Imagination in Human and Cultural Development 2015004105, 9780415661638, 9780203073360

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Imagination in Human and Cultural Development

This book positions imagination as a central concept that increases the understanding of daily life, personal life choices and the way in which culture and society changes. Case studies, from micro instances of reverie and daydreaming to utopian projects, are included and analysed. The theoretical focus is on imagination as a force free from immediate constraints, forming the basis of our individual and collective agency. In each chapter, the authors review and integrate a wide range of classic and contemporary literature culminating in the proposal of a sociocultural model of imagination. The book takes into account the triggers of imagination, the content of imagination and the outcomes of imagination. At the heart of the model is the interplay between the individual and culture; an exploration of how the imagination, as something very personal and subjective, grows out of our shared culture, and how our shared culture can be transformed by acts of imagination. Imagination in Human and Cultural Development offers new perspectives on the study of psychological learning, change, innovation and creativity throughout the lifespan. The book will appeal to academics and scholars in the fields of psychology and the social sciences, especially those with an interest in development, social change, cultural psychology, imagination and creativity. Tania Zittoun is Professor at the Institute of Psychology and Education at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. She studies human development through the lifecourse, with a particular focus on how people make sense of, and create, their own trajectories. Alex Gillespie is Associate Professor in Social Psychology at the London School of Economics, UK. He studies social interaction, specifically how it produces novelty, creates our sense of self and enables society to reproduce itself.

The series Cultural Dynamics of Social Representation is dedicated to bringing the scholarly reader new ways of representing human lives in the contemporary social sciences. It is a part of a new direction – cultural psychology – that has emerged at the intersection of developmental, dynamic and social psychologies, anthropology, education, and sociology. It aims to provide cutting-edge examinations of global social processes, which for every country are becoming increasingly multi-cultural; the world is becoming one ‘global village’, with the corresponding need to know how different parts of that ‘village’ function. Therefore, social sciences need new ways of considering how to study human lives in their globalizing contexts. The focus of this series is the social representation of people, communities, and – last but not least – the social sciences themselves. In this series Symbolic Transformation The mind in movement through culture and society Edited by Brady Wagoner

Cultural Realities of Being Abstract ideas within everyday lives Edited by Nandita Chaudhary, S. Anandalakshmy and Jaan Valsiner

Trust and Conflict Representation, culture and dialogue Edited by Ivana Marková and Alex Gillespie

Interaction, Communication and Development Psychological development as a social process Charis Psaltis and Anna Zapiti

Social Representations in the ‘Social Arena’ Edited by Annamaria Silvana de Rosa

Engaging Violence Trauma, memory and representation Edited by Ivana Maček

Qualitative Mathematics for the Social Sciences Mathematical models for research on cultural dynamics Edited by Lee Rudolph Development as a Social Process Contributions of Gerard Duveen Edited by Serge Moscovici, Sandra Jovchelovitch and Brady Wagoner

Rethinking Creativity Contributions from social and cultural psychology Edited by Vlad Petre Glăveanu, Alex Gillespie and Jaan Valsiner Optimizing the Self Social representations of self-help Ole Jacob Madsen Imagination in Human and Cultural Development Tania Zittoun and Alex Gillespie

Imagination in Human and Cultural Development

Tania Zittoun and Alex Gillespie

First published 2016 by Routledge 27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex, BN3 2FA and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2016 T. Zittoun and A. Gillespie The right of T. Zittoun and A. Gillespie to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Zittoun, Tania. Imagination in human and cultural development / Tania Zittoun and Alex Gillespie. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Imagination. 2. Change (Psychology) 3. Developmental psychology. I. Gillespie, Alex (Psychologist) II. Title. BF408.Z58 2016 153.3—dc23 2015004105 ISBN: 978-0-415-66163-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-07336-0 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK

Contents

List of figures vi Series Editor’s foreword vii Preface xi 1 Imagination: a sociocultural approach

1

2 The centrality of imagination to everyday life

15

3 The loop of imagination

38

4 Resources for imagination

56

5 Imagination in situated activities

74

6 Imagination in the lifecourse

90

7 Imagination in societal change

111

8 Imagination as freedom

125

References 137 Author index 161 Subject index 166

Figures

2.1 Dream work (based on Freud, 1900/2001a) and the semiotic movement from perception to action 3.1 Imagination as a loop 3.2 The sequence of the loop of imagination 3.3 Dimension 1: Temporal orientation 3.4 Dimension 2: Generalization 3.5 Dimension 3: Implausibility 3.6 Loops of imagination in a three-dimensional space 5.1 Imagination in the crib 5.2 Imagination in the classroom 5.3 Imagination in cooking 5.4 Braided imagination in aikido practice 5.5 Imagination in musical training 5.6 Imagination in Einstein’s thought experiment 5.7 Imagination overwriting pain 6.1 Stanislav’s early life trajectory through spheres of experience 6.2 Zuzana imagining a flat 6.3 Stanislav’s recursive imagination of the stars 6.4 Imagination in life trajectory transitions 7.1 Bat-winged humanoids on the moon (1835, Licensed under Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons) 7.2 Earthrise in Le voyage dans la lune (Licensed under Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons)

25 40 48 49 50 51 52 76 78 80 83 84 86 88 102 103 105 107 114 116

Series Editor’s foreword

Imagination in the center: Creating the real through the non-real This book is real. Yet – as any scientific treatise – it is an exposition of ideas that have grown in the authors’ long-term contemplations about their favourite research topics. In this sense – the book is not real. Or: it may be real as something to read, touch and smell, but its contents are not real. It will become real by the readers’ act of making sense of the ideas presented in it. It includes authors’ creation of an imaginary – in this case theoretical and phenomenological – world about the phenomena under study. All science is built on imagination. Scientific knowledge construction is happening on the borderlands of what is already known, facing that is not (yet). But how can one know in advance that the given direction the scientist takes would pay off? The answer is simple – one does not. A scientist is like Columbus – undertaking a journey towards finding the riches of India, and ending with the pleasures of the beaches of the many islands even now called “the West Indies”. Research is risky – and through that – fascinating. Every journey to a new area of knowledge is an adventure. The authors of this book take on the adventure to rediscover the centrality of imagination in psychological theorizing. This is a risky step – the seeming “objectivity” of the concentration on “behavior” that has been the hallmark of psychological science all over the twentieth century is left behind here. Focus on only the externally observable phenomena has kept psychology from making progress. The work reported in this book corrects this fault. Imagination is not “behavior” – and cannot be reduced to it. It is an ideational process that references the non-real – the future – with a personally created affective load. Yet in that ideational role imagination is real – as I imagine my future here-and-now, for me that imagination is as real as the keyboard on which I am typing this text. Yet it is not real for anybody else – nor for myself once I reach my real future-turned-into-past. New ideas call for new inventions. This book includes a fundamentally new – structural and holistic – unit of analysis. It is an excellent example of how

viii  Series Editor’s foreword

researchers need to analyze complex phenomena not into their elements (which lose the qualities of the whole) but into functional units that are the “minimal Gestalts” of the complex functioning whole. The reader of this book will repeatedly encounter a “snail” – a basic figure for analyzing the processes of development. In a generic form that figure is like this:

“Direction vector”

Past

Present Future Irreversible time

This graphic depiction is theoretically of central importance. It is a Gestalt-unit of analysis of complex processes in the making of the life course. It is for the first time in a century – ever since Henri Bergson started talking of it philosophically – that the notion of irreversible time has been brought into the analytic schemes of psychologists. That all development is taking place in irreversible time is obvious – tulips that grow from bulbs can be expected and speculated upon (e.g. see Goldgar, 2007), but the reverse – tulips reverting back into bulbs – is impossible. A person can never return to one’s childhood as a child – but can imagine one’s past state of a child from the present moment in one’s life course. Yet such imagination is oriented towards living in the future. There is no turn back. However – the future is never known before it is turned into past. This aspect of the irreversibility of time in human life course makes the processes of imagination not only important, but crucially central for any theory of human psychology. Social representations are irrelevant until they are brought into personal imagination as presentations for the future – not yet known but made to be familiar through such (re)presentations. A person with “zero imagination” – a hypothetical extreme case of psychopathology – would be unable to adjust to any new circumstances of changing environment. Building one’s future based only on the experiences of the past – contrary to the analytic beliefs of psychoanalysts and behaviorists alike – would fit into the ideal of robotic society, not a human one. Human beings are oriented towards the future and coping with its uncertainty by constructing its transition into the past. In that process, imagination is not only inevitable, but crucial. Yet, psychology as science has had enormous problem with contemplating imagination. Imagination has been treated as “not real”, “childish” or “irrational” – it took Daniel Kahnemann three decades to persuade the public (and the Nobel

Series Editor’s foreword  ix

Committee) that human beings simulate their futures, rather than predict them based on the data from the past, analyzed by an intuitive statistical homunculus in the human mind. When we look at his achievement through the lens of the material in this book we reach the verdict, he did not go far enough. Simulation of the possible outcome of an action scenario means operating with the expectations for the future. And conceptualizing these is possible only through imagination. Thus, it is within the sphere of imagination where all remnants of “human rationality” function. The analytic unit (the “snail”) in this book includes an important return of a tool that psychologists have forgotten since the 1930s – that of theorizing in terms of vectors. Vectors, in contrast to “data points”, have direction. Such direction is discernible within a background system, even if that system consists of another vector. By bringing thinking-in-directions back into psychology – William MacDougall and Kurt Lewin would have been glad to know that this might happen – opens new possibilities for the study of the human psyche. It allows to depict duration of some effort in the lives of persons over the life course, from momentary decisions (e,g. “I want to have an ice cream” . . . and . . . here I buy one and enjoy it) to lifecourse goal-pursuing activities (e.g. “I want my children to grow up to be good citizens” . . . and . . . we should wait for two decades to find out). Importantly, the background system of the “direction vector” in the work presented in this book is the structure of irreversible time. It locates each and every present moment in the lifecourse of a person in the infinitely small time interval we call “the present”. This is the initiation point for all imagination and memory processes used to bring about the future-into-past transition that is happening in the present. The “direction vector” oriented in any direction towards the future would activate the search for past memories for that orientation. Here we get phenomena of imagination of what could happen, what should happen, and what one fears will happen (Janet, 1921). Here we can also observe the operation of personal will, “I know I cannot act beyond my limits but I will try to do it anyway”. All innovation is based on the system of the human psyche that strives towards its horizons – attempting to surpass these, yet only arriving at the creation of yet new horizons. To summarize, “the snail” in this book is a deeply original analytic tool for cultural psychology of human development that brings together in one “data unit” the direction of the movement initiated by the person with the inevitable realities of irreversibility of time. But what if the “direction vector” becomes oriented “backwards”, towards the past? It gives us an account – a very realistic one – of moving towards the future while mentally dwelling in the past. Narratives of the “how nice it was when I was young” in contrast to “how wise I could be if I were to live to age ninety” give is a glimpse of such phenomena. Both directions – forward or backward from the “present moment line” – are equally analyzable by “the snail”. The very moment when the “direction vector” changes across the

x  Series Editor’s foreword

“present line” – from being future-oriented to become re-directed towards the past – we can perhaps diagnose the arrival of the “real” version of “being old”. Finally, imagination is the vehicle for personal freedom. Its application is possible even under the most adverse life circumstances. The psychological resilience of people who have survived torture, imprisonment, sitting through boring university faculty meetings – is all testimony for the freedom imagination gives us in our ordinary lives. Imagination makes the desire for having and bringing up children into a pleasing task and allows us to forget the difficulties involved. Hopes for success of business enterprises, making peace treaties for long term conflicts, and in regaining once lost love are all ways of surviving the mundane nature of ordinary lives. And in my imagination – the readers of this book will be up for a nice intellectual adventure. Jaan Valsiner Aalborg-Chapel Hill January 2015

Preface

Imagination is a topic that is ever-present yet it is rarely addressed by academics, as it is seen to be frivolous, too playful, too subjective, or, in a word, too un-real. Our own research experience, however, led us to realize that imagination should be at the centre – and not the periphery – of any attempt to understand human thought and action. For one of us, Tania Zittoun, the question of imagination has been in the background for a long time. Coming to psychology after having studied literature, anthropology and philosophy, the questions of how we imagine, live with unreal entities, or get lost in fiction, were always fascinating. In her work, Tania addressed these issues through the study of symbolic resources – how people use novels, films or songs, that is, fiction, to learn or to develop in the “real world”. She also nourishes a long-standing interest for psychoanalysis, and especially on what it has to bring on the issues of dreaming, imagining ad enjoying the Arts, in Freud, Winnicott and others. Hence, imagination was always present in Tania’s work, but never directly addressed. That it could become a central object of attention started to become clear as she engaged in the adventure of co-writing a monograph on development along the lifecourse, with Jaan Valsiner, Dankert Vedeler, João Salgado, Miguel Gonçalves and Dieter Ferring (Zittoun et al., 2013). However, it still needed a few essays, and especially, presenting and discussing these ideas with many others, for imagination to become a central theoretical question. Hence, the ideas of imagination as a loop was first discussed in Copenhagen, with the group in developmental psychology, and Tania wishes to thank Pernille Hviid, for inviting her there, and Morten Nielsen, the first to see a potential book in these ideas. She then thanks Min Han who offered her some editorial space to develop these ideas further, for an edited book which is still in press as this one comes out. Frederic Cerchia, with whom a first paper was published on this, and Constance de Saint-Laurent, also deserve some special thanks. Ivana Marková took seriously the idea of imagination and developed it in a remarkable lecture in Neuchâtel. Jaan Valsiner was, once again, a powerful promoter: he kindly supported the idea of a monograph on imagination as sociocultural phenomena, and offered an editorial space in the present book collection to let this project develop.

