (in the thesis of imagined transformation), instead, as being catalyzed by the imaginary of media omnipresence, the overwhelming sense that media are everywhere which dictates that potential media effects must be anticipated and, in so doing, intensifies the fusion of the public with private spheres of political life. At the same time, this private-public fusion takes place through existing, institutionalized practices of media performativity, such as the performativity of charisma (personalization), ordinariness (conversationalization) and spectacle (dramatization), bearing implications for the exercise of power and democratic practice in societies.

[FR] On pourrait synthétiser les approches de la traduction à l’aide de deux figures mythiques opposées : Hermès et Orphée. Le premier est métaphore d’une traduction herméneutique qu’on pourrait dire sourcière, visant à transposer le sens. De l’autre côté demeure Orphée, personnage qui tâtonne dans l’obscurité des formes et qui est métaphore d’une traduction qu’on pourrait qualifier de cibliste, visant le style. Mais on pourrait envisager une autre voie de la traduction, celle d’Apollon : voie mystérieuse de récréation et révélation. Nous aborderons ces trois métaphores à travers quatre traductions du premier sonnet du Chansonnier de Pétrarque : celles de Louis Aragon, de Gérard Genot, d’Yves Bonnefoy et de Jean-Yves Masson. // [ENG] We can synthesize the approaches of translation by means of two mythological figures: Hermes and Orpheus. The first is a metaphor of an hermeneutical translation which transposes the meaning, in other words it’s a source-oriented translation. On the other hand, we find Orpheus, a figure that fumbles around in the darkness of form: it is a metaphor of a target-oriented translation. However, we can assume another type of translation, Apollo’s translation: it’s the mysterious way of recreation and revelation. We will explain those metaphors through four French translations of the first sonnet of Petrarch’s Canzoniere: Louis Aragon, Gérard Genot, Yves Bonnefoy and Jean-Yves Masson translations.

Under regimes of austerity, social movements´ transformative eco-politics may appear endangered. What kinds of environmentalism and radical imaginaries can unfold in social movements in crisis-ridden societies? I focus on the ‘movement of the squares’ during its post-encampment phase, with a case study on three urban projects of the Indignados movement in Barcelona. Observation of these projects reveals the importance of three common and intertwined radical imaginaries embodied in participants’ social practices and orienting their future visions: the commons, autonomy, and ecologism. The ecologism imaginary cannot be properly understood if disembedded from the other two: the ‘Indignant’ projects constitute community structures re-embedding (re)production, jointly covering and generating needs differently, in response to the global capitalist forces that are threatening their social reproduction. Eco-politics can only be plausibly transformative if it is able to articulate a politics of intersectionality linking social reproduction with ecological interconnectedness and struggles against dispossessions and social injustice.

From contaminated water pipes to social media manipulation to sinking cities, infrastructures increasingly appear at the heart of cultural, political, and environmental crises. As a technique of governance, infrastructures delegate control to systems and disperse power into the environment. This special issue argues that engaging with infrastructural politics requires new tactics and modes of analysis which take seriously the politics of articulation, everyday life, and meaning. The introductory essay situates the project of infrastructural politics within the critical and cross-disciplinary literature on infrastructure and the political tradition of Cultural Studies. We identify distinctive features of infrastructural politics, organized around the concepts of scale, formalization, and imaginary, that set forth the common concerns of the issue and raise questions for future research. Following this discussion, we introduce the essays of the issue, spanning topics that include emergency dispatch, automated music mastering, open pit coal mines, homeless encampments, police body cameras, and sand. Throughout, the issue is animated by a commitment shared among founding figures of Cultural Studies, activists, and abolitionists: the capacity to critically engage infrastructure in order to improve the lived conditions of culture.

