Bilder des Menschen: Imaginäre und performative Grundlagen der Kultur

In: Edition Kulturwissenschaft 61

Abstract

What is the role of images, imagination, and the imaginary for our understanding of the world, of other humans, and of human subjectivity? What meaning do they have for everyday life, literature, and the arts? Christoph Wulf shows: Processes of imagination and of the imaginary contribute to the shaping of humans, their societies, and their cultures. They are closely connected to practices of the body and to its performativity. Taking into account games, rituals, and gestures, as well as families and domestic bliss, it becomes clear: social and cultural practices are learned, stored, and changed through mimetic processes, i.e. through creative imitation - and they become a part of the individual and collective imagination as images.