xii Preface

For Alex Gillespie the question of imagination had also been developing for a long time. His early research on the early American pragmatists, especially William James and George Herbert Mead, provided an experience and actionbased conception of humans as future-oriented. Our ability to act, to think, and even our uses of culture are directed to the future. More specifically, people act not so much on the basis of what is, but what could be. Yet, the psychological sciences have focused almost exclusively on what was (i.e., socialization) or what is (i.e., observing behaviour). This obvious gap is likely do to methodological limitations; empiricism privileges studying what is, but provides little guidance on how we can study what could become. Yet humans, at a psychological level, don’t live simply in the world of what is; they live in a semiotically mediated world of tensions between what is, what could become, and, even, what could never be (i.e., alternative and parallel scenarios). This line of thinking puts imagination at the centre of human’s psychological, social and even practical being. In order to explore these ideas, Alex, when he moved to the London School of Economics, set up a course on creativity and innovation. Over the course of three years he has benefited from the input of more than 100 students, exploring a wonderful range of topics through essays and dissertations. In regular seminars these students have also been harsh critics, challenging ideas, and forcing greater rigour. In our ongoing discussions it became very clear that we had developed parallel reflections on imagination, Tania focusing more on the developmental process, Alex on the social changes and innovation allowed by imagination. Putting together these reflections together was a very natural and complementary integration. Moreover, this jointly written book is a continuation of a longstanding collaboration that goes back to the first years of the century when we were both at the University of Cambridge. It comes at a point where we started to integrate various lines of work and revise our general ideas based on these elaborations (Gillespie & Zittoun, 2013; Zittoun & Gillespie, 2015b). It was also a way to draw on our past reflections on methods for studying real-time psychological processes, development across the lifecourse, and culture at a more collective level. Indeed, Chapters 5, 6 and 7 focus on these three levels respectively. As we started to develop the material that would become this book, it was systematically discussed with groups of students at the University of Neuchâtel and at the London School of Economics, whose reactions and critical comments were vital. Tania especially thanks Alexandre Diep, Donjeta Berisha, Deborah Bertinotti, Fabienne Gfeller and Laura Jounot, who bravely developed their MA thesis using this emerging theme of imagination, as well as Marc Rebetez, for trying the ideas out in his interviews. The ideas were also tested further with a group of Japanese colleagues and students led by Ayae Kido, thanks to the kind invitation of Tatsuya Sato at the Ritsumeikan University. As the book started to take shape, the ideas were once again exposed to the scrutiny of our European colleagues at our Cupsynet meeting (European doctoral network in sociocultural psychology) at the University of Aalborg; we thank all commentaries and feedback, and especially Sergio Salvatore and Nandita

Preface xiii

Chaudhary’s challenging questions. Vlad Glăveanu has nourished our thinking with many valuable discussions. We need to especially thank Fabienne Gfeller and Marc Rebetez, whose data we present, and which allowed developing the theory beyond what we initially planned. Antti Rajala, from the University of Helsinki, also engaged in these discussions and allowed us to use some of his yet unpublished data, and we thank him for this. Beatrice Bakhti, a Swiss film director, allowed us to use the transcripts of the Teen novels. And we are very happy to thank Jaan Valsiner also for his kind suggestion to use the data from Sarah Austin’s imagined adultery (Hamburger & Hamburger, 1991). Finally, we thank our families who allowed us to spend long holiday afternoons discussing loops of imagination, while walking through the Czech countryside and across Hampstead Heath, and tolerated our weekend Skype meetings. London and Neuchâtel, January 2014

Chapter 1

Imagination A sociocultural approach

I’d like to become a journalist, a reporter, actually. I would like to go for adventures. And at the same time to be able to write, because I like it very much [. . .] I like to write very much [pause] Oh, I have a diary, I make up stories and I write poetry as well. (A young girl’s potential future, Switzerland, 2000s; Bakhti, 2010) There will be a wall unit here, this is where we’ll sleep. Here, we’ll have a sitting area with a coffee table, some shelves under the window and a drawing desk so Ivana won’t have to use the table. (Refurbishing a flat, Czechoslovakia, 1980s; Třeštíkova, 2009) I send you from my garden what I would I could (sic) press upon your lips and feel in your heart – “burning love”. But alas all the fire in me will be extinguished before I can see your dear face. (Imagined adultery, England, 1832; Hamburger & Hamburger, 1991, p. 141)

Located in three places in Europe, in three different centuries, these three quotations might seem disconnected: one is a young woman talking about her future, the next is a young couple describing how they will refurbish an old flat, and finally a Victorian wife longing for her imaginary lover. However, they each reveal the dynamics of imagination. In each case, the speaker temporarily leaves their here-and-now. The mundane is transcended: the teenager’s room, the dilapidated flat and the unhappy marriage are each supplanted with images ripe with potential, namely, an adventurous adult life, a remodeled flat, and a passionate love. In each case the imagination “loops out” of the social and material reality, to generate a future or parallel reality. Such disengagement with reality is not indicative of psychopathology, it is not “mere” imagination; in each case the imagination “loops back” with consequences. Rachel went to school and became a librarian, Vaclav engaged with the practicalities of renovation, and the adulterous letter writer remained with her husband. Mundane reality can thus be transformed by this looping, with new possibilities and motivations inhabiting the present. Imagination in Human and Cultural Development will examine the imagination in terms of this looping metaphor.

2  Imagination: a sociocultural approach

Imagination, we propose, is the process of creating experiences that escape the immediate setting, which allow exploring the past or future, present possibilities or even impossibilities. Imagination feeds on a wide range of experiences people have of, or through the cultural world, through diverse senses, now combined, organized and integrated in new forms. Imagination can either be more or less deliberate; it can be enjoyed in itself (such as in a daydream) or be part of a more deliberative process of creation. Imagination is a process, in the sense that it only exists in the making, which we call a looping dynamic. In other words, we are not interested in an abstract capability for imagination that exists independently of the real-time process of imagining, or in the stable outputs of imagination sometimes called “the imaginary”. Imagination, we maintain, is a social and cultural process, because, although it is always individuals who imagine, the process of imagination is made possible by social and cultural artefacts, it can be socially allowed or constrained, and because the consequences of imagination can be significant changes in the social world. In the present chapter we will introduce our sociocultural approach to the imagination. We begin by outlining the sociocultural approach, specifying the assumptions, and showing how we use this approach to conceptualize the imagination. This chapter provides the theoretical backdrop for our more detailed examination of imagination that occurs in Chapter 2 and especially the theoretical model of imagination that we propose in Chapter 3. Sociocultural or cultural psychology is the field of research that examines the mind as social, cultural and historical (Boesch, 1991; Bruner, 2003; Cole, 2007; Valsiner, 2014a). This approach considers not only social and cultural phenomena in themselves, but also how people uniquely experience these phenomena. Thus, sociocultural psychology studies how people relate to other people, social situations, material spaces, social norms, institutions, discourses, and shared myths. Sociocultural psychology is a dialogical approach to human life because it considers that any human action, from dreaming to building a house, is already and always part of social relations or an internalized dynamic which connects these activities to other people, institutions, and our own collective history (Linell, 2009; Marková, 2003, 2006). Each action within the sociocultural environment is, in this sense, part of the individual’s dialogue with their sociocultural environment. While there is a huge amount that has been written about this approach, we want to highlight just a few aspects.

Philosophical assumptions Psychology, despite often construing itself as an empirical breakaway from philosophy, has always been, and remains, dependent upon philosophical assumptions. In order to avoid making implicit common sense assumptions about ontology (i.e., what is assumed to exist) or epistemology (i.e., how we come to know what we assume to exist) we will briefly make explicit the main assumptions, or axioms (Danziger, 2008; Valsiner, 2012), upon which our present enquiry is dependent.

Imagination: a sociocultural approach  3

Our approach is pragmatist, relational and perspectival (Mead, 1932). The starting point is human experience, such as, sensations, actions, interactions, dialogue, internalized dialogue and the experience of otherness and being changed through interactions with other people and things. The existence of human experience allows us to posit the necessary conditions for such experience, and in this regard we consider the following terms useful: matter, time, society and culture. These conditions of human experience lie, in an ultimate sense (if that is even possible), beyond human experience; in Kant’s (1781) terminology they are “noumena” which only come into our experience as “phenomena”. If there is anything beyond human experience, which does not mediate human activity in some way, then, by virtue of being completely inconsequential, it is not worth debating (Peirce, 1878). However, that which does intrude into human experience, which has consequences for our human interests, is worth debating and understanding. Human’s foundational concepts are ways of trying to understand these intrusions – to understand that which resists people’s desires and impinges upon their expectations. Concepts such as matter, time, society and culture are useful in conceptualizing human experience because these are elements of experience that cannot be “wished away” or even ignored. These phenomena intrude upon human experience, creating ruptures, motivating the meaning making process. This meaning making process, whether common sense or science, is an attempt to stabilize these intrusions, to make them predictable, and even to master them such that we can fulfil our human interests. This enterprise of sense making is usually a social process. Thus our approach gives primacy to human interests, to human action, social interaction and sense-making (Dewey, 1896; Mead, 1910) whilst simultaneously recognizing that these are constrained and enabled by things beyond sense-making itself (i.e., a resistant material world, other people, culture, etc.). Indeed, it is this “beyond” that is the precondition of our sense making, motivating it and being the topic of it. Human life and the human mind is a constant adjustment of desires, expectations and ideas to intrusions from materiality or the social world. This process of adjustment is never complete, and our conceptualization of these constraints is always open to a new constraint and refutation.

Theoretical assumptions Interactions and experiences are the basic elements of our ontology and also our main routes to knowledge. But this ontology must be further developed into a series of theoretical assumptions, for if we have experiences and interactions, we need to assume people experiencing, other people and things to be experienced and so on. Theoretical assumptions are both necessary and useful. It is impossible to begin to understand anything without making assumptions, and, simultaneously, making assumptions is the beginning of understanding. The following assumptions that we make will form the building blocks of our exploration of imagination, and making these assumptions begins to open up the phenomena, suggesting useful lines of investigation.

4  Imagination: a sociocultural approach

Individual experience As psychologists, we have an epistemic and ethical commitment to examine the person’s experience of the world. Each person traces a unique trajectory of experiences through space and time; as a consequence, each encounter with the world results in an even more unique trajectory of cumulating experiences (Lévinas, 1972; Marková, 2006, 2013a; Winnicott, 1990). Also, we consider that the person is more than a “cognitive being”. People have, first of all, an embodied experience, they live and feel and perceive the world as a body. As feeling experiencing beings, people remember, anticipate, dream, fantasize, hope and regret. Hence, each person is a radically specific source of experience on the world; he or she perceives, feels, remembers, anticipates and imagines in a unique way. Interactions As sociocultural psychologists, we recognize that people are rarely alone and, moreover, they become individuals in relation to one another; we are not interested in a solipsist being. Rather, experiences, within this ontology of interaction, are produced by a unique interaction of our living bodies with our cultural and social environment (James, 1912). We interact with other people, and with objects, in specific times and spaces (Gillespie, 2006; Grossen & Salazar Orvig, 2011; Moscovici, 2003; Perret-Clermont, 1993). These have all properties – material affordances and social meaning for things, unique intentions and social positions for people, and social guidance that frame situations. Temporality Experience is temporal. We experience the world as changing, every experience is in contrast to a before and after. As individuals and groups we orient ourselves in time using cultural tools to record, mark and demarcate time (Wyndhamn & Säljö, 1999). In the physical and social world, time therefore appears irreversible; experiences have roots and consequences, things done cannot be undone, people grow older and not younger. However, our minds allow us to navigate time, to reminisce about the past or imagine possible futures, and our subjective experience of slowness or trepidation differs from the regularity of our clocks – and sociocultural psychology has to account for these two streams of temporality. The temporal nature of experience has long philosophical roots, and also has been developed by psychologists. Henri Bergson importantly differentiated between time as it passes and can be measured, and time as it can be experienced, and has a very different organization (Bergson, 1938). William James (1890) proposed the idea that human consciousness flows as a river, never stopping, made out of many streams and waves, some coming to the fore, some deeper, some quick and evanescent, some more enduring. Sociocultural psychologists have reinstalled irreversible time as central in developmental studies (Valsiner, Molenaar, Lyra, &

Imagination: a sociocultural approach  5

Chaudhary, 2009; Zittoun et al., 2013); however, the idea that experienced time can actually go back to the past, or live with the memory of unlived lives (Phillips, 2013), has not yet been fully explored. Semiotic processes Drawing on Peirce, sociocultural psychology assumes that we can make sense of our experience because it leaves some traces in our experience, and that we learn to use these traces as signs for something else (Peirce, 1878; Salvatore & Zittoun, 2011; Valsiner, 1998, 2007b). Our semiotic capacity is the basic way by which the world we experience becomes intelligible to us – we recognize an apple because we have some memory of a former experience of eating an apple, now encapsulated in the idea of appleness, which turns that apple into a sign for all apples. The process by which the experiential trace of the apple becomes a sign, which can be used to invoke the experience in self or other, is necessarily a social process; it arises through the triadic interaction between self, other and object (Zittoun, Gillespie, Cornish, & Psaltis, 2007). This semiotic capacity is also what allows the social and cultural world out there to guide our very being-in-the world and turn into a psychological experience. Also, our semiotic capacity is what allows us to differentiate the ongoing flow of time: it creates beacons on the river of experience (Zittoun, 2008b). The dynamics of internalization allows us, like breathing, to absorb and select social meanings, appropriate and elaborate them; and through externalization (i.e., words, ways of moving, dress, artistic or literary productions etc.) we render visible part of our inner experience and we participate to the endless dance of social interactions (Tisseron, 2013; Valsiner, 2006, 2007a; Vygotsky, 1975). Semiotic processes allow us to conceptualize our embodied experience in the here and now, and thus to distance ourselves from it. Consider a person who experiences some discomfort in her foot: she might realize that that diffuse experience of heaviness and discomfort is typical of coldness; she might then realize that she actually has no socks on; further she might decide that rooms are nicer when the temperature is higher, as it was the case in some other country, before deciding to move flat. Moving from a general diffuse experience to recognition of that experience, and a categorization of that experience towards a generalization of that experience, requires more and more distance, and the mechanism is semiotic processes. Simultaneously, that distance allows a wider temporal experience; recognizing an experience and naming it bounds the experience to past similar experiences, and their linguistic denomination in linguistic stream; and being able to generalize allows the person to revise the past and to open possible futures. Reversely, through semiotic means, such as traditions of movements and techniques, people can also guide and modify their embodied experience, as when dancers rehearse a typical figure, until their body can act out a highly abstract and cultivated figure, which in turn, transforms the body and its way of experiencing the world. Hence, a semiotic approach allows us to see the continuity between

6  Imagination: a sociocultural approach

culture and nature, mind and the body; it sees the continuity of an always-mediated embodied experience. Sociocultural psychologists have described these progressive organizations of our semiotic capacity, in different “levels” of mediation (Valsiner, 2007b), or showing how a primarily embodied experience gets progressively differentiated and integrated in complex systems of understanding that becomes our minds (Gillespie & Zittoun, 2013; Valsiner, 2005; Werner & Kaplan, 1963). Our semiotic capacity is both the basis for our orientation in the world, and is what allows making sense of it; it is constantly revised by our experience, and is the basis of our actions and interactions. This semiotic capacity has also been described and analysed by psychoanalysis, which shares some historical roots with cultural psychology, and also basic epistemological assumptions (Ansermet & Magistretti, 2010; Salvatore & Venuleo, 2010; Salvatore & Zittoun, 2011; Zittoun, 2011, 2015). Psychoanalysis has not only examined how signs allow us to differentiate, organize and work through our embodied experiences; it has also devoted much attention to affective and semiotic dynamics which escape deliberate will, and has therefore become one of the few systematic exploration of imagination under its various forms (Roudinesco, 2014). We therefore will draw on some works of psychoanalysis to complement our sociocultural exploration of imagination as semiotic process.