Résumé S’appuyant sur la définition que Jack Kerouac a donnée de lui-même (« Je ne suis pas un “beat” mais un mystique catholique étrange, solitaire et fou… »), l’auteur lit l’immense oeuvre du « Ti-Jean » de Lowell comme si elle proposait, à travers une ethno-fiction, la mise en scène imaginaire du mythe fondateur d’un lignage Canuck, de la chronique généalogique de la migration des Kerouac, de la Bretagne aux États-Unis en passant par le Québec, et de la difficile américanisation d’une famille ouvrière, catholique et de langue française dans un des « Petits Canadas » des États-Unis. L’article démontre que l’image de « Beatnik » ne fait pas justice à l’extraordinaire créativité littéraire de cet écrivain qui a inventé un style d’écriture automatique inconnu avant lui, qui a mis en mots l’esprit de toute une époque dans un des « grands romans américains » du XXe siècle et qui a réécrit une nouvelle version de la mythologie américaine du voyage. Le monde imaginaire de Kerouac a été c...

The decolonization of the social imaginary has been proposed as an important dimension of the transition towards a degrowth society. However, although omnipresent in the degrowth literature, the terms ‘‘social imaginary’’ and ‘‘social imaginary significations’’ have not been adequately explained. This creates a level of mystification that limits the analytical value of the degrowth framework. In addition, there is very little theoretical work on how actual social imaginaries can be decolonized and transformed. This paper first tries to clarify those concepts. Subsequently, it develops a theoretical framework for explaining such transitions of
the imaginary. In developing this framework, the paper focuses on moments of crisis, since crises have been historically associated with change and transition. It argues that crises are important because they destabilize social imaginaries and open up a stage of suspension—a liminal stage—in which the rise of new social practices can facilitate the emergence of new social imaginary significations and institutions that can contribute to the alteration of the social imaginary at large. The paper draws on case studies related to the Greek crisis, the biggest ever faced by a country of the Global North after the Second World War.

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.

... Their differing judgments reflected divergent political outlooks that placed varying emphasis on the proper role of government as an ameliorative social force. ... Washington, DC: NationalCommunication Association. ... America's Struggle Against Poverty 1900-1994. ...

Resumen: En este texto se desarrolla un acercamiento al problema de las formas de acción colectiva y de representación que se pueden presentar como alternativas con potencial de transformación de las condiciones sociales más allá de la estructura ideológica del sistema capitalista. A partir de una confrontación entre Cornelius Castoriadis y Slavoj Žižek con respecto a la posibilidad de autoinstitución de la sociedad y la necesidad de vincular la multitud a una representación unitaria, se analizan los dilemas concretos de la lucha revolucionaria a través de las figuras de Lenin y Robespierre. Este análisis permite concluir que la irrupción de la libertad de los colectivos en los eventos revolucionarios implica un tipo de violencia que impide determinar con certeza su dirección. Sin embargo, tal violencia también es la condición que enmarca el acto revolucionario en una dimensión ética, como una decisión que posibilita la transformación del imaginario.

Abstract: This text develops an approach to the problem of the forms of collective action and representation that can be proposed as alternatives with potential to transform social conditions beyond the ideological structure of the capitalist system. The concrete dilemmas of the revolutionary struggle are analyzed through the figures of Lenin and Robespierre, after a discussion of the arguments of Cornelius Castoriadis and Slavoj Žižek on the possibility of self-institution of society and the need to link its multiplicity to a unitary representation. The paper concludes that the irruption of the collectives’
freedom in revolutionary events implies a type of violence whose direction is difficult to determine with certainty. However, this violence frames the revolutionary act in an ethical dimension, as a decision that enables the transformation of the imaginary.

In this paper, we offer a Leftist critique of standard liberal defenses
of the public school. We suggest that the standard arguments
employed by mainstream liberal defenders of the public school
are generally inadequate because they fail to provide a credible
representation of their historical object, let alone effective remedies
to our current problems. Indeed, many of these narratives, in
our view, are grounded in fantasies about what public schools, or
teaching and learning, are or could be, as much as they are
grounded in the historical realities of public schools or the realities
of so-called privatization. We speculate whether the self identification
of the proponents of this cause as ‘progressive’ is
not part of this ideological construction and if the underlying
political agenda is not in fact more conservative.

