ABSTRACT
Bottici investigates the political role of the imaginal. Whereas imagination tends to be conceived as a faculty possessed by individuals, the imaginal is simply what is made of images. Today, politics depend on the imaginal, which makes the public possible in the first place. Images no longer only mediate political activities; they have also become an end in themselves. The quantity of images that accompany contemporary elections in most Western countries has become such that the spectacle completely prevails over the content. That images overwhelm contemporary politics is no surprise: politics today feed on the very capacity to create images. Behind this virtual revolution, there is a deep change: images are now malleable in a way never before possible. Anything goes, even faked information, so long as it captures the audience’s attention. Bottici strives to understand this willingness to exchange “fake news” for “real news”. The concept of imaginal transformation is an invitation to give up on truth. The imaginal plays a crucial role in all aspects of social life as images orient human understanding of the world. Thus, the imaginal explains the paradox of a political world full of images but deprived of imagination.