The lifecourse One way to translate the fact that human life is temporal, is to say that, as any one given person goes through life, or as he/she develops, or simply is, they constitutes their lifecourse. Their lifecourse is the unity of time and space along which people interact with their environment, experience the world, and imagine. The notion of “lifecourse” has been mainly used in the social sciences to follow the distinct trajectories of cohorts in specific social and historical conditions, without much interest for individual experiences (Elder, 1996; but see Jindra, 2014). In psychology, after a few attempts to analyse life trajectories, most studies turned to the maturation of specific functions, especially in young and old age (Baltes & Mayer, 1999; Baltes, Reese, & Nesselroade, 1977; Baltes, Staudinger, & Lindenberger, 1999). Recently however, there is a renewed interest for the trajectories of people across the whole lifecourse (Levy, Ghisletta, Le Goff, Spini, & Widmer, 2005; Sapin, Spini, & Widmer, 2007). A human lifecourse can be conceptualized from either an observer’s perspective or the actor’s perspective (Farr & Anderson, 1983), focusing either on their social conditions and actions or upon their experiences and feelings. We would argue that both perspectives are necessary. The effort of preserving both the person’s perspective on their lifecourse, and an understanding of the sociocultural conditions in which they take place, is currently pursued by sociocultural psychology. In effect, it is currently defining a study of the lifecourse that accounts both for the social, cultural and historical reality constraining or shaping possible

Imagination: a sociocultural approach  7

lives, and the unique way in which each of us creates our own life-path (Sato & Valsiner, 2010; Sato, Yasuda, Kanzaki, & Valsiner, 2014; Zittoun et al., 2013; Zittoun & de Saint-Laurent, 2015; Zittoun & Gillespie, 2015a). Our starting point is that imagination is central to this process of guiding ourselves along our own lifecourse. The paramount reality and spheres of experiences Human experiences are both individual and social. Experiences are individual in the sense of being embodied, belonging to an individual, and having a sensory and emotive quality. However, despite being unique, lifecourses are not autonomous trajectories; they take place in a world of things and people that is, at least, partially shared. There are many different ways to conceptualize our “partially shared world”, and in the following we rely upon the complementary phenomenological and pragmatist insights of Alfred Schuetz and William James (Zittoun et al., 2013; Zittoun & Gillespie, 2015b). First, we need to give a name to our partially shared environment. We admit, without too much difficulty, that we live in a given year, in a certain town or country, with buildings, chairs, cups and good or bad weather. This “taken for granted” reality, which we mostly accept as a given and in which we live, has been called by Alfred Schuetz “paramount reality” (Schuetz, 1945a, p. 552). This given world, which includes the existence of others, the materiality of things and the irreducibility of time, renders our experiences inherently social, in the sense of taking place in materially given and intersubjectively and symbolically shared world. Second, of course, it is clear that the reality in which we live is not monolithic; the world of the British factory worker is different from that of the Swiss banker, not to say of the Ougandaise field worker. Notions like “context” (Grossen, 2001), “frame” (Goffman, 1974) or “activity system” (Cole, 1996) have been very useful to differentiate these local, yet relatively stable environments. Schuetz considers that such sociocultural frames get their stability from the fact that a certain number of rules are implicitly shared by these who live and act in it. Schuetz (1944, p. 499) calls the taken-for-granted rules of life in a given social group the “cultural pattern of group life”. This pattern is transparent for the local people yet problematic for a newcomer or a stranger, who discovers that these rules are mostly “incoherent, only partially clear and not at all free from contradiction” (Schuetz, 1944, p. 500). The paramount reality of places and people combines with the pattern of group life to produce certain experiences. For example, in a church, one might be put within a religious sphere of experience by virtue of the lofty celling, the mystical light and the acoustic vastness (James, 1902). In a school or university, educators attempt to configure paramount reality and the patterns of group life such that they are conducive to the educative experiences. However, these spheres of experience, which are normally supported by places and people, do have a degree of independence. Thus, although church norms might

8  Imagination: a sociocultural approach

require silence, praying or appropriate music, it is entirely possible for someone to play rock music in the church. Or, it is not only possible but likely, that some people during the service become disengaged from the immediate expectations, and instead, become more engrossed in a reverie about a future holiday. Hence, distinct experiences can in effect take place in diverse “sub-universes” (James, 1890, volume 2, p. 291) or “provinces of meaning” (Schuetz, 1945a, p. 553). William James (1890, vol. 2, p. 292) gives the examples of the sub-universes of: sensation, science, mathematics, religion, individual opinion, madness and the “idols of the tribe” or prejudices. Alfred Schuetz (1945a), developing from James, proposed that people move through different “provinces of meaning” (Schuetz, 1945a, p. 553), including working, daydreaming, doing arts, thinking scientifically and dreaming: each is a different province of meaning. A given province meaning engages, according to Schuetz, specific ways of experiencing oneself, of relating to others, a particular time-perspective, as well as certain type of attention, relation to doubt, and goal-directedness. On this basis, we try to account for the fact that, through daily life, a person moves through different social and material settings (e.g., a school, a street, a supermarket) that demands certain ways of acting and the acceptance of more or less explicit norms, yet which are also experienced as distinct. Even more, in a given place with its “cultural pattern of group life”, such as an office, a person can engage in very different provinces of meaning; they can solve a technical problem on their screen, talk about their holidays with colleagues or do some work. Talking about holidays with colleagues has its own norms, conveys certain feelings, demands certain ways of presenting oneself (i.e., it implies friendship, it invites sharing, it should not take too long, it should not get too personal, etc.). Solving a computer malfunction, on the other hand, entails a different set of norms (i.e., whose responsibility the problem is, who has the expertise to fix it, how much time should be dedicated to it, how important it is, etc.) along with the technical skills required to do the task. Drawing upon both Schuetz and James, and with the intent of stabilizing their shifting nomenclature, we propose to use term “sphere of experience” to designate a configuration of experiences, activities, representations and feelings, recurrently occurring in a given type of social (material and symbolic) setting – it is one of the various regular, stabilized patterns of experience in which a person is likely to engage on a regular basis (Zittoun, 2012a). A sphere of experience is thus specific to a person, engaged in certain conduct, in a given socially existing environment. The notion combines first and third person’s perspectives because it combines both the person’s phenomenological experience with the setting, resources, and semiotic environment that support that experience. Proximal and distal experiences Spheres of experience can have different relations to the paramount reality. Some of these spheres of experience demand mainly an engagement with the actual

Imagination: a sociocultural approach  9

social and material given, such as changing one’s child nappies, while other experiences are uncoupled from paramount reality, residing mainly in imagination, such as remembering one’s summer, speculating about alien civilizations, or thinking about the taste of a possible meal. We therefore propose to distinguish two types of experiences. “Proximal experiences” are primarily anchored in the experiencing body, in a given here-and-now moment, and take place in the paramount reality: they take place there where one is physically located, and that location (the material and social setting) demands attention and impinges upon the senses. Proximal experiences are materially bounded and often socially constrained. In proximal experience, the time is irreversible, and actions have causal effects. Hitting one’s head on the wall causes pain, pressing the gas pedal in a car causes acceleration, giving a gift creates feelings, and so on. “Distal experiences”, in contrast, include all the experiences which transport our experience out of the immediate setting, to the past, to the future, to abstraction or to worlds of science fiction. In distal experiences, people can explore events independently of their bodily location, beyond the laws of time and space, and also, independently of logic and causality. Distal experiences are relatively independent from material constraints. We say “relatively” because the hungry person imagines food and the fire alarm in one’s dreams can be inspired by the alarm clock. Also, sometimes material props are used to support distal experiences, such as children or actors using costumes to create make believe scenarios. Finally, distal experiences can be very personal, but also afforded, guided and constrained, such as a commemoration or a cinema screening (Zittoun & Gillespie, 2015b). Moving between spheres of experience In their daily life, people routinely alternate between spheres of experience: the place where they live and feel at home, their leisure time places or activities (running in the park, watching films, gardening), their hobbies or social activities, their work and so on. Each of these spheres of experience require certain knowledge, skills and ways of doing; they activate certain relational modes, social roles and thus identity aspects, and they engage different emotional experiences, values and projects. Moving between spheres of experience most obviously occurs with physical relocation, but it is not necessary. People can enter the sphere of experience of places that either no longer exist or never existed. One can imagine one’s childhood bedroom, or the house of one’s dreams. Equally, while at home one can imagine one’s work environment, evoking the associated experiences. One can sit in a cinema and, at a psychological level, leave the seat, the setting, the audience, and become psychologically engaged in distal worlds, fictional characters, and the associated emotions with the support of moving images and sound. How do we engage in such distal experiences? And more specifically, how do we move between distal and proximal experiences? Finally, how do distal experiences

10  Imagination: a sociocultural approach

change or affect our proximal experiences? We will examine imagination as the process by which we uncouple from the immediate setting, looping out of the setting’s proximal sphere of experience, moving at a psychological level into a distal sphere of experience, and then looping back into the present, and recoupling with the proximal setting. People are continually emerging from one sphere of experience only to become absorbed in the next sphere of experience, with transitions that can be experienced as more or less smooth. Schuetz (1945a, p. 553) distinguishes between movements between provinces of meaning which are more or less abrupt. There can be a mild “shock experience” when one falls asleep and enters the world of dreams. Sometimes the “shock experience” of waking up is more abrupt, as with the sudden ending of a film, and the time it takes to adjust to mundane reality. Finally, there can be abrupt and deep “shock experiences” such as a crisis or the stranger encountering a new culture (Schuetz, 1944, p. 502). Ruptures and transitions Ruptures occur when routine patterns of thought and action break down, when the person experiences a failure of expectation, such that what was taken-for-granted becomes questionable. A transition refers to the way in which a person adjusts to a rupture, and specifically how they transition to a new pattern of taken-for-granted thought and action (Zittoun, 2006). Ruptures can occur within a sphere of experience (e.g., while cooking, realizing that an ingredient is missing) or between spheres of experience (e.g., second generation teenagers immigrants experiencing a tension between expectations from the home and expectations at school). Ruptures and transitions also occur at different scales, from the “mild shock” of coming back from work, or getting out of a daydream to concentrate on one’s work, to the more substantial transitions which follow subjectively perceived ruptures, which are intransitive, with no way back (e.g., quitting a job, committing a crime or losing a relationship). Important moments of the lifecourse are defined by a reorganization of the dynamically stable system constituted by a person’s various spheres of experiences, that is, their self. Experienced ruptures typically bring about the emergence or disappearance of new spheres of experience, as well as new forms of adjustment within the person or, more likely, between the person and her environment. The concept of “transition” designates the processes of change triggered by a rupture, as the person attempts to integrate and re-equilibrate their experience. Transitions have typically been studied by lifespan researchers as critical moments that are likely to have consequences on the individuals’ future trajectory (Baltes, Staudinger & Lindenberger, 1999; Elder, Kirkpatrick Johnson, & Crosnoe, 2004; Shanahan & Porfelli, 2002). Adopting an observer’s perspective, these studies sometimes consider ruptures as moments of possible bifurcations (Sato, Hidaka, & Fukuda, 2009). From this perspective, bifurcation points are moments where individuals differentiate themselves by making choices within a

Imagination: a sociocultural approach  11

limited set of options. Hence, in the case of the trajectories of young people married in similar conditions, bifurcation points are thus the moments of establishing a place to live (at one’s parents’ house or in an independent flat), the fact of having or not having a child in the first year of marriage, that of having a second one or not, that of having a wife taking on a professional activity or not, and so on (e.g., Fincham & Bradbury, 1990). The development of life trajectories can also be seen from the perspective of the person, or the actor’s perspective. From this perspective, moments of bifurcation are rarely clear-cut. Rather, the individual faces a cloudy field of uncertainty, out of which new path may emerge, sometimes unintentionally. Bifurcations, from the actor’s perspective, depend upon so many external contingencies that it can seem less about “choice” and more about what is “sensible” or even “necessary”. As social psychologists have shown, while observers tend to explain behaviour in terms of personality and dispositions, actors tend to explain behaviour in terms of pressing situational demands (Jones & Nisbett, 1972). A person is faced with the situation: what to do after school? Where to choose to live? What to name a newborn child? Hence, from that more “inside” view, bifurcations open a space for personal exploration; they are a cloud of buzzing possibility, not a clear decision tree, bi or trifurcations (Sato et al., 2009; Valsiner, 2014a). In this exploratory space, between what is, what was, and what could be, we find the imagination. Imagination is evident in five aspects of the lifecourse. First, imagining can be part of a sphere of experience within the lifecourse, for instance when looking for the best way to continue one’s sentence when writing a letter, or when a child imagines lions at the corner of her bed to feel less anxious from darkness and so fall asleep (Hall, 1897, p. 185). Second, it can be the main activity within a given sphere of experience, whether mediated or not, shared or not, in a given sphere of experience, such as when a person is engrossed in a novel or video game, lost in a daydream or engaged in role play. Third, it can be what connects or relates two spheres of experiences together, as when a person daydreams about her summer house while at work, when a prisoner imagines life beyond the walls (Bouska & Pinerova, 2009), or when a student tries to find an answer to a historical test by using a movie or a novel as symbolic resource (Zittoun, 2006). Fourth, it can be active in points of bifurcation, when creating new pathways and possibilities, such as when a young couple plans how to redecorate their flat, or when a parent decides the first name for their child (Zittoun, 2004a, 2004b). Finally, imagining can actually play an important role in the emergence of new spheres of experiences, often distal, such as when a community begins to elaborate in detail utopian dreams.