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 individuals, the concept of social imaginary is meant to encompass significations within which individuals are socialized and that thus precede the formation of individuals themselves. To put it bluntly, we could say that, whereas the
imagination is a faculty that an individual possesses, the social imaginary is the social context that possesses individuals. In this article, I would like to reconstruct the dilemmas that surround this conceptual couple and argue for a theory of the imaginal as a solution to such dilemmas. In conclusion, I will also argue that the concept of the imaginal is a much more malleable tool in terms of social ontology, because it is able to overcome the social versus individual dichotomy, moving towards an alternative ontology of the transindividual. In a time when social boundaries are being contested by globalization from above and from below, and in which risks proving an outdated tool for social inquiry, the concept of the imaginal is a much more promising tool, whether one decides to embark on an alternative social ontology or not.

Located just north of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, the largest and oldest of China's Special Economic Zone (SEZ) has been both a project and symbol of post-Mao modernization. In this paper, I trace how the Shenzhen built environment mediates images and experiences ...

This article compares the contributions to the study of the imaginary and otherness made by two French thinkers, close one to each other due to the epoch in which they lived and the influence of phenomenology in their works: the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and the philosopher and specialist on Islamic religion Henry Corbin. The objective is to contribute to the development of a method of psychological research which could avoid reductionism. It is concluded that, as the experience of the sacred cannot be dissociated from the revelation of the one who experiences it, the specific way of the religious event invites to listen its meaning from a psychological perspective.

The concept of the imaginary is pervasive within contemporary thought, yet can be a baffling and often controversial term. In Imagination and the Imaginary, Kathleen Lennon explores the links between imagination - regarded as the faculty of creating images or forms - and the imaginary, which links such imagery with affect or emotion and captures the significance which the world carries for us.

Beginning with an examination of contrasting theories of imagination proposed by Hume and Kant, Lennon argues that the imaginary is not something in opposition to the real, but the very faculty through which the world is made real to us. She then turns to the vexed relationship between perception and imagination and, drawing on Kant, Merleau-Ponty and Sartre, explores some fundamental questions, such as whether there is a distinction between the perceived and the imagined; the relationship between imagination and creativity; and the role of the body in perception and imagination. Invoking also Spinoza and Coleridge, Lennon argues that, far from being a realm of illusion, the imaginary world is our most direct mode of perception. She then explores the role the imaginary plays in the formation of the self and the social world.

A unique feature of the volume is that it compares and contrasts a philosophical tradition of thinking about the imagination - running from Kant and Hume to Strawson and John McDowell - with the work of phenomenological, psychoanalytic, poststructuralist and feminist thinkers such as Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Lacan, Castoriadis, Irigaray, Gatens and Lloyd. This makes Imagination and the Imaginary essential reading for students and scholars working in phenomenology, philosophy of perception, social theory, cultural studies and aesthetics.

Cover Image: Bronze Bowl with Lace, Ursula Von Rydingsvard, 2014. Courtesy the artist, Galerie Lelong and Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Photo Jonty Wilde.

La modernidad ha sido creadora de espacios, límites nuevos y fronteras en tanto marcas metafísicas, mitológicas y simbólicas de territorios físicos e imaginarios. El espacio moderno y sus fronteras son metáforas, límites que se crean, muros que se levantan para identificarnos con unos y categorizar a otros. En este breve trabajo abordamos el problema de la transformación de la idea de frontera (geográfica, cultural, simbólica, etc.) como pretexto para una reflexión en torno a las transformaciones de esa obsesión civilizatoria llamada frontera. La frontera ha sido siempre un referente en el que se enfrentan las identidades, los nombres, los símbolos, los imaginarios diferenciados: es la línea de mayor enfrentamiento entre dos alteridades. A partir del marco anterior reflexionamos en torno a la mitología turneriana, ya que consideramos que detrás de la creación del imaginario de la frontera norte está la mítica visión de la frontera norteamericana como canon ideológico que explica y c...

