Culture as Societal Imagination
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.30827/tnj.v3i2.15502Keywords:
culture, imagination, cultural theory, social theory, identity, lateral universality, Niklas LuhmannAbstract
The present article proposes to conceptualize culture as societal imagination. Transcendental philosophy defines imagination as the capacity of distinguishing repeatable and therefore significant features within perception, which can then be processed by consciousness. Analogously, culture may be defined as the bundle of mechanisms which provide communication with significance. The proposed model underlines the difference between consciousness and communication in terms of the operations they perform but characterizes culture as the structure that links both of them together. Since the operation distinguishing something significant from its insignificant surroundings is irreducibly contingent, both individual imagination and culture are autonomous vis à vis individual and societal claims to sovereignty. Therefore culture, rightly understood, can enable forms of reciprocal understanding which have the potential to overcome any demarcation, for example in terms of concepts of identity.Downloads
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