Observing imagination: Methodological considerations Understanding the role of imagination in human life and society needs to be grounded in facts. But how can we have access to imagining? Imagination is a process, but, unlike running or spelling, it is rarely visible. Also, because it is a

12  Imagination: a sociocultural approach

quite pervasive and often involuntary process, it is difficult to deliberately create it in a laboratory (but see Singer & Singer, 1992). Imagination, we argue, is at the heart of our everyday action, life choices and experience of the world. Whereas imagination is often associated with children’s play, fiction or the arts (e.g., Götz, Lemish, Aidman, & Moon, 2005; Hargreaves, Miell, & MacDonald, 2012; Harris, 2000; Meric, 2012), our proposition is that imagination is inherent in many domains of daily life, from children’s play to the moon landing, from a reverie about one’s childhood to the call to arms for a utopian dream. It is particularly evident when we take some distance over our current situation, when we wonder about what might come next, when we have to decide a course of action, speculate about potential futures, or when we wish we were in other places. One could even argue that it is even more pervasive, always at the periphery of our awareness, fleshing out not only our desires, but also innumerable expectations about what is around the corner, what someone else is thinking, or how a melody will progress. However, if imagination is everywhere and often invisible, then how are we to study it? We maintain that it is necessary to catch imagination “in flight” or “as it occurs” so that we can examine it as a dynamic process. If a parent imagines possible names for a child to come, many names will be considered, discussed, dreamed about, imagined, rejected, remembered or forgotten; but only one or two will be chosen and thus have a longstanding empirical trace. Yet if one wants to understand what a name means for that parent, one has to consider not only the chosen name, but also this whole field of discarded alternatives (Rabinovich, Silva, Souza, & Tôrres, 2011; Zittoun, 2004a, 2004b). Moreover, we need to study the consideration of these alternatives in the step-by-step sequence in which they were explored by the parents – in order to reconstruct the dynamic stream of imagination. We will draw upon a wide range of data to both illustrate and explore imagination. Our methodological strategy is to look for instances where people externalize their imagination, such as in self-reports, writings, but perhaps also, even if more difficult to analyse, through other modalities. In effect, the only access we have to people’s meaning making is through externalization, that is, the part of these semiotic dynamics made perceptible to others, for example, through speech, text, movement, paintings, objects or diaries (de Saint-Georges, 2014; Gillespie & Zittoun, 2010a). Imagination also needs to be understood historically, both in terms of the life trajectory of the individual and the cultural tradition of imagination that they are embedded within. Capturing data on this aspect of imagination requires obtaining longitudinal data, which is logistically challenging. To overcome this problem, we have chosen to use existing public data (Gillespie, Cornish, Aveling, & Zittoun, 2008; Gillespie & Zittoun, 2010; Zittoun & Gillespie, 2012, 2015b). Among others, we use material obtained by other researchers, self-writings, longitudinal documentaries which “entail tracking individuals or groups over an extended period of time, reporting on how their lives have developed since the last visitation

Imagination: a sociocultural approach  13

and inviting audiences to reflect on the changes that time or circumstances have wrought” (Kilborn, 2010, p. 149). We will often use these data sources to engage in in-depth case studies, based in part upon previously published work. Case studies allow to us to analyse the complexity of psychological dynamics in their social and cultural context, and also, case studies provide a powerful means to deepen theories through dialogue with data (Molenaar & Valsiner, 2005; Valsiner, 2014b, 2014c). Overall we have let the phenomena of imagination guide us, and this has led us to diverse data. We will use case studies, everyday observations, self-writings, documentaries, historical records and works of fiction. Some of the data sources will re-appear in several chapters in order to illustrate different aspects of imagination. In each case, the background to the data will be described the first time when it is introduced, and on subsequent occasions readers will simply be directed back to the original introduction to avoid repetition.

Overview of the book Our main claim is that imagination is a core psychological process, and its corollary is that it is a key to understand human lifecourses in a changing social cultural world. Overall, the book is organized in two main sections. The first section continues the theoretical definition of imagination. In Chapter 2, we propose an overview of past and existing approaches to imagination. This allows us to identify the specificity of imagination, as well as its processes. We will propose that many phenomena treated separately in psychology and the social science can actually be seen as variations of imagination. On this basis, we present our model of the process of imagination as loop in Chapter 3. There, we propose to analyse the sequence of imagination, as a dynamic of uncoupling from the flow of experience, which is provoked by certain events, deploys thanks to the use of various resources, and resolves in the here and now, in such a way that it can have various outcomes for the person as well as her relation to her environment. We also propose a system of three main dimensions allowing accounting for all of the variations of imagination – such as memory, fiction or the exploration of the future – and a vocabulary to designate its constitutive semiotic processes. In Chapter 4, we explore the dialogicality of imagination, by showing how it is inherently a sociocultural phenomenon. Moving from the more implicit aspects of the paramount reality, through social representation and down to personal experience, we show all of which constitutes the stuff of imagining. We show that the many resources uses for imagining are both enabling and constraining its dynamic. The second section of the book then explores the implications of this theoretical proposition. Using the model defined in Chapter 3 and amplified in Chapter 4, we explore the consequences or outcomes of imagination. We consider different scales of phenomena. In Chapter 5, we analyse a series of discrete episodes of imagining, in diverse spheres of experience – at work, at school, through play

14  Imagination: a sociocultural approach

or in a life-threatening situation. Doing so, we show both the pervasiveness of imagination, and the robustness of the looping model. But also, we highlight, even at this microgenetic scale, the consequences of imagination. In Chapter 6, we adopt a lifecourse perspective, and this time, at an ontogenetic scale, we examine how imagination not only develops through time, but also, may actually play a major role in the ways in which people conduct their lives. In Chapter 7, we move one more step back, and consider imagination in the transformation of society. At this sociogenetic level, we thus show how the imagination of specific persons can coincide, be shared and concretized; imagination thus appears as major component of both utopia and actual social and technical innovation. Finally, Chapter 8 brings the book to a conclusion by reflecting on the implications of the work presented in the preceding theoretical and empirical chapters. Specifically, we argue that our theorization of imagination provides a solid basis for conceptualizing both individual agency, or freedom, and the processes through which society renews itself. That is to say, we argue that central to our humanity is the capacity to think of alternatives.

Chapter 2

The centrality of imagination to everyday life

How do people imagine parallel worlds and possible futures? How do they guide their own development? How are they are both shaped by culture and society and yet also shaping culture and society? These are fundamental questions that have been the subject of philosophical debate for centuries, and they are currently questions stimulating research across the social sciences. However, as is the case with many “big” questions, there is no unified approach, as different disciplines and sub-disciplines have tackled the problem in quite different ways. There are diverse approaches to the study of imagination, in part, because the phenomenon itself is diverse. First, it varies from being relatively being simple (i.e., a child’s fear of the dark) to complex (i.e., imagining alternative societies). Second, it varies from being personal (i.e., a private reverie during a repetitive task) to a cultural tradition of imagination (i.e., the community that mobilizes around a utopian dream). Third, the research focus can vary from the experience of imagination (i.e., the phenomenological vividness of the dream) to the practical outcomes of imagination (i.e., a new product or innovation). This chapter will review the diverse approaches to studying imagination. In the first section we will review the history of the concept, as it has been used in philosophy, social science, psychology and cultural psychology. The contribution will be to draw out the main tensions and distinctions in this interdisciplinary field. The second section provides a more focused review of the related concepts creativity, dreams, daydreaming, play, counterfactual reasoning, decision making, thought experiments and innovation. The specific relation between these concepts and imagination will be drawn out, and some lessons taken forward to the Chapter 3, where we outline in detail our own approach.

The historical construction of imagination as an object of study The concept of imagination has been reviewed in psychology (Cerchia, 2011; Pelaprat & Cole, 2011; Roth, 2007; Singer, 2000), philosophy (Furlong, 2004; Gendler, 2011) and the social sciences (Cournarie, 2006), with each discipline focusing on distinctive aspects of imagination. Gendler (2011), in particular,

16  The centrality of imagination to everyday life

emphasizes the heterogeneity of the research field, reviewing a list of definitions and examining various taxonomies of imagination that have been proposed in an attempt to bring order to the field. Danziger (2008) examined the history of the basic dichotomies that characterize the study of imagination. He shows that, for Aristotle, there was no clear distinction between memory and imagination: memory was simply imagination about the past. The idea that imagination is merely reproductive, or derivative of past experiences, was reinforced by the empiricists of the eigthteenth century who, among whom Hume, attempted to reduce memory and mind to a series of images coming from past sensory experiences (Danziger, 2008, p. 190). This led to a “reductionist” view of imagination (i.e., merely derivative of sensory experience) that, despite being criticized by James (1890, Chapter 18), characterized psychology and philosophy for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Roth, 2007). Since, more conceptual distinctions have been made: between the productive and reproductive aspects of imagination, between visual and non-visual forms of imagination, and between imagination which is intentional, such as planning for the future, and imagination which is neither volitional nor goal directed, such as a daydream or reverie. In what follows, we will retrace how these main lines of division came to the fore, using propositions from different disciplines that can complement each other, before centring our enquiry on a proposition that allow us the develop an understanding of imagination as an intentional, creative and sociocultural process. Philosophical approaches: Basic dichotomies Imagination has been studied in philosophy as an approach to how we form our ideas and how we have knowledge of what we cannot perceive. Of course, it is difficult to compare philosophers from different times, when concepts had a very different meanings and applications. Nevertheless, and without aiming to be exhaustive, it is interesting to notice that the concept of imagination seems to have generated recurrent debates including: whether it relates only to visual images or a broader array of sensation; whether it is merely reproductive or productive and creative; and whether it is a more basic psychological faculty (derivative of perception and memory) or a higher mental function (more closely linked to attention, consciousness or executive function). For Descartes (1641) the difference between imagination and reasoning is that the former demands the capacity to “see in the mind’s eyes”. Imagining a triangle entails being able to explore the image mentally, whereas we cannot imagine a “chiliagon” (a polygon with 1,000 sides that is perceptually indistinguishable from a circle), rather, it is something that can only be apprehended with reason – seen as superior to imagination (Descartes, 1641, p. 85–87). Here, in effect, imagination is reproductive, it simply reproduces imagery originally provided by the senses. This idea will be pursued by Hume and later by associationist approaches in psychology, becoming evident in the work of Wundt and Bartlett.

The centrality of imagination to everyday life  17

Giambattista Vico (1710/1993a, 1725/1993b, 1728/2004), in contrast, conceptualized the imagination as the way through which people, alone or as groups, give meaning to phenomena felt through their senses and bodies, and that would be otherwise be beyond their grasp. For example, an individual or group imagining that the thunder is due to the gods’ wrath can make the phenomenon of thunder explicable and meaningful. The results of the collective imagination, for Vico, are poems, myths and explanatory frameworks which are passed from generation to generation, thus comprising many of humanity’s treasures. Here, imagination is not only based on reproducing images; rather, it is creative. It is also linked to the weakness of reason (Vico, 1710/1993a, 1725/1993b, 1728/2004). This idea that the imagination fills the gap created by our incomplete knowledge and rationality, calming the anxieties that such a gap creates, was later developed in psychology by Freud. Perhaps the most dignifying conception of the imagination in philosophy is found in Sartre. Developing from the Kantian idea that the imagination has a synthetic function, Sartre conceptualized the imagination as integral to all human consciousness. The French author wrote two books, one on the imaginary, the other on imagination (Sartre, 1936/1989, 1940). Adopting a phenomenological stance, based on the psychological research available in the 1940s, Sartre explored at length the Cartesian and associationist conceptualizations of the imagination as merely reproducing images. He refuted this idea, arguing that the imagination is an essential property of human consciousness. It is imagination which enables us to free ourselves from the reality of situations in which we are involved, apprehend that which is missing, and tend toward it, potentially even creating it. Thus, for Sartre, the imagination becomes a condition for human freedom from the contingency of things; going far beyond the recollection of senses with the mind’s eye, or being an epiphenomenon of sensation, imagination becomes central to human consciousness and agency (Sartre, 1940). This idea, that the imagination is a prerequisite for freedom and agency, will be central to our own analyses, being demonstrated in Chapter 7 and discussed in Chapter 8. Psychological approaches: Building the field of imagination Psychology grew out of philosophy in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and, as such, it has built upon (and reacted to) philosophic conceptions and assumptions. To situate current views on imagination, we will retrace the background of the most common positions in psychology. William James’ (1890) Principles of psychology was central to establishing the psychological standpoint as distinctive from the philosophical standpoint. He started with the distinction between productive and reproductive imagination, placing emphasis on the productive aspect: “when the mental picture are of data freely combined and reproducing no past combination exactly, we have acts of imagination properly so-called” (James, 1890, p. 45). Objecting classical associationist models, James tried to determine the qualities of imagination processes,

18  The centrality of imagination to everyday life

interpersonal differences, the neurological location of imagination, and the relation between perception and imagination. His argument was that perception and imagination are closely related, but, nevertheless different processes. Basically, we tend to know whether we imagine an object, or perceive it. Accordingly, perception and imagination are different at the level of experience. In France, Théodore Ribot (1900/2007) wrote a monograph on the creative imagination. In his analysis, imagination combines the dissociation of existing images and their re-associations through analogies, personification and metamorphosis. Imagination, for Ribot, is emotional and instinctual; it is a poor version of rationality, and people can be categorized as either thinking or imaginative types. Ribot looked at the origin of many forms of imagination (“plastic imagination”, imagination in science, mechanics, and mysticism). However, all of these explorations remained limited by associationist assumptions, namely, that imagination is derivative of perception. However, he did begin to explore the creative side of imagination in terms of how traces of perception can be recombined in novel ways. Moreover, according to Ribot, imagination can participate to the creation of novel social and cultural realities. In the work of James and Ribot one can find the distinctiveness of the psychological approach, namely, the focus upon experience and also the close relationship between imagination and related psychological concepts such as perception, remembering and reasoning. The contemporary psychological literature (as reviewed later in this chapter) tends to conceptualize imagination as a form of representation or cognition (Harris, 2000), and as more closely related to emotion than reasoning (Piaget, 1992). Also, often, psychological approaches conceptualize imagination as an individual cognitive phenomena (i.e., Andrews, 2014; Byrne, 2005; Diachenko, 2011; Furlong, 2004; Gendler, 2011; Golomb, 1995; Harris, 2000; Kind, 2005; MacKeith, 1982; McKellar, 1957; Singer & Singer, 1992, 2005; Singer, 1981, 2000; Tamburrini, 1984). Such psychological research has made considerable progresses in understanding the underlying cognitive mechanisms. However, our focus is different. We are more concerned with the content, the step-by-step sequential process, and the consequences of imagination. Specifically, we will examine the cultural basis of imagination, the way in which culture can trigger, guide and provide the resources for imaginative experiences, but also, how imagination can feed-forward into culture. Cultural psychological approaches: Defining the dynamic imagination In developmental psychology two fundamental approaches to imagination can be distinguished one from another (Zittoun & Cerchia, 2013). First is the “deficit approach” to imagination, where imagination is a remnant of old or primitive forms of thinking; it is not adequately adjusted to the demands of reality; and when tolerated, it is because it plays a role in children’s development as they cannot yet master more complex modalities of thinking. It is, to some extent, the position of

