The Imaginary

Abstract

“The imaginary” is a concept typically associated with the predominantly French-language post-structuralist movement—which was also critical of modernism—that emerged during the second half of the 20th century. Within this tradition, the term was introduced as a way to discuss the production of images—inherent to culture, the symbolic order, or the linguistic system—that shape the filters through which an individual perceives and interprets the world around them. It has also been noted that the concept bears clear traces of its origin during the rise of mass culture. This is because the general conception of the “image”—within and through the process of mass production—shifted from being a discrete, singular representation of something toward the idea that an image is merely a copy of a copy. In other words, as originality and origin were supplanted by iteration and fluidity, a need arose to articulate how these social processes—this constant creation of images that refer to one another rather than to an external reality—influence our experience of the world.

Cite

APA

Stagnell, A. (2026, April 23). Det imaginära. In K. Bjørkdahl (Ed.), Nordisk retorikkleksikon. Nordisk retorikförening. https://retorikkleksikon.no/det-imaginara/

@incollection{stagnell2026imaginara,
  author    = {Stagnell, Alexander},
  title     = {Det imaginära},
  booktitle = {Nordisk retorikkleksikon},
  editor    = {Bjørkdahl, Kristian},
  publisher = {Nordisk retorikförening},
  year      = {2026},
  url       = {https://retorikkleksikon.no/det-imaginara/}
}