As a replacement for ideology, the imaginary is untinged by the well-rehearsed problems and antinomies of theories of ideology in the tradition of Marxism and critical theory—the claims that domination and/or social reproduction depends on the false beliefs of social agents, that these beliefs are the outcome of a systemic process of distortion that produces deceptive appearances, and that the beliefs of social agents, in particular the dominated, may therefore be understood as the functional correlates of an unfree social formation. Yet […] these advances come at a considerable cost. Two issues stand out. First, theories of the imaginary are […] idealist. They tend to hypostatize imaginaries, render them as causal or determining factors of social life while leaving nebulous how the shared meanings and representations that imaginaries encompass relate to the material social structure, social interests, forms of social power, or to what Antonio Gramsci called the "two great 'floors' of the superstructure": civil society and the state. The elements that constitute the collective imaginary are untethered from any social theory and hover unencumbered in the clear morning sky. … Second and relatedly, the idiom of imaginary promotes cultural analysis in consensual terms, as if shared ideas, desires, affects, values, and images were merely the result of membership in a linguistic or cultural community. […] As a stopgap for utopia, collective imaginaries are adduced as a resource to build movements for climate renewal, social justice, and many other things. Thus theorists who understand their vocation as not just understanding but also transforming the social world frequently call for fashioning new collective imaginaries: imaginaries that respond to current crises and that also exhibit normatively attractive features in the sense that they should be oriented towards inclusive, democratic, socialist, ecological, and feminist values. Designing such imaginaries, we are told, will rekindle the motivational deficit of contemporary Left politics. Such exhortations to curate alternative imaginaries operate with the premise that what is missing in contemporary political life are adequate images, symbols, and frameworks, and if these were to be supplied, energy and vitality would follow. Yet in contrast to earlier iterations of Marxism and critical theory that—coming out of the Hegelian tradition—emphasized the importance of developing knowledge and understanding of social and historical processes as a condition for their transformation, the subject that is invited to free itself by adopting or constructing a collective imaginary has a superficial, contingent, and casual relationship to the latter. To suggest that an emancipatory politics can be based on imaginaries constructed at will presumes that imaginaries are constitutive of our moral psychology and act as sources of motivation. Presupposed is a subject that is conditioned to act in response to changes in the imaginary and more specifically, to engage in collective action. The problem of emancipatory social transformation on this interpretation is reduced to coordinating a collective desire or will for which we need resonance rather than historical consciousness, concepts and theories, or an understanding of the balance of social forces.
Yves Winter, "What Is an Imaginary?" Critical Inquiry 52, no. 2 (2026)
