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The force of the term 'imaginary' in much twentieth-century theoretical discourse is twofold. It designates a concept enabling a behaviour-pattern or set of relationships to be encompassed by a theoretical structure. But it can also serve to designate, and to stigmatize, alternative theoretical structures. That is to say, theories that do not have a concept of the imaginary are identified as imaginary constructs. The imaginary conceals itself from the theory by effectively permeating or even constituting the theory. The term, then, has a polemical or rhetorical as well as a theoretical status. My concern here is with 'imaginary', not with 'imagination' in the Romantic sense, where the word has positive overtones of creativity and vitality.1 However, it is revealing to examine a pre-Romantic discourse of imagination, namely that of Pascal, where we find adumbrated both the conceptual and the polemical functions of the term 'imaginary' that will be afterwards traced in Lacan and Althusser, and, in a somewhat different form, in Sartre. Pascal's fullest treatment of imagination occurs in fragment 44 of the Pensees (Lafuma numbering).2 From this, the following themes emerge: imagination ('this arrogant power hostile to reason') is in violent conflict with reason, and with reality;
Paragraph – Edinburgh University Press
Published: Nov 1, 1994
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