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Piaget (Piaget, 1992) and many of his followers (Archambault & Venet, 2007; Cerchia, 2011; Goncu & Kessel, 1988; Harris, 2000; Peisach & Hardeman, 1985). Second, there is the “expansive approach” to imagination. This was promoted by Vygotsky (Vygotski, 2011b; Vygotsky, 1931, 1971, 2004) who posited imagination as a specific, productive, unique feature of human mind, which allows people to distance from their own experience and, drawing on it, propose new syntheses which open new thoughts and actions. In this sense imagination can be seen as an “expansion” of experience and possibility. We will focus on this second approach of imagination. Vygotsky wrote a few papers on imagination (Vygotski, 2011b; Vygotsky, 1931, 2004) that drew on his experience of the arts (Vygotsky, 1971), his reading of Freud, James and Ribot, and which were also oriented towards his educational goals. However, although many acknowledge his insights (Archambault & Venet, 2007; Moran & John-Steiner, 2003; Smolucha, 1992), little has been done to develop this understanding (but see de Moraes Ramos de Oliveira & Valsiner, 1997; Pelaprat & Cole, 2011). Before attempting to do this in the following pages, we will review the core aspects of Vygotsky’s conceptualization. First, Vygotsky systematically argues that imagination can, like rational thinking, be more or less distant from emotion, and more or less intentional (Vygotski, 2011b). For Vygotsky also imagination is necessarily creative, not reproductive: When, in my imagination, I draw myself a mental picture of, let us say, the future life of humanity under socialism or a picture of life in the distant past and the struggle of prehistoric man, in both cases I am doing more than reproducing the impressions I once happened to experience. I am not merely recovering the traces of stimulation that reached my brain in the past. I never actually saw this remote past, or this future; however, I still have my own idea, image, or picture of what they were or will be like. All human activity of this type, activity that results not in the reproduction of previously experienced impressions or actions but in the creation of new images or actions is an example of this second type of creative or combinatorial behavior. (Vygotsky, 1930/2004, p. 9) This excerpt illustrates that Vygotsky has a very broad view of imagination that included abstract and complex domains of experience. Also, it is noteworthy that he emphasized the ability of imagination to move both backwards and forwards in time, thus presenting it as a temporal expansion of the individual’s experiential world. Second, Vygotsky suggests that “the essential feature of imagination is that consciousness departs from reality. Imagination is a comparatively autonomous activity of consciousness in which there is a departure from any immediate cognition of reality” (Vygotsky, 1987, p. 349). This intuition, suggested by James but then often overlooked, is central: it is the modality of experiencing imagination that distinguishes it from reasoning. The imagination is not about the social

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or material reality as it is immediately perceived and experienced, imagination is always a mediated experience, or a distal experience (Zittoun & Gillespie, 2015b). Imagination is a departure from the immediate situation. Indeed, as we will see, it is what gives us a degree of freedom from the constraints of an immediate situation. Imagination as a “detachment” or “disengagement” from the immediate situation implies that the imagination is not causally dependent upon the immediate situation or reality (Vygotski, 2011a; Vygotsky, 1931, 1971). But this does not mean that imagination is “not real”. Emotions, for example, experienced within imagination are “real”. Indeed, imaginary experiences can sometimes, and to some extent, trump reality, blocking it out (what has recently been called “quarantined” by Bogdan, 2013). Another way to describe this distancing from the immediate reality is that of an opening to experiences, not of what is, but experiences of what if, what could be, what could have been, etc. (Josephs & Valsiner, 1998; Vaihinger, 1924; Valsiner, 2007b). Interestingly this point corresponds to contemporary cognitive science, which conceptualizes imagination as the creation of alternative worlds or counterfactual reality (Byrne, 2005; Harris, 2000), or, more provocatively, as mindvaulting over and out of the realm of immediate perception and action (Bogdan, 2013). Third, Vygotsky shows that imagination develops as people learn to master language and other complex social and cultural systems. As children’s mastery of language, school norms and other semiotic systems increases, so imagination becomes more complex. Conversely, an adult with professional or scientific expertise has more complex imagination within these fields. Thus imagination is not opposed to education, socialization or culture; quite the reverse, it is cultivated by social languages, conventions, and traditions. According to Vygotsky, the progressive mastery of a semiotic system in imagination implies that thinking about some domain is progressively more distanced, as well as differentiated and integrated hierarchically. In other terms, imagination becomes progressively more complex in a sphere of experience important for, and invested by a given person. In such sphere, imagination is not only enabled by lateral association, or even new synthesis, it can also include a hierarchical integration and a vertical transformation of the individual’s semiotic system. Fourth, Vygotsky argues that imagination allows unique creations based on an individual’s personal and emotional experience and their mastery of cultural systems, and that these unique creations can not only be transformative for the individual, but also transformative for society: Imagination is the basis of all human activity and an important component of all aspects of cultural life. Absolutely everything around us that was created by the hand of man, the entire world of human culture, as distinct from the world of nature, all this is the product of human imagination and of creation based on this imagination. (Vygotsky, 1930/2004, pp. 9–10)

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In that sense, Vygotsky considers imagination to be a central process for both individual and societal change. Thus, rather than being a “deficit approach” it is a resolutely “expansive approach” (Zittoun & Cerchia, 2013). These ideas have been developed by a few authors including husband and wife Jerome L. Singer and Dorothy Singer. They studied imagination linking it to the growing importance of the new forms of media during the twentieth century. Interested in the flow of consciousness, as described by William James (James, 1890/2007), they systematically explored various forms of non-rational thinking, including daydreaming, fantasy and imagination (D. G. Singer & Singer, 1992, 2005; J. L. Singer, 2000). Their work on imagination considers both its development through play in childhood, its evolution through children’s exposure to new media, and its importance in thinking, not only in the creativity of scientists and artists, but also for daily life. Imagination is a form of human thought characterized by the ability of the individual to reproduce images or concepts originally derived from the basic senses, but now reflected in one’s consciousness as memories, fantasies or future plans. The sensory-derived images, “pictures in the mind’s eye”, mental conversations, or remembered or anticipated smells, itches, tastes, or movements can be reshaped and recombined into new images or possible future dialogues. These thoughts may range from regretful ruminations (“if only I had said or done it differently”), to rehearsals or practical planning of social interactions, to the production of creative works of art, literature or science. (Singer & Singer, 2005, p. 16) Thus, according to the Singers, imagination draws on experiences of the world (perception, images and concepts), and can be oriented to the past (as in rumination), the future (as in planning) or the creation of alternative realities (as in arts). Two aspects of this statement can be highlighted, and will be further explored. First, such definition suggests that imagination can include “regretful ruminations” as well as “itches”, that is, imagination has an embodied and emotional quality (Singer & Singer, pp. 19–20). Second, it is clear that the images “derived from the basic senses” are not taking place in a void; they take place within a social and cultural environment. Hence, Singer and Singer are aware that children’s imagination and play is nourished by the stories they read or the films the see. The “stuff” of imagination is mainly given by our cultural experiences (see also Oatley, 2011; Valkenburg & van der Voort, 1994; Valkenburg & Jochen, 2006). We will develop this idea according to which imagination is a bricolage, not only of our own sensations but also of cultural and symbolic resources in Chapter 4.

Building up the field of imagination We started our investigation from an historical perspective, and we will now continue from a more analytical perspective, focusing on the psychological

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conceptualization of imagination. If we agree with Vygotsky that one of the main features of imagination is that it demands a disengagement from proximal reality, a looping out of the immediate situation, then we must admit that many diverse phenomena fall under the umbrella of imagination. These other phenomena, such as creativity, daydreaming, dreaming or even regretting, have been addressed by a range of authors and the term imagination itself has not always been used. However, our proposition is that we should take Vygotsky seriously, and thus we have a serious interest in examining studies in these phenomena. In what follows we will examine what can be learned about imagination from the literatures on creativity, dreaming, daydreaming, play, counterfactual reasoning, thought experiment and decision making. Imagination and creativity First of all, and to clarify this important point, the notion of imagination is not equivalent to that of creativity. According to Vygotsky, the two notions are in a relation of inclusion: If human activity were limited to reproduction of the old, then the human being would be a creature oriented only to the past and would only be able to adapt to the future to the extent that it reproduced the past. It is precisely human creative activity that makes the human being a creature oriented toward the future, creating the future and thus altering his own present. This creative activity, based on the ability of our brain to combine elements, is called imagination or fantasy in psychology. Typically, people use the terms imagination or fantasy to refer to something quite different than what they mean in science. In everyday life, fantasy or imagination refer to what is not actually true, what does not correspond to reality, and what, thus, could not have any serious practical significance. But in actuality, imagination, as the basis of all creative activity, is an important component of absolutely all aspects of cultural life, enabling artistic, scientific, and technical creation alike. (Vygotsky, 2004, p. 9–10, our emphasis) Creativity is generally understood as a process by which people might produce novel or valuable actions or artifacts; in that sense, creativity is a normative notion that depends on a form of social validation. Creativity has been widely explored in psychology, education and work development (Banaji, Burn, & Buckingham, 2010; Beghetto & Kaufman, 2010; Craft, 2000; Davies et al., 2013; Paletz & Murphy, 2008; Poddyakov, 1990; Sternberg, 1999). Among the reasons for this emphasis are certainly political and institutional interests for increasing innovation and productivity. This desire to “increase” creativity, considered in terms of measurable outcomes, renders the definition both difficult to handle (often ideologically used rather than scientifically understood) and inherently normative.

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There are currently attempts to reopen the concept of creativity from a sociocultural perspective (Glăveanu & Gillespie, 2014; Glăveanu, 2010a). These studies emphasize the cultural and social basis of creativity, with creativity going far beyond the individual to include the cultural resources that are utilized, the domain that is contributed to, the play of difference in the act of creation, and the institutional gatekeepers of what is defined as creative. With these studies, we agree that creativity should be seen as “complex socio-cultural-psychological process that, through working with “culturally impregnated” materials within an intersubjective space, leads to the generation of artefacts that are evaluated as new and significant by one or more persons or community at a given time” (Glăveanu, 2010b, p. 87). However, whether one takes an individualistic or sociocultural approach to creativity, the stage of social validation remains crucial. A creation, a work of art, or even an idea, is usually not said to be creative until it has been useful to others, or, at the very least, been judged by others to be of value. Imagination, in contrast, can end with the experience of imagination itself. Although imagination often has consequences, both emotional and practical, it is not defined by its consequences. Imagination is an experience, moreover it can remain completely private (see also D. G. Singer & J. L. Singer, 1992, p. 268). Accordingly, we would argue that imagination is usually part of the process of producing something creative, but it is not necessary that all imagination has outcomes that are judged creative. Imagination and dreaming As seen above (and discussed in Chapter 1), psychoanalysis shares enough epistemological and theoretical assumptions with sociocultural psychology to be called upon to better understand the phenomenon at stake. Psychoanalysis was defined as a theory, as method of research and a type of therapy (Freud, 1910/1957). Hence, beyond being a theoretical enquiry about the dynamics of the mind, it was also a clinical enquiry, devised to account for symptoms that could not be explained otherwise, from slip-of-the tongue to hysteric fits, from uncontrollable movements and hallucinations to mildly intrusive thoughts. It led Freud to make hypothesis about the form of symbolic thinking by which a repressed or unacceptable idea (usually due to social conventions) would force itself through the person’s psychological defences, to express itself in a disguised way (Freud, 1916, 1910/1957). Freud called these processes primary, being based on quick and emotionally loaded associations. Primary processes were further analysed through Freud’s work on dreams (Freud, 1900/2001a, 1901/2001b). By asking people to freely associate about various aspects of their dreams, he soon realized that these “free” associations actually had recurrent themes, systematic motives, consistent semantic or emotional fields, and that very often these ideas were not of the kind people were proud of. He thus made the hypothesis that these webs of meaning displayed through associations, were actually already “in” the dream, or in the mind of the

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dreamer while dreaming. That is to say that, to some extent, the person could not face these dangerous ideas openly, to make them conscious, and that, at night, when he or she was “off guard”, these repressed contents came to be symbolized in the dream, and finally, in the version of the dream that the person was able to recall. Freud identified four basic processes that transform the “latent contents” into the dream. First, “condensation” is the process by which many ideas, events, situations or characters are synthesized into one idea. For example, one dreams of a person that resembles one’s friend and one’s father simultaneously, a situation might be a hybrid between an exam and a wedding, and so on. Such synthesis takes place because the dream has established, often beyond awareness, a relation of similarity between the situations: it evokes the same feelings, the same relational pattern, the same wishes, or maybe the ideas in the dream are expressed with similar words in the languages spoken by the dreamer, and so on. Condensations can thus summarize complex patterns in simple dream motives, or rather, synthesize them in extremely rich semiotic constructions. In On dreams (1901/2001b), Freud mentions his dream of a swimming pool full of women dispersing in various directions, with one male character helping one woman to go out if the water. The dream, explains Freud, draws on an event from his teenager years, and two paintings he knew, one of Melusine, the other of the Deluge (Freud, 2001b, p. 648–649). In his analysis, these three elements were condensed into the one dream scene. Second, “displacement” is the process by which, in a dream, the meaning or the emotions that should be attached to one situation or one person are moved further unto some aspect of the dream that seems unimportant, or a detail. It is the narrative trigger typically used in thrillers and crime fiction – that the key to the story was evident throughout (cf. Lacan’s comment on Poe’s “purloined letter” (Lacan, 1978a). In dreams, Freud suggests, there is no space for unimportant facts, and thus a seemingly small detail might be there because it has become the centre of meaning (Freud, 2001b). That is to say, the core of the repressed ideas or images might be displaced onto details that are superficially trivial. Third, the process of “figuration” turns verbal thinking or complex ideas into a visual, or often poetic form. A person’s experience of being trapped in a dull job or in conventions can be figured by a dream of prison, or failing adventurous escapes. Very often, the emotions or situations to be dreamed of activate very early memories of similar situations; some childhood material can be integrated in the dream, together with later experiences and very often aspects from the preceding day, which triggered the dream itself. Finally, the process of “synthesis” concentrates and crystallizes long chains of experiences through the three processes of condensation, displacement and figuration. That is to say, the dream is made “comprehensible” by a call for “intelligibility”, as if a set designer would finally be sure that all the bits of material present some unity in the final dream, enough to be remembered and recalled.1 Hence, the dream and especially the recall and narration of a dream demand acts of new synthesis. That is to say, the telling of a dream can be an authentic creation.

