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Warren Breckman
Department of History, University of Pennsylvania

Abstract

The "imaginary" has secured a central place in the lexicon of cultural and historical studies. Scholars have appealed to the concept of the social imaginary in order to underscore the "constructed," imagined, even "fictive" nature of such phenomena as gender, sexuality, national identity, and historical memory. From such a viewpoint, the imaginary (for example, social-cultural representations, unconscious mentalities, or even symbolic archetypes) is seen to play a crucial role in history: it shapes the ways in which societies establish hierarchies, distinctions, and meanings both internally in relation to their members and externally in relation to other groups; it moulds the individual and underlies the actions of historical agents; and it mediates all relationships between culture and nature.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the theme of the imaginary in the two thinkers most closely associated with the idea of the imaginary, Jacques Lacan and Cornelius Castoriadis. The paper argues that scholars have tended to use the concept of the imaginary without fully appreciating the very different positions offered by Lacan and Castoriadis. Lacan's theory of the imaginary centers on a psychoanalytic account of how the human subject constitutes the "ego" as a fictive identity. This becomes the basis of Lacan's critique of traditional notions of the human subject and of his distrust of political projects seeking greater human autonomy. Castoriadis, by contrast, views the imaginary as radical creativity, operative at both the individual and social levels. Although Castoriadis also criticizes received notions of human subjectivity, his theory of the social imaginary commits him to rethinking the human subject, human agency in history, and the pursuit of autonomy. The paper aims through this comparison to heighten awareness of the theoretical complexities implicit in the concept of the imaginary and to underscore the political and epistemological issues at stake for those who pursue the history of the social imaginary.