Hegemonies of the social imaginary: An analytical conceptualization

The concept of social imaginary is central in the social sciences to grasp the cultural dimension of social and political action. The classic works of Cornelius Castoriadis and Charles Taylor have traced – in their difference and complementarity – the theoretical contours within which to frame the concept of social imaginary, also in temporal terms. This article critically reviews the idea of these two authors to underline the importance of considering the social imaginary as a battlefield, where the stake is the definition of a new possible reality. The article highlights the heuristic and analytical potential of the conception of the social imaginary as a battle for hegemony of the meaning to be attributed to reality, generated by a critique of the existing that elaborates, in an original way, the future on the basis of the present and the past, and which has as its objective the orientation of collective action toward a particular form of social order. The imaginaries linked to the climate crisis will be used as an exemplary contemporary arena in which the battle for hegemony of the social imaginary is fought. The analytical proposal developed in the article is that the social imaginary should be viewed as a specific social field of struggle to gain hegemony through the creation of ‘plausible’ and (potentially) ‘realizable’ scenarios that render specific actions necessary.