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These psychoanalytic ideas about dreams have two implications for our understanding of imagination. First, if imagination works even a little bit like dreams, we might imagine that the “logics” of imagination uses similar processes to create new ideas or representations. In other words, we might start of enquiry by considering that the semiotic processes by which imagination is built can be identified as condensation, displacement, figuration and synthesis. Figurability and intelligibility will of course change depending on the domain in which imagination is exerted, or the semiotic mode through which it is externalized if any: conditions of intelligibility are different if one expresses one’s imagination through music or text, and then, jazz or classical music. It is likely to be related with the specificities of the semiotic code through which the process unfolds. As it is known, the language and its rules always participate to the elaboration of the discourse itself. The second implication of Freud’s conception of dreams stems from the idea that they are processes within a tension between one’s inner thoughts and one’s relationship to the world and its social demands. Dreams are, on the one hand, triggered by real-life events, and created to represent experiences in spite of the demands of respectability, morality and so on. Also, dreams are figured in highly social forms – as creative as they are, dream represent religious symbols, known buildings or places, social conventions, musical bits, films or literary characters and so on (Zittoun, 2011). On the other hand, the dreams gather experiences from the person’s recent memory, but also, traces of experiences long forgotten, often already generalized or crystallized in typically memory (or “screen memories”, as we usually remember very few situations of our childhood, and those which we do recall often actually condensate a series of situations). Hence, the dream is a solution, a compromise, generated by a preconscious process, yet pointing to, and drawing from, inner life and the socially shared reality. Such ideas Freud summarized with a diagram of the psychic apparatus. On the left hand side of Figure 2.1, impulsions come from embodied perceptions – perceptions through the senses or from inside of the body, and these eventually end up in motor activity, on the right hand-side. Doing so, they go through layers of traces of past experiences; these traces of experiences are more or less elementary (on the left side), such as memories of bodily experiences and Perception > Traces > Unconscious > Pre-conscious > Action

……

Figure 2.1 Dream work (based on Freud, 1900/2001a) and the semiotic movement from perception to action

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emotions or complex (on the right side), such as, representations associated to language and culture. The impulses from the left tend to move through these layers and create a path to consciousness, and possibly, action (on the right side). On the way, the “pure” impulses associated with different traces of experiences and representations, which will constitute unconscious dynamics, are not accessible to consciousness due to mechanisms of censorship. What eventually enters the preconscious is finally wrapped up in such a way that it can become conscious and be acted upon without too much damage. This very primitive model has been, again, expanded and developed, both within psychoanalysis and without, with more fine grained analysis of the process of assembling different layers of experiences (Green, 2005, 2011; Valsiner, 2007c). This model is fully compatible with the sociocultural understanding of the different layers of semiotic mediation presented above (Chapter 1); it indeed corresponds to our knowledge of how perception, traces of experiences and semiotic forms are synthesized in simple and complex ideas, which then get a communicative shape (Ansermet & Magistretti, 2010; Salvatore & Zittoun, 2011; Zittoun, 2006, 2008a). Hence imagination, just like dreaming, is a process that combines traces of various layers of experience, some highly social, some at the edge of physicality, and related to different moments of our lifecourse. Imagination and daydreaming Daydreaming is related to dreaming, but it occurs while people are awake and thus it entails more awareness. Although daydreaming is ubiquitous, occurring in all domains of life from play to work, it is rarely studied by non-clinical psychologists, except for the Singers (Singer & Singer, 1992), and a couple of isolated studies (Jenkins, Nixon, & Molesworth, 2011; Mar, Mason, & Litvack, 2012; Oettingen, 2012; Pereira & Diriwächter, 2008; Pisarik, Rowell, & Currie, 2013). There has also been some work on experience sampling which, without going into the details of the content of people’s daydreams, does show that people’s minds are “wandering” 46.9 per cent of the time, that this occurs in all domains of activity, and is more likely to occur when people are unhappy (Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010). To define daydream, let us go back to Freud. Dreaming is motivated by basic needs and desires that are obstructed by the demands of the social and material world, to which people are forced to adjust to as they develop (Freud, 1911). Yet there remain activities which are intermediary, between our adjustment to the demands of reality and our internal desires. Playing, for example, entails bringing into play elements drawn from the real world, but then reconfiguring these elements to create new situations and experiences which are better aligned with the desires. The artist engages in a similar process: The creative writer does the same as the child at play. He creates a world of phantasy which he takes very seriously – that is, which he invests with

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large amounts of emotion – while separating it sharply from reality. [. . .] The unreality of the writer’s imaginative world, however, has very important consequences for the technique of his art; for many things which, if they were real, could give no enjoyment, can do so in the play of phantasy, and many excitements which, in themselves, are actually distressing, can become a source of pleasure for the hearers and spectators at the performance of a writer’s work. (Freud, 1959, p. 421) Hence, the writer develops spheres of experiences that are emotionally relevant yet separated from reality. This process can be quite basic, such as employees who are subordinated by day enjoying fiction of omnipotence by night. But equally, this process of sublimation can take more complex forms, such as Freud’s (1910) analysis of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting The Virgin and Child with St. Anne. While most adults do not engage in art and social norms tend to dictate against childish play, this basic human urge to invert and subvert reality manifests most commonly in daydreaming. As people grow up, then, they cease to play, and they seem to give up the yield of pleasure which they gained from playing. But whoever understands the human mind knows that hardly anything is harder for a man than to give up a pleasure which he has once experienced. Actually, we can never give anything up; we only exchange one thing for another. What appears to be a renunciation is really the formation of a substitute or surrogate. In the same way, the growing child, when he stops playing, gives up nothing but the link with real objects; instead of playing, he now phantasies. He builds castles in the air and creates what are called day-dreams. I believe that most people construct phantasies at times in their lives. This is a fact which has long been overlooked and whose importance has therefore not been sufficiently appreciated. (Freud, 1959, p. 422, our emphasis) Winnicott further developed this insight, that imagination and daydreaming are basic experiences of creating one’s life (Zittoun, 2013a). Winnicott’s work on the transitional object is well known. Here it is enough to say that Winnicott distinguishes, based on his clinical observations, three “zones” of experience (Winnicott, 2001, pp. 104–105), or three “lives” (Winnicott, 1967, p. 35): the zone of inner psychical reality, where dreams and hallucination occur; the zone of external (or shared) reality, “with interpersonal relationships as the key even to making use of the non-human environment” (Winnicott, 1959, p. 57); and the zone of transitional phenomena, which arises at the boundary between inner psychical experience and outer shared reality. Transitional phenomena first involve self-maintaining processes, such as the infant’s capacity to imagine the return of the mother in her absence, then children’s play, and finally what he calls “cultural experience”:

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Cultural experience starts as play, and leads to the whole area of man’s inheritance, including the arts, the myths of history, the slow march of philosophical thought and the mysteries of mathematics and of group management and of religion. (Winnicott, 1967, p. 35) There is admittedly some continuity between dreams, cultural experiences as created by self, hallucinations and imagination. Yet not everything is equivalent. Winnicott distinguishes between daydreaming and fantasying on the one side, and dreaming and playing, on the other. Dreams fit in object-relating in the real world, and living fits in the real world in ways that are quite familiar [. . .] By contrast, however fantasying remains an isolated phenomena, absorbing energy but not contributing in either to dreaming or to living. (Winnicott, 1971/1996a, p. 26) And similarly, “creative playing is allied to dreaming and to living but essentially does not belong to fancying” (Winnicott, 1971/1996a, p. 31). The difference is illustrated by the following case study: The patient may sit in her room and while doing nothing at all except breathe she has (in her fantasy) painted a picture, or she has done an interesting piece of work in her job, or she has been in a country walk; but from the observer’s point of view, nothing has happened. In fact, nothing is happening because of the fact that in this dissociated state so much is happening. On the other hand, she may be sitting in her room thinking of tomorrow’s job and making plans, or thinking about her holiday, and this may be an imaginative exploration of the world and of the place where dream and life are the same thing. (Winnicott, 1971/1996a, p. 27) Later Winnicott adds “the fantasying is simply about making a dress. The dress has no symbolic value. A dog is a dog is a dog. In the dream, by contrast, [. . .] the same thing would indeed have had symbolic meaning” (Winnicott, 1971/1996a, p. 33). If we come back to the three zones of experience, playing and dreaming seem to take place in the imaginary zone, while fantasizing is simply in the inner space. The former is relational, while the latter is not; consequently, the former is transformational, and the latter is not. In dreaming or playing one can learn something about self and the others, and even transform that understanding or one’s relationship to it; fantasizing is, in contrast, “out of time”. If we now come back to the terms defined in Chapter 1, dreaming, daydream and fantasizing all occur as distal experiences. The difference is that dream and daydreaming create mutual enriching dynamics between proximal and distal experiences; only fantasy entails distal experiences without implications for

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further proximal experiences. This distinction between daydreaming that has an impact on further proximal experiences, and these which are disconnected, has been recently confirmed by clinical researchers. In such, work, imagination as part of daydream becomes a core developmental process: Imagination is centred on the transformation of real life. It is for example the case when we imagine a fictional dialogue with someone in order to prepare – and often even to discover – what one wants to tell him or her. Imagination is a voluntary organization of the mind in order to solve a problem or anticipate a feared or desired event. Imagination anticipates transformations that the subject defines as goals to be reached. It is a form of virtual thinking oriented towards the future. It projects the subject in it by allowing him or her to constitute projects oriented toward future happiness. (Tisseron, 2012, p. 16) Human imagination can orient the individual to their future utilizing their past. Psychoanalysis2 enables us to conceptualize daydreaming as a form of imagination that draws on inner experiences, the emotional and embodied traces of past experiences, to construct images or scenarios that are emotionally satisfying and/ or preparations for possible futures. If imagination demands the recombination of memories and experiences, a substantial part of it is related to our past experiences. However, Tisseron, unlike Winnicott or Freud, emphasizes the voluntary component of imagination, and in that sense, he joins the more cognitive accounts of that process, as we will see. Imagination and transitional phenomena Winnicott (1971/2001) has shown how imagination processes, such as play, are not simply by-products or sublimations, but core components of human experience and creating one’s life (Zittoun, 2013a). As we have seen above, Winnicott distinguished three zones of experiences and identified the area of transitional phenomena as that of playing, imagining and science. To examine the transitional zone in children Winnicott developed the “squiggle game.” Squiggles are scribbles done either by Winnicott or by a child while they are interacting in a therapeutic session, and the other partner must name what the object is and complete the drawing. Thus, child and adult “play” on figures that are constituted in the meeting of the child’s inner life and the on-going social situation. During a session, a series of drawings is produced, and it is very interesting to see how the sequence of images follows their own logic of association. In one reported case, Winnicott interacts with Robin (age 5), the youngest of a large family, at the time when he has to start school. Robin is sent to Winnicott due to a series of symptoms, including behaving like a child younger than his age (Winnicott, 1996). In parallel, the mother has some anxieties – this is her last child and she now will lose her role of protector. During the consultation, Winnicott

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explains the rules of the game to Robin and engages a long sequence of playing, in which alternatively he and the child draw a squiggle, listen to the interpretation of the other, and possibly comment it. More than 20 “squiggles” are thus produced and discussed, and the discussion begins to yield three themes: a series of rounding animals (pigs, birds), some snakes and eventually a gun. The roundish animals seem to designate the child needing protection, one of the birds being precisely a robin (a displacement of the boy’s name), to which a gun is added. Winnicott sees the emergence of the snake, which is first rolled up, then standing, as designating the child’s progressive awareness of his own ability to stand for himself, so to say erected. Eventually, the sequence culminates when Robin draws a snake with a gun, which leads both to burst into laughter. Winnicott concludes that they now had been around the issue and that Robin had expressed what had preoccupied him: his ambivalence between his fear to leave the mother and her protection and need for him to be with her, and his need to become ready to confront school as an autonomous person. Winnicott considers that the squiggle works similarly to the dream experience of the child. Indeed one might think that it draws upon preconscious processes, processes which would not been conscious on their own and are more likely to be dreamed, yet close enough to a situation of symbolization or externalization to acquire some symbolic, sharable form. Hence the relationship between “inner thinking” and drawing seems at least partially similar to the processes transforming a dream’s latent content into its overt content (i.e., the dreams one remembers). And so, Winnicott seems to read the series of squiggles as dream work: a meaning can be displaced through a series of signs which have some form of similarities; a meaning can also be diffracted upon different signs; and a same sign can crystallize a variety of meaning sets. During the exchange, thus different streams of meaning unfold in parallel and shape one each other: the flow of Winnicott’s clinical thinking; the flow of Robin’s preconscious thinking; and the level of conscious dialogue, through words. Yet in addition, the dialogue that goes with and around the squiggle game allows for some distance from the preconscious thoughts, and with supportive mediation by the adult, there is a progressive transformation of the content of the symbolic discourse: the animals are not scared anymore, and the snake (i.e., Robin) becomes aware of his own strength and independence (Robin can now face school as self-standing being). Such studies thus suggest how much distal experiences ranging from dream to play demand an intense work of semiotic transformation, and doing so, might actually participate to the transformation of further proximal experiences. Within the psychoanalytical tradition, these semiotic processes have been described as displacement, condensation, figuration and synthesis. Dream, daydream and play are generally considered as dynamics working with a diversity of social and cultural material but mainly also emotionally laden personal experiences. We now turn to studies specifically considering playing, beyond psychoanalysis.

The centrality of imagination to everyday life  31

Imagination in play and games Cross cultural studies show that children’s play is ubiquitous (Bruner, Jolly, & Sylva, 1976). More specifically, children play at what their parents do and that which the children are not yet allowed to do (Edwards, 2000). Children in urban societies play going to work, going to the doctor and being police men and women; while children in more traditional or rural contexts play farming, hunting and caring for younger siblings. Interestingly, once the children are allowed to engage in a given activity, then playing that activity diminishes. For example, children spend less time pretending to care for dolls and imaginary babies if they are given responsibility to care for younger siblings (Edwards, 2000). Such studies support the idea that play is a means for children to explore their social world, and thus the imagination can help children prepare for future roles (Mead 1910/2001; Vygotsky 1933). Lillard (2001) has synthesized much literature on children’s play by suggesting that it functions as a “twin earth”. Philosophers use the twin earth thought experiments to interrogate the meaning of our world (see the discussion of thought experiments below). Lillard suggests that, in much the same way, children use imagination and play to create parallel spheres of experience that they can use to manipulate and explore meanings. Play is an externalization of the symbolic and imaginative process of building up an internal representation of society. The key idea here is that of simulation (Decety & Grèzes, 2006). Adults have imaginary simulations of the social world within their minds, which have been built up through many years of playing and the subsequent supports of both fiction and experience. These simulations, or imaginary worlds, enable adults to have expectations about the social world, to run scenarios about what will happen if they do X, Y or Z. That is to say, these simulations are central to our understanding of the future (Schacter, Addis, & Buckner, 2008). Developing an internalized simulation of one’s society entails understanding society from multiple standpoints within society, for example, to be able to imagine the standpoint of the worker, the thief, the police inspector and the judge. This matrix of perspectives Mead (1922) called “the generalized other” (Gillespie, 2005a). The generalized other is what enables people to simulate the responses of specific and general others to one’s actions. But, how does it develop? Mead argued that roles, or standpoints, within society are explored and rehearsed through play. More specifically, he argued that in games, with rules and role exchange, children learn how these roles or standpoints are inter-related, thus cultivating the generalized other. If play often entails role exchange (Bruner & Sherwood, 1976), role exchange is central in games (Gillespie & Martin, 2014): in games, players take turns at various roles, and apply the rules of the game equally to themselves and others. Through such play and games, Mead argued, children come not only to understand the different standpoints in society, but also to see themselves as being like other people in society. Play and games enable children to step out of their own

