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Imagination in Politics: Freedom or Domination?

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Imagination in Politics: Freedom or Domination?

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Overview

Imagination is a complex and ambiguous culture-making power that is a rather marginal concept in contemporary political theory. This book addresses how imagination can be both a source of freedom and domination in liberal-democratic politics and argues for a benign public employment of images and narratives in a global world of diverse cultures.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780739199060
Publisher:	Lexington Books
Publication date:	10/15/2014
Pages:	278
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Mihaela Czobor-Lupp is assistant professor of political science at Carleton College.

Introduction: Why Does Liberal-Democratic Politics Need Imagination? Chapter One: The Dangers and Promises of Imagination in Politics Chapter Two: Habermas and Bakhtin: Discourse Ethics, Imagination, and Intercultural Understanding Chapter Three: Arendt on the World-Creating Power of Imagination as an Antidote to the Totalitarian Temptations of Politics Chapter Four: Kant and Schiller on the Civil Power of Imagination Chapter Five: Herder on the Role of Imagination, Language, and Culture in the Formation of Humanity Chapter Six: Nietzsche on the Role of Imagination in Modern Liberal-Democracies Chapter Seven: Heidegger on Political Aestheticism and Poetic Care Conclusions: The Promise of Benign Public Imagination for the Contemporary World

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Editorial Reviews

How can we make a public sphere that moves beyond today's debilitating politics of the spectacle and towards empowering citizens to engage creatively across difference about collective life? In this essential work, Mihaela Czobor-Lupp argues that only through the transformation of our creative imagination can people create the kind of public sphere that vindicates our dialogical and ethical power. Against a long line of commentators who either uncritically valorize or blindly fear the creative power of aesthetic politics, Czobor-Lupp gives us a clear-eyed account of both the attractions and the dangers of imagination for collective life. Czobor-Lupp brings the aesthetic insights of three centuries of German political philosophy to bear on the ethically attractive but aesthetically inadequate arguments of discourse ethics and Arendtian action theory: the result is a delightful and insightful read, but also a critical contribution to contemporary political thought.

Elisabeth Ellis

In 1968, at the height of the student rebellions, there was a motto: "L'imagination au pouvoir!" It was a startling but also misleading motto—because what was needed was not more power (pouvoir) but a move beyond power politics. Today, in our reigning culture of violence when media everywhere are saturated with images of horror, death, and destruction, it is surely time to enlist the more salutary and liberating resources of imagination. In her book, Czobor-Lupp enlists a whole tradition of salutary imagination: from Herder, Kant, and Schiller to Nietzsche, Arendt, and Heidegger. May this imagination free us from oppressive domination.

Fred Dallmayr

Theorists have long been divided over the role of the imagination in politics. Does the imagination foster creative and sympathetic citizens? Or does it lead to the aestheticization of politics? In Imagination in Politics, Czobor-Lupp offers the careful and insightful treatment of imagination contemporary theorists have been looking for. Through an engagement with a wide range of thinkers from Herder and Schiller to Habermas, she examines when imagination can benefit and when it can harm political order. Her account—that imagination helps when it liberates and harms when it dominates—is elegant and compelling.

Jeffrey Church

Imagination in Politics: Freedom or Domination?

Imagination in Politics: Freedom or Domination?

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