Enter the Imaginarium

This paper was motivated by contemporary discussions around the ‘future of feminism’, the pessimism expressed as to feminisim’s continued relevance, and the work for the feminist project that remains undone. In this paper, I use a Lacanian analysis to reveal the role of the Imaginary in contemporary society. In Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, the Imaginary is the realm of mirrors, illusion, deception and binary distinctions. In recent years, we witnessed an unprecedented rise of the Imaginary with the proliferation of media, particularly digital media. Drawing upon Todd McGowan’s insights into the Lacanian Imaginary and the film The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus, this paper seeks to explore and explain the relationship between the Imaginary and the feminine and to highlight the troubling implications of the rise of the Imaginary, particularly for the feminist project

Aesthetics · Art · Fantasy · Feminism · Illusion · Literature · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Psychoanalytic theory · Realm · Sociology · The Imaginary · Art, Politics, and Modernism · Contemporary Literature and Criticism · Digital Games and Media · Gender Studies · Law · Psychology