Imagination actively creates worlds rather than merely imitating an external reality

Evidence

Relatedly, as to the question of why imagination should not be confounded with passive perception and imitation, Castoriadis is steadfast: “Representation is not tracing out the spectacle of the world, it is that in and through which at a given moment a world arises” (1975, 331). Hence, Castoriadis considers images to be generated by a fundamentally creative (rather than imitative or repetitive) act of representation. With creative representation, we have no simple “unmediated access to ‘reality,’ and further, no interest in ‘reality’ ” (Castoriadis 1997a, 151). The act of “putting” our world “into images” is a twofold process of distorting what “is” (seeing what is absolutely not there in what “is”) and of creating forms so alien to “reality” that they cannot even be called distortions but are nonetheless entirely unique “unmotivated creations” (Castoriadis 1975, 247). — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 238

Categorization

• XREF: Castoriadis’s radical constructivism is the philosophical bedrock for the book’s argument that speculative financial communities conjure value and futures into existence — links directly to the reader’s finance/imagination thesis. — connects to: Lukács’s world-oriented novel is founded on a subjective optical illusion — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 360; Imagination functions both as an open-ended process and a fixed outcome — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 155; Imagination precedes and produces reality rather than reflecting it — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 152 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Imagination precedes and produces reality rather than reflecting it #corroborates (0.90) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 152
• Imagination precedes and enables the achievement of political transformation #exemplifies (0.85) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3429
• Speculative imagination gives provisional images to future chaos we can live with #expands (0.85)
• Speculative imagination generates collective futures under incalculable uncertainty #expands (0.80)
• Imagination gives way to a verification mechanism checking accuracy against reality. #contradicts (0.80)
• The speculative imagination keeps the future open to change by collectively owning its indeterminacy #expands (0.80) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 249
• Speculative imagination is a generative social force integrated into everyday capitalist life #exemplifies (0.80) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 74
• Imagination differs from perception in conscious attitude, not object content #qualifies (0.75)
• Reality’s coherence depends on a reserve of un-mapped imaginary territory #expands (0.75) — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 403