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perspectives and become aware that they are just one like many others, and in so doing, they become able to regulate themselves from the standpoint of the group or society. According to this Meadian account, play and games are important in the ontogenesis of the individual, in enabling symbolic processes, and distanciation. Of course, the relation is two way, as enhanced symbolic processes enable more complex play and games. Imagination as counterfactual reasoning More deliberate occurrences of imagination have been addressed by authors in the cognitive tradition (e.g., Overton, 1998, p. 331). In this domain, authors show the centrality of imagination in human life, and the fact that it is a complex, highly skilled modality of thinking, not a primitive one, hence coming back from the general view that prevailed initially in the cognitive revolution (Bogdan, 2013; Byrne, 2005; Frith, 2007; Gendler, 2011). For instance, in The rational imagination (Byrne, 2005), which treats imagination as an everyday phenomena, Byrne proposes to study counterfactual reasoning. She argues that imagination starts with “what if” or “if only”, for example, “if only I were more handsome I could have married Jane”. It implies the creation of alternatives, of a sphere of experience that is parallel to shared reality, and concerns what could have been different in the past and what might happen in the future. For her, counterfactual imagination is rational because it is a way to learn from one’s mistakes and prepare for one’s future, to consider better or worse outcomes. Examples include considering whether one should be vaccinated from an illness, knowing that some people die from it, yet also that others endure bad side-effects (Byrne, 2005, p. 43). Another example is the reasoning one engages in, knowing that a man’s daughter has been injured in a car accident, while he, who should have picked her up, was delayed on the way (Byrne, 2005, p. 70). Finally, imagination, for Byrne, is the sort of reasoning in which people have engaged in after 9/11, wondering what would have happened if only the security agents had not let the terrorists enter the planes (Byrne, 2005, p. 99). Reasoning about such cases demands the statement of a fact, and the opening of an alternative experience characterized by the absence of that fact, initiated by a “what if” or “if only” statement. The core of Byrne’s thesis are the several principles of counterfactual reasoning. Specifically, when people engage in counterfactual thinking: 1 2 3 4 5

they keep in mind true possibilities; they keep in mind a limited number of possibilities; they often think about two possibilities at the same time; they might think about possibilities that may once have been true and no longer are true; they easily imagine a counterfactual possibility if the possibility is accompanied by a second possibility;

The centrality of imagination to everyday life  33

6 7

facing social pressures they tend to think about the extreme opposite options – what is socially encouraged and what is forbidden, even if they tend to avoid the latter; and people tend to think in a temporal order. (Byrne, 2005, p. 200, 2007)

Finally, Byrne identifies the typical objects of imagination as counterfactual reasoning about actions, events and so on and so forth. Byrne’s analysis complements what we have discussed so far, namely, that imagination entails the opening of an experience disconnected from perception, entails a distancing from the reality of the immediate situation, and entails a different modality of thinking (i.e., follows a different logic from practical realities). However, Byrne addresses a very specific aspect of imagination, namely, counterfactual thinking, that follows upon an action or event that already took place, and that from the perspective of the present, seeks an alternative in the past. In other words, such studies suggest that imagination can take place after specific conduct took place in a given proximal sphere of experience is, as a form of post-hoc evaluation. This, we could think, will then be the occasion to learn from experience, and open up new possibilities for imagining. Imagination and decision making Another deliberate form of imagining is decision making, which has been studied by Bogdan (2013). Bodgan draws on a wide variety of sources (developmental, ethological, etc.) including introspection. His argument is mainly aimed at showing the relevancy of a “devo-evo” perspective, that is an evolutionist perspective assuming that genetics deploy themselves through ontogeny as individual moves through diverse social and cultural niches. Opening his demonstration, Bogdan analyses his own decision making for his holidays, which demands imagining various places, based on catalogues and pictures, and also, revisions in the light of a discussion with his fiancée. Imagination is defined as: the capacity to form and deploy thoughts about non-actual, possible, future, or counterfactual scenarios in a deliberate, self-conscious, effortful, reflective and introspectively active form of offline processing of information. [. . .] this capacity can be said to be the engine of intellect. (Bogdan, 2013, p. 5) In Bogdan’s terms, we thus find again the idea that decision making demands leaving the sphere of proximal experiences to engage in something beyond the immediate and actual, which Bogdan characterizes as “quarantining”, and that we consider as the creation of a new, distal sphere of experience. Imagination is also presented as a complex cognitive function, and again, no-longer in opposition to rationality. Bogdan focuses also on one specific aspect of imagination, namely, decision making, that is, that which will directly change a person’s course of

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action in the present or the future. In that sense, Bogdan shows again the importance of imagination in creating future outcomes. Imagination in thought experiments One final aspect of deliberate imagination that we want to consider is thought experiments. Thought experiments are difficult to define (Brown, 1986), because they take various forms and are, in a sense, only limited by our imagination. However, common characteristics include imagining something that is impossible so as to reveal something about the nature of the world. Thought experiments, despite being impossible, have proved decisive at various points in the history of science. Galileo came to challenge the Aristotelian view that objects fall at different speeds according to their weight by imagining what would happen if a heavy ball was tied to a light ball: would the heavy ball pull down the light ball? Or would the light ball slow down the fall of the heavy ball? Or (and here is the twist) does the fact that they are tied together mean that they now have a larger combined weight, meaning that the two balls tied together would fall faster than either ball falling alone? As Brown (1986) shows, the thought experiment reveals the contradictions within the Aristotelian conception. There are many famous examples of thought experiments, such as, the “Chinese room,” the “Brain in a vat,” and “Schrödinger’s cat.” Einstein is also widely known to have made use of elaborate thought experiments (Norton, 1991). One can also consider utopias as thought experiments (Morris & Kross, 2004). Yet despite being relatively widely known, the methodology of thought experiments is little understood. Some argue that they are useless, others that they duplicate existing processes of logical deduction, and yet others that thought experiments are a distinctive form of thinking (Brown, 1986) or actually experimenting (Brown, Meynell, & Frappier, 2013, p. 1). While it is likely that thought experiments reveal logical contradictions that are latent within a given theory, the value of thought experiments is that they make the contradictions tangible. By virtue of becoming imagined, often in a vivid form, the thought experiment enables the scientist or philosopher to explore and operate on the contradiction. This role of imagination to make the abstract concrete and embodied will be further discussed in the next section. This brief consideration of thought experiments reveals, first, that imagination is also evident in the process of science, and second, that once again imagining the impossible can have outcomes for the actual – in this case changing the course of science. Note that, for Byrne, Bodgan and Brown, imagination is a deliberate, intentional and mainly mental and conscious process. Is this contradictory with what has been seen so far? No, not if we consider a continuum of processes of thinking, which we will now see. However, what Byrne, Bogdan and Brown ignore, and probably more than the psychoanalysts, is the fact that strong social and cultural norms are bounding decision making and counterfactual reasoning. This also we will need to account for.

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Imagination as embodied, semiotic, multimodal process At the end of this theoretical exploration, we will now highlight the elements on which we will build our understanding of imagination. We especially try to be consistent with our assumptions about the social and cultural construction of the world in which we live, but also, to respect the fact that the person that psychology studies is embodied, feeling, and that he or she has a unique history of encounters with the world. As proposed above, imagination is part of one’s flow of consciousness. We distinguish proximal experiences, in which the here-and-now, embodied experience is primary, located in irreversible time and causalities, from distal experiences, in which different rules of causality and time occur. Hence, first, imagination demands some decoupling from a proximal experience. Authors have described in different ways the specific quality of imagining, such as “quarantining” (Bogdan, 2013) or “bracketing” of actual causalities, as “as-if/what-if” mode of thinking in opposition to “as-is/what-is” (Josephs & Valsiner, 1998), or with the idea of transitional phenomena (Winnicott, 2001) or “zone of proximal development” (Vygotsky, 1931). Second, we consider that imagination is a semiotic activity; while it may respond to and draw nourishment from the social and material world, it does not require any such support while it is occurring. In this sense it is different to art and play which both entail material supports to occur. Internalized signs, discourses, representations and images provide the semiotic resources thanks to which imagination occurs. However imagination can occur while a person is acting with these objects. In effect, third, although one can imagine in “one’s head”, imagination is not only a mental capacity: it is an embodied experience, even when it is “internal”. One can be moved while imagining, feeling close to crying if imagining the loss of a close person, aroused when imagining a beloved one, or dizzy when imagining a scary situation. Indeed, a large body of research has shown that when people imagine scenarios such as these the corresponding brain regions of perception and action are activated (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999). For example, at a basic level, imagining walking activates very similar brain regions to actually walking (la Fougère et al., 2010). Similarly, when sportsmen rehearse a movement “in their mind” the corresponding muscle or nervous circuits are actually activated (Hale, 1994). Fourth, imagination can be more or less verbal, visual, musical, colourful of spatial or even sensorimotor. It can also be supported by externalization, in any semiotic modality. Imagination can be guided and enabled by language, as when we write or talk about counterfactual events. But it can also be done by a sketch, when someone is trying to give shape to a concept, a table or a house. It can be done by gesture (McNeill, 1996), as when someone “shows” where his furniture will be standing in a house in construction, or, in the case of sportsmen, by a physical sketch – as when a skater “rehearses” in a minimal movement the jumps he is

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about to do before entering on the ice or golf players rehearse movements without a ball (Ploszay, Gentner, Skinner, & Wrisberg, 2006). In that sense, imagination is a multimodal embodied semiotic process, which in its multiple declination, can be mainly “internal” (i.e., as an embodied mind experience) but can also be more or less mediated or actualized by external gestures. From this first analysis, imagination appears to be as any form of cultivated thinking – it is semiotic, embodied, and multimodal. However, imagination is distinctive because it is functioning with an experience that is outside of the immediate situation. This allows for much more freedom in direction and intensity of explorations. Hence, to go one step further, we can draw on the literature summarized above to characterize the semiotic dynamics that are activated in imagining. First, because imagination can be very close to embodied and emotionally laden experience, it is quite likely to emerge and move through quick and labile associations or resemblances, drawing on older layers of experience. In that sense, imagination is likely to move through dynamics resembling dream work; more than simple associations, these can take many creative forms through condensation, displacement, figuration and synthesis. However, it is not only basic impressions which are thus connected through imagination – the redness of strawberries with the redness of a dress. These transformations can also be exerted on highly cultivated internalized material, that is, material that has also a “vertical” organization. In imagination, experiences can also be associated to classes of experiences and concepts, and to highly abstract ideas, such as the idea of revolution and that of freedom. Generalized ideas can be of two sorts: some which are highly cultivated, such as scientific or artistic concepts, and these which are based on emotional or experiential situations, such as for instance, every experience in which a person felt humiliated. Imagination can thus function through various levels of mediation, through a distancing which can activate very socialized semiotic systems organized in concepts and classes, while other ideas and experiences are grouped and generalized in more informal ways. Hence, our proposition is that imagination is a multimodal, embodied, semiotic process; that imagination is creative, not reproductive, as it operates through the processes of condensation, displacement, figuration and synthesis, which themselves can be applied both in a sort of “horizontal way” – through relations of proximity, but also, in a more vertical way, through progressive distanciation based both in the internalization of complex semiotic forms and of progressive generalization of experience. Finally, our proposition is that dreaming, daydreaming, decision making, or simulations, are all variations of imagination. This raises the question, what is the specificity of each of them? Why do they have different names? Many of these distinctions are due to the history of science, specifically, explorations originating in different traditions in psychology, from the social to the natural sciences. Our idea, however, is that these are all the variations of the basic phenomena that we call imagination. To substantiate this proposition, Chapter 3 will outline our model of imagination.

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Notes 1 Freud’s hypotheses on dream work have been ferociously discussed. Some of the most consistent objections do question these basic ideas (Hobson, 2002), others accept the idea of the dream work but refuse that of unconscious motives (Epstein, 1999), while other recent discussions accept most of Freud’s ideas on dreams in the light of neuroscientific research (Ansermet & Magistretti, 2010) or a combination of anthropology, neuroscience and analysis of interactions (Nathan, 2011). We subscribe to these ideas, and some of their modern interpretations, for two reasons. First, as said elsewhere and recalled in Chapter 1, this model shares theoretical assumptions with the semiotic approach proposed here (Salvatore & Zittoun, 2011; Zittoun, 2004a 2004b, 2006). Secondly, and for a more pragmatic and phenomenological perspective, our own exploration of dreams convinced us of the relevance of such notions. 2 The work of Lacan (1978b) is here left aside, for his distinctions follow different logic. In effect, he distinguishes three other psychic domains or modalities: the real, the imaginary and the symbolic. The real is unknowable in itself; the imaginary groups together brute and scattered experiences; only the symbolic can, through language and within specific systems, render the experience meaningful, thinkable and communicable. Obviously, our understanding of imagination does not overlap Lacan’s imaginary.

Chapter 3

The loop of imagination

One of the most subtle descriptions of the imagination is found in William James’ (1890) influential chapter on ‘The stream of thought’. In that chapter, James tries to give a phenomenological description of how we move from one thought to the next. Like a bird’s life, [the stream of thought] seems to be made of an alternation of flights and perchings. The rhythm of language expresses this, where every thought is expressed in a sentence, and every sentence closed by a period. The resting-places are usually occupied by sensorial imaginations of some sort, whose peculiarity is that they can be held before the mind for an indefinite time. (James, 1890, p. 233) While we sincerely hope that you, the reader, are absorbed in our text, and that you let our words guide your stream of consciousness, it is also quite likely that your stream of thought might leave these words, and take flight, perching on a more compelling distal experience. A trigger might be discomfort, tiredness or convoluted text. In such movements of experience, the stream of consciousness, like a bird, flits from one experience to the next. The range of flight can go far beyond the immediate environment. An intrusive thought about dinner, an upcoming meeting, or travel plans would be a more substantial departure of experience from the here-and-now of engaging with our text. To illustrate the point we invite you to conjure a mental image of a previous or prospective holiday; bringing into experience the place, people, climate and activities. When you return to this sentence, we maintain, you have had an imaginary experience. Our proposition is that such imaginary experiences entail a temporary “uncoupling” from the ongoing here-and-now situation. In this chapter, we describe imagination as a process of uncoupling, a looping out of the immediate situation, and a return to that situation. We explicate this loop as temporal sequence, which requires some triggers, some resources, and has various outcomes. On this basis, we propose three dimensions for conceptualizing the diversity of loops of imagining. We conclude by considering the status of

The loop of imagination  39

the model. All subsequent chapters are based on this model, first exploring the applicability of the model at various levels, and then discussing the implications of the model.

