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Approaching the Spirit of Democracy through Lenses of the Imaginary
Uppsala University, Faculty of Educational Sciences, Department of Teacher Training. Uppsala University, Faculty of Educational Sciences, Department of Teacher Training.
2006 (English)Conference paper, Published paper (Other (popular science, discussion, etc.))
Abstract [en]

This paper explores the field of the imaginary through the readings of Kristeva and Castoriadis with the purpose to find a specific lens with which the spirit of democracy – an essential issue in the Swedish educational policy - can be understood. Imagination is the engine which interconnects terms such as knowledge, identity, and democracy/politics. Applying the notion of the imaginary entails a view of the world as a creation in constant move through people’s imagination and the way the imagination affects their actions. More specifically this implies that imagination and the understandings of reality are un-separable entities: the way we imagine the world, ourselves, and others is a way of knowing how they are. Since everyone is bearers of images/knowledge, their thoughts, manifested through language, are given educational relevance; every single image has the potential of setting our previous images in movement there through creating something new (learning). Consequently the imaginary means that there is no fixed truth and no fixed identity. The idea that the world lacks a stable foundation indicates that even the subject’s reflection of herself is bound to change in parallel with the alteration of her image/knowledge. The imaginary also carries a democratic/political dimension seeing that it has the power to create social change through questioning the obvious. By not only linking democracy/politics to collective encounters, but also to the sphere of the intimacy, accentuates the importance of paying attention to change as something that ultimately begins within each of us.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2006.
Keywords [en]
Imaginary, Democracy, Justice, Responsibility, Identity, Knowledge, Education
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-81840OAI: oai:DiVA.org:uu-81840DiVA, id: diva2:109755
Available from: 2006-09-04 Created: 2006-09-04 Last updated: 2012-02-09

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