This paper examines the relationship between the imaginary and political engagement in two experimental Francophone African works: Djibril Diop Mamb ety's Touki Bouki and Sony Labou Tansi's La Vie et demie. Rather than explicating the political motives for writing and filming imaginatively, this paper analyzes the effect that experimental postcolonial fictions have on their viewers and readers. It argues that the concept of as-if imagining offers new synthetic ground between aesthetic and political projects that are often perceived to be in tension with one another.

– Monsters, Bottle Rockets, Bamboos, Balls and The Utmost Depth: enchantments in performances of a streetwise youth – This article is dedicated to scrutinizing some images and objects produced within a universe of marginalized youth cultures. Given the high flow of youngsters among these cultures, these practices are here understood as a network. Such network involves piXação (graffiti tagging), torcidas organizadas (soccer supporters' groups, i.e. hooligans, ultras, etc.), bate-bolas (bat-balls, masked carnival clowns) and bailes funk (favela funk parties). They were consequently analyzed with an approach that is interested in the studies of the imaginary , and in their relations with anthropology, philosophy and psychology; the monsters that give name to the sound crews of the bailes funk, the bamboos used by the torcidas organizadas, the balls/balloons swung by the bate-bolas, the weapon-allegory ambivalence of rojões (bottle rockets), and the image of the fundão (utmost depth). RÉSUMÉ – Monstres, Pétards, Bambous, Balles et le Fond: enchanterie dans les performances d'une jeunesse qui vive la rue – Cet article analyse quelques images et objets issus de l'univers de jeunes cultures marginalisées qui fleurissent dans les quartiers pauvres de Rio de Janeiro. Il s'intéresse, ainsi, au réseau de pratiques qui comprennent aussi bien les graffiti que les démonstrations des supporteurs des différentes équipes de football, les exhibitions des Bate-Bolas (groupes de jeunes déguisés qui se produisent dans les rues pendant le Carnaval) et la participation aux bals Funk. Nous essayerons plus particulièrement d'examiner, depuis une approche forgée par les études de l'imaginaire et appuyés sur les contributions de l'anthropologie, de la philosophie et de la psychologie, les images autant que les objets liés à ces pratiques – tels les monstres éponymes des équipes de sonorisation des bals, les outils brandis par les supporters, les vessies manipulées para les clowns, les fusées, ces armes-allégories pleines d'ambivalence et l'image du fond. Mots-clés: Jeunesse. Epistémologie. Esthétique. Subjectivité. Imaginaire. RESUMO – Monstros, Rojões, Bambus, Bolas e o Fundão: encantarias em performances de uma juventude rueira – O artigo dedica-se a esmiuçar algumas imagens e objetos produzidos em um universo de cul-turas jovens marginalizadas. Dado o alto fluxo de jovens entre elas, essas práticas são aqui compreendidas como uma rede. Tal rede envolve a piXação, as torcidas organizadas de futebol, as turmas de bate-bola e os bailes funk. Analisa-se, então, com uma abordagem interessada nos estudos do imaginário, e nas suas relações com a antropologia, a filosofia e a psicologia, os monstros que dão nome às equipes de som dos bailes, os bambus usados pelas torcidas, a bola/bexiga dos bate-bolas e o rojão em sua ambivalência arma-alegoria, além da presença constante da imagem do fundo. Palavras-chave: Juventude. Epistemologia. Estética. Subjetividade. Imaginário.

This is a final draft. Please cite only the published  in Gregory R. Smulewicz-Zucker and Michael J. Thompson, Radical Intellectuals and the Subversion of Progressive Politics: The Betrayal of Politics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), pp. 211-236.

How can one describe and identify all the characteristics of a translation? How can scholars probe all that exists beyond the translated text? This study proposes new theoretical tools in order to define the “imaginaries of translation” that allow us to understand, on the one hand, the translator’s subjectivity (the imaginaries of translators), and on the other hand, the various conceptions and representations of translation (the imaginaries of translating) involved in the circulation and transmission of texts from one linguistic reality to another. The articles in this volume examine the notion of the imaginary in different European languages and through the prism of the most important translation theories.