The imaginary act refracts rather than mirrors the real action it expresses.

Evidence

Imagine an actor who is playing Hamlet and who is caught up in his role. He crosses his mother’s room to kill Polonius hidden behind the arras. But that is not what he is actually doing. He is crossing a stage before an audience and passing from “court side” to “garden side” in order to earn his living, to win fame, and this real activity defines his position in society. But one cannot deny that these real results are present in some way in his imaginary act. One cannot deny that the movement of the imaginary prince expresses in a certain indirect and refracted manner the actor’s real movement, nor that the very way in which he takes himself for Hamlet is his own way of knowing himself as an actor. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 458

Categorization

• DEFINE: The Hamlet-actor figure models symbolic interpretation: the imaginary act relates to real praxis by refraction, not reflection.
• XREF: The actor/role figure recalls Benjamin’s and Adorno’s thinking on mimesis and semblance, and reappears in Jameson’s later discussion of realism and reification. — connects to: Imagination precedes and produces reality rather than reflecting it — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 152; Illusions that ground action are real, second realities; One’s own action is misrepresented when understood through the other’s observable teleology (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Imagination precedes and produces reality rather than reflecting it #contradicts (0.85) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 152
• Illusions that ground action are real, second realities #expands (0.75)
• One’s own action is misrepresented when understood through the other’s observable teleology #expands (0.72)
• Economic expectations are products of imagination rather than reason. #exemplifies (0.70) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 137