Term
Central Imaginary
used in 8 texts across the archive
“The sovereign (more recently: central) imaginary is what you arrive at when you utter some political desire (universal healthcare, no more immigration, etc.), imagine the kind of political authority that could satisfy that desire in such a way that you could recognize it to have been satisfied, further imagine the scenic conditions that could enable the stable continuation of that authority (because you don’t want you political desire met just for a single administration) and then consider whether that authority would in fact do what you want it to do because, after all, if it could do it, it wouldn’t have to and might have something very different in mind.”
In use
“Once we have identified the central imaginary as the “topic” of our conversation, we can start to seek out imperatives from the center.”
“This means we all have what we could call a “central imaginary”: a proto-narrative of the center as the agent that could meet our demands.”
Key texts