If there is a dumb meta-narrative acting as the framework of our experiences, actions, and life, then we need a more detailed theoretical explanation of how capitalism provides us with social cohesion. One attempt at this explanation is developed in the Theory of Social Imaginaries by contemporary thinkers such as Gilbert Durand, Michel Maffesoli, Cornelius Castoriadis, and Charles Taylor.

1. Professor: Jorge Martínez Lucena

2. If there is a dumb meta-narrative acting as the framework of our
experiences, actions, and life, then we need a more detailed theoretical
explanation of how capitalism provides us with social cohesion.
One attempt at this explanation is developed in the Theory of Social
Imaginaries by contemporary thinkers such as Gilbert Durand, Michel
Maffesoli, Cornelius Castoriadis, and CharlesTaylor.
How Does Post-Modernity Get Social
Cohesion?

3. These thinkers try to understand how our society can get cohesion without
using a common metanarrative capable of giving us rational response to our
anthropological questions about the meaning of our life, as religions and
ideologies intended to do.
In order to understand this theory, we need to situate the center of human
decision not in our reason, but rather in our emotions; concretely in our
imaginative skills.This way, men wouldn’t pursue ideas deduced from the
dumb metanarrative, but would instead imagine and follow what they want
or they wish to be.
How Does Post-Modernity Get Social
Cohesion?

4. “By social imaginary, I mean something much broader and deeper than the
intellectual schemes people may entertain when they think about social
reality in a disengaged mode. I am thinking, rather, of the ways people
imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things
go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally
met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these
expectations” (CharlesTaylor, Modern Social Imaginaries, Duke University
Press, 2004, p. 23)
What Is a Social Imaginary?

5. A social imaginary is a more or less unconscious image or array of images
which are socially shared and let the individuals belonging to a society
identify and distinguish what should be considered real/unreal or
normal/abnormal in their milieu.
What Is a Social Imaginary?

6. 1.The stabilizing function:
“Our social imaginary at any time is complex. It
incorporates a sense of the normal expectations we
have of each other, the kind of common understanding
that enables us to carry out the collective practices that
make up our social life.This incorporates some sense of
how we all fit together in carrying out the common
practice. Such understanding is both factual and
normative; that is, we have a sense of how things
usually go, but this is interwoven with an idea of how
they ought to go, of what missteps would invalidate the
practice” (CharlesTaylor, 2004: 24)
Functions of Social Imaginaries

7. 2.The subversive or revolutionary function:
Social imaginaries accomplish one of the main goals of the imagination,
which consists of rebelling and rioting in the face of its natural or cultural
destiny.Therefore, social imaginaries enable us to wrestle against
dissolution, to exorcize death and temporal decomposition. This is why they
can also contribute with alternative paths to solving social and psychological
contradictions.
Functions of Social Imaginaries

8. The way in which these imaginaries touch humans century
after century is through myths.
Myths are concrete and moving crystallizations of imaginaries
which let us cope with these widespread images that join us to
our social, cultural, and moral milieux.
“Narratives emerged as social forms, which include
explanatory myths, among other genres that support the
coherence and cohesiveness of the community” (Nelson,
2003: 22)
“Canonical texts, myths, fables, yarns, legends, parables, and
traditional tales all play their part in this. These cultural
artifacts constitute a powerful normative force both in first
weaving and maintaining the social fabric” (Dan Hutto, Folk
Psychological Narratives, MIT Press, 2008: 243)
How DoThese Imaginaries Work?

9. The myth of the progress:
Since modernity, the myth of the progress has stabilised the Western central
imaginary. It consist of the fact that the conquest of our desired future
exclusively obeys to our human agency.The wish for salvation at the end of
times is converted into an intrahistorical liberation process, a secularized
redemption, a hope for our historical future (Carretero, 2006: 116).
Some Modern Myths

10. The myth of the man-machine:
To treat a man like a thing, or like a pure mechanical system, takes much
more imagination than to see him as an owl. The relationship between a
man and an owl is more significant than the one between a man and a
machine. However, never has a society applied a metaphor to man as
thoroughly as modern industry is doing today with the metaphor of the
man-android (Castoriadis, 1983: 274)
Some Modern Myths

11. Every society or culture used to have a
foundational myth, which was significantly
connected to the prevalent metanarrative.
Nevertheless, the fall of metanarratives has been
provoked by a cultural milieu which has promoted
the skepticism over any aim of giving a mythical
explanation of the wholeness of life or history.
Foundational Myth

12. With the unrivalled prevalence of the dumb capitalist metanarrative in our
globalized post-modern world, the myth transform itself profoundly.
Myth is no longer a narrative which tries to provide a rational explanation of
our lives or our history as a culture. Myth turns into micro-myth and plays a
crucial role in the development of the capitalist system.
These micro-myths are supplied to us through consumerism (media-market-
technological apparatus).
Micro-myths

13. • To provide the consumer with the chance of constructing his own
authentic identity.
• To provide the individual with an intensification of his own experiences.
• To provide individuals with the experience of belonging to neo-tribal and
liquid communities (this has a lot to do with identity and intensity as well)
Psychological Functions of
Micro-myths

14. To provide societies where they are spread with the experience of needing
the other in order to be oneself.
To provide societies where they are spread with an imaginative agreement
about what is normal/abnormal, real/unreal, fair/unfair, etc., which is
fundamental in order to get social stability and political governance.
To provide the capitalist system with the psychological and sociological basis
of consumerism that lets it grow metastathically.
Sociological Functions of Micro-myths

15. After the fall of metanarratives, individuals in Western culture also fall into
anomie, a feeling of pointlessness, disorientation and lack of motivation
originated by the absence of clear anthropological and moral coordinate axis
in their cultural milieu.
Micro-myths, with their psychological and sociological effects, let us feel
good enough to keep the social imaginaries of our society as they are.
Micro-mythsAgainst Anomie