ABSTRACT

The Politics of Imagination offers a multidisciplinary perspective on the contemporary relationship between politics and the imagination. What role does our capacity to form images play in politics? And can we define politics as a struggle for people’s imagination? As a result of the increasingly central place of the media in our lives, the political role of imagination has undergone a massive quantitative and a qualitative change. As such, there has been a revival of interest in the concept of imagination, as the intimate connections between our capacity to form images and politics becomes more and more evident. Bringing together scholars from different disciplines and theoretical outlooks, The Politics of Imagination examines how the power of imagination reverberates in the various ambits of social and political life: in law, history, art, gender, economy, religion and the natural sciences. And it will be of considerable interest to those with contemporary interests in philosophy, political philosophy, political science, legal theory, gender studies, sociology, nationalism, identity studies, cultural studies, and media studies.

chapter |22 pages

From imagination to the imaginary and beyond

Towards a theory of imaginal politics

chapter |17 pages

Politics at its best

Reasons that move the imagination

chapter |18 pages

The politics of imagination

Spinoza and the origins of critical theory

chapter |13 pages

From soul to mind

Psychology and political imagination

chapter |15 pages

Imagining the west, perceiving race

Social sciences and political imagination

chapter |20 pages

Religion and the struggle for people's imagination

The case of contemporary Islamism

chapter |19 pages

Feminist imagination

The aesthetic role of critique and representation