Imagination as uncoupling The idea that imagination entails an uncoupling from the here-and-now is a metaphor. The clutch in a car uncouples, or disengages, the motor from the drive chain, thus allowing both the wheels and the motor to move independently. Similarly, imagination entails a partial and temporary separation of two streams of experience, namely, proximal experience guided by the immediate social and material world, and experience guided by the semiotic stream of consciousness itself. The metaphor of uncoupling also implies that some imaginary experiences disengage their author from the socially shared reality. For example, an imagined action does not imply relational or causal consequences in socially shared reality. If one imagines strangling a noisy neighbor, nothing will actually happen to him. Disengagement from socially shared reality renders imagination both powerless and powerful. It is powerless because remembering one’s holidays will never refresh one’s suntan. But, equally, in conditions of extreme social control, such as imprisonment, the imagination is one of the few things that cannot be controlled – the captor neither knows nor controls what the prisoner imagines (Bouska & Pinerova, 2009; Cohen & Taylor, 1976/1992; Levi, 1975/1995). The distinction between imagination being coupled into the here-and-now and decoupled from the here-and-now can also be conceptualized in terms of the classical distinction (Josephs, 1998; Josephs & Valsiner, 1998, 1999; Vaihinger, 1924) between what IS (AS IS) and what could be or could have been or could become (AS IF). Although we agree with this distinction, our intention is to go beyond it, as it fails to explain how we can be both doing things in the world simultaneously as it is and as it could be. For example, one can drive a car whilst listening to, and thus experiencing, an adventure novel. Equally, a utopian movement simultaneously deals with the practicalities of the present and the as-yet un-actualized dreams of the future. At the heart of the model we propose is not to oppose the AS IS and AS IF modes of thinking and acting, but rather to see them as related, often co-occurring or sequentially related (i.e., the AS IF becoming the AS IS). Uncoupling occurs on a continuum, with complete uncoupling at the extreme. Hallucinations, dreaming whilst asleep, as well as the state of detachment achieved during meditation, entail a strong uncoupling from the socially shared here-andnow. At the other extreme, experiences of deep immersion in the here-and-now have been described as having flow-like quality, that of being fully absorbed in the moment (Csikszentmihalyi, 1991). Yet most of the time, we alternate and combine, moving between these two modes of experience. There are moments when uncoupling is called for: moments where we face a new challenge (e.g., how to orient oneself in a new town, what to do with a newborn child, how to reinvent

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one’s life after a radical change of the political system), or, more generally, where what is taken for granted is questioned. These situations which demand uncoupling can be called ruptures (Brinkmann, 2011; Dewey, 1946; Zittoun, 2006), irritations (due to the suspension of belief in things as they are, Peirce, 1877) or crises. However, there are equally moments in which coupling is called for: moments when a practical task needs to be carried out which requires our dedicated attention (e.g., driving on a difficult stretch of road, engaging in vigorous conversation, or conducting surgery), or when we are engaged in demanding social activities (e.g., an engaging conversation, a game of tennis or listening to a story). Imagination is the uncoupling from the here and now from proximal experiences. It occurs in two main variations, either as a clearly defined looping out towards a distal sphere of experience, or, as a rapidly alternating movement between the distal and the proximal, a variant that we call “braided imagination.” Given that the core idea is that of looping, we will now analyse it in more general terms. We propose that imagination is disengaging from the here-and-now of a proximal experience, which is submitted to causality and temporal linearity, to explore, or engage with alternative, distal experiences, which are not submitted to linear or causal temporality. An imagination event thus begins with a decoupling of experience and usually concludes with a re-coupling. Thus, imagination is a loop. Imagination as a looping experience, as a temporary disengagement from current experience, can account for phenomena such as daydreaming, creating, deciding, remembering, having a cultural experience and so on. These are all experiences which can be emotionally intense, intellectually challenging, and which can change us, without necessarily affecting other people or our environment. Figure 3.1 depicts imagination as a loop. The bottom line represents the physical time within the paramount reality. The looping line represents the stream of thought. This ostensibly simple idea will be our starting point for theorizing imagination. We will proceed to build on this basic idea, enriching the model.

Imaginary loop (uncoupled experience)

Coupled experience

Re-coupled experience Physical time

Figure 3.1  Imagination as a loop

The loop of imagination  41

We need to add a caveat to our model, because, arguably there is imagination which occurs outside of any looping beyond the immediate situation. The concept of apperception, long established in psychology, refers to the meanings that perceivers bring to the objects of perception (Pillsbury, 1897). When, for example, we view a cake, we might apperceive the texture in the middle of the cake, the taste or even a feeling of indulgence or guilt at betraying a diet. In these cases what is perceived is not immediately evident in the perception itself, rather, these aspects that infuse (and complicate) the perception of the cake come from the perceiver. Thus, in a sense, these are the threads of imagination woven into the very fabric of perception. In this sense we could describe imagination as expanding the perception of the immediate environment. However, apperception is not the topic of our analysis. While we recognize that imagination might play a role in apperception, our focus is going to be on the more clear and distinct, or more prototypical, instances of imagination where there is a clear uncoupling of experience from the immediate situation – such as when the taste of the cake leads to a Proustian reverie.

The temporal sequence of imagining Imagination is a semiotic process. It is a process in the sense of having triggers, pulling signs into a series of relationships, and having outcomes. To further conceptualize the sequence of imagining, we will focus on the correspondence between Sarah Austin and Pückler, chosen because it is very explicitly and reflectively referring to imagination. Sarah Austin was a married British intellectual living in England, working as translator for Prince Hermann Pückler Muskau, residing in Bad Muskau, in what was then Prussia, between 1831 and 1834 (Hamburger & Hamburger, 1991).1 Although the two never met, Sarah Austin developed a very vivid and romantic idea of who her correspondent was, and Pückler happily followed her in a passionate exchange of letters, through which an imagined adultery took place. At the beginning of their epistolary relationship, Sarah is trying to present and probably also construct herself as a free, strong and passionate woman, far from a self-constrained Victorian intellectual. She writes: “I ought to have been born the wife of a Norseman, a sea-king – or else an Arab chief [. . .] Anything wild and adventurous, and here I am, ye Gods, a Professorin!!! Of all tamed animals” (Hamburger & Hamburger, 1991, p. 126); given this volcanic nature, she has to find ways to employ her energy, and so she continues: There is no such cure for this as constant occupation of body and mind, and those small carking cares which, more than all things, destroy romance and voluptuousness. Were I a nun, Gold help me. I can imagine that it would go hard with me in the hours of leisure and contemplation: for religion such as I feel it often softens rather than hardens the heart, and tranquility, opportunity of thinking on oneself – one’s own being, state and affections, – as I can imagine that I should die of it, or go mad. But you who know human nature well under some aspects, you perhaps know it not on this side, how

42  The loop of imagination

the activate business, the reiterated small cares and occupations of a mistress of a family in narrow circumstances effectively divert the mind from all such thought and weary the body too much to leave that very importunate. (Hamburger & Hamburger, 1991, pp. 126–127) In this sequence, Sarah starts by describing her daily life of “small carking cares”; she then engages in an imaginary loop, here probably triggered by the implicit objection – that daily life does not seem very adventurous!, expressed by the conditional – “Were I a nun”. She thus explores the potential sphere of experience of being a nun, and the “hours of contemplation” dedicated to introspection – for this, she probably has to feel in as-if she were a nun, in a convent, in the silence and the modest environment. She then even imagines a possible implication of that fiction, that she would die or go mad. This, in turn, allows her to come back to the current exchange, to imagine her reader’s gaze on her life, and eventually admit that her petty life actually has the virtue of wearing off her energy. The looping of Sarah’s imagination illustrates several features that we will explore in further detail. This instance of imagination: 1 2

3

entails, as a trigger, certain features of the environment and her experience, such as the tension between her actual situation and her adventurous aspirations; is both nourished and constrained by cultural elements, such as her representations of womanhood, romantic imagery, and ideas about nuns and the wife of horsemen which originate in her cultural milieu, and by social interactions, such as her expectations of Pückler; is likely to have consequences, in her relation to Pückler and more likely, to her own husband and her evaluation of her current way of life.

The following three sub-sections expand upon each of these features. Triggers for imagining When and why do people disengage from the real? Uncoupling takes various forms and can be more or less abrupt. A first potential trigger is when the takenfor-granted nature of our daily reality becomes questioned. Hence, having to move country, losing a job, winning the lottery, typically lead people to experience ruptures, a breakdown in what is known, or of the usual adjustments reality demands. A rupture usually demands elaborating new representations. In this type of situation, one could say that the flow of experience in the world is put under such rapid or extreme requirements for adjustment that one’s flow of consciousness or thinking has not the tools, images or representations to adapt; imagination is thus required to generate new semiotic adjustments to the changed environment. That is to say, because ruptures call for new ways of doing and thinking, ruptures typically trigger imagination.

The loop of imagination  43

A second potential trigger for the imagining loop is situations of boredom or overstimulation. In a large experience sampling survey, Killingsworth and Gilbert (2010) found what they called ‘mind wandering’ (or ‘stimulus independent thought’, which we would call an imaginary distal experience) was widespread occurring in 46.9 per cent of the samples. Mind wandering was pervasive in activities such as working, commuting, grooming and housework; somewhat less prevalent in reading, shopping, watching TV and eating; it was least prevalent during love making. What is noticeable about the activities in which mind wandering is most prevalent, is the potential for boredom. In the case of boredom it is the flow of ongoing action in the surrounding world that becomes insufficiently stimulating, too repetitive, or simply not interesting enough to retain the engagement of one’s stream of consciousness. Listening to a boring lesson, washing the dishes or a routine commute are all activities that can lead the bird of imagination to take flight. One’s stream of consciousness can glide into a daydream, alternative scenarios, remembering or anticipating (Pereira & Diriwächter, 2008). In some extreme cases it is the intensity of immediate experience that triggers withdrawal and redirection of the stream of consciousness into a loop of imagination. This can occur to escape from an emotionally loaded situation, with imagination providing alternative, perhaps less stressful or intense scenarios. At the extreme it imagination can be a response to extreme pain or torture (Solomon, Ginzburg, Neria, & Ohry, 1995). Thus either too little or too much stimulation in the immediate situation can lead to an uncoupling of experience, and a looping out of experience in imagination. A third potential trigger for imagining occurs in situations that require quick alternation between spheres of experiences. These are situations in which imagination is required and needed to solve a task or a find a solution; one deliberately loops in and out of the current situation, for example, in creative work, writing and brainstorm (Vygotsky, 2004). Making music usually requires both being deeply engaged in the flow of actions and sounds which are unfolding, yet also exploring an imaginary world of possibilities, feelings and images, as well a knowledge about styles and genres, which will guide and be transformed by the former (Diep, 2011; Hargreaves, MacDonald, & Miell, 2012). Similarly, inventing a food dish, or writing a chapter like this one, demands leaving the flow of action canalized by things and material (whether spices and flavors, or letters on a keyboard) and momentary absences, to visualize an idea, imagine a taste, create an example and so on. In such activities, imagination is triggered by the needs or irritation of the ongoing activity, and it occurs through a series of loops quickly coming back to immediate experience. In that sense, it thus becomes braided in the flow of experience. The fourth potential trigger is voluntary uncoupling. This typically entails techniques for uncoupling – sitting in a dark cinema theater, entering in a church or swallowing a pill. In such cases, when the technique is culturally determined, people use the same resources for guiding the imagination itself: the movie they watch, or the rituals they follow. A somewhat less voluntary uncoupling is that of falling asleep, which then allows for dreaming. In these cases, the resource works

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as a threshold, both facilitating the uncoupling of experience and stimulating the loop of imagination itself. Such voluntary uncoupling is usually facilitated by reducing situational stimuli, such as finding a quiet place to read, dimming the lights for watching a movie or turning off the lights for sleep. As we will see below, these techniques can provide more or less active guidance of imagination itself. Artefacts such as books or films provide an abundance of semiotic means, strongly channeling its loop, while dreams for example have less guidance. Voluntary uncoupling is related to both boredom and overstimulation. Someone bored with their day job, or stressed by demands, may seek uncoupling, seeking an alternative to the real. Our culture provides the semiotic resources, such as films, books and video games, to facilitate such uncoupling. These triggers for imagining are more or less deliberately used by the person imagining, and more or less constrained or demanded by others or the social environment. Also, imagining might be, in a given situation, a socially shared or an individual action. Being bored in the classroom and letting one’s mind wander while staring out of the window is rather accidental, individual, and not demanded by the social situation. In contrast, having to imagine how to get back to the base camp after having been injured during a lonely trek is a forced experience, as we will see in Chapter 5. Going to the cinema is generally a voluntary action, individually initiated or shared, and demands going through a certain number of physical and temporal arrangements, socially meant to create an effect of threshold that will facilitate a large group of people’s deliberate engagement in imagination (Zittoun, 2013a). Living in a country that enters war brings an unwanted, shared situation, in which people try to collectively imagine what will happen, such as when the whole neighborhood is preparing for air raids (Gillespie, Cornish, Aveling, & Zittoun, 2008). These variations have two implications: first, the extent to which a loop of imagination is voluntary and shared is likely to change the emotional tone: one can be more or less animated by fear and anxiety, or excitement of change when imagining. This might in turn colour the content and outcomes of imagination; for instance, in a study on daydreams, a student reports how on a bad mood day, she imagines a monster tearing her classmates in pieces (Pereira & Diriwächter, 2008, pp. 170–171). Second, the extent to which the loop of imagination is constrained can also shape both the content and consequences of imagination. As we will suggest, the ability to imagine alternatives is central to human agency, that is, the capacity to transform the present. Accordingly, blocks to the imagination of certain alternatives or the promotion of other alternatives can guide the trajectories of both individuals and societies. Cultural resources for imagining Imagination entails certain cognitive contents, that is, images, feelings, ideas and so on. These contents are recombined, synthesized or otherwise woven into a

The loop of imagination  45

bricolage of imagination. The question we now ask is, where do these semiotic contents come from? These contents, we will show, originate in personal experience, social relations and cultural elements. As such these contents are always simultaneously enabling and constraining, guiding and opening imaginary experiences. First, imagination is, at the level of experience, a private activity. As such it is nourished by a person’s lifelong experience and knowledge. Some aspects of this “stuff” with which we imagine is obviously very personal, having to do with a person’s unique emotional and relational life, more or less conscious memories, sensitivity and tastes, inner freedom, and so on. Second, the content of what is imagined is nourished and guided by other people. Consider a dialogue between a mother and a child on what the child did during his school day, and what they wish to do next, which story they would like to read, and how they think the story will end. Such a dialogue is also guiding and scaffolding a child’s imagination, first oriented through the past, then the future, and then the comprehension of the narrative. In daily dialogues, we learn to invite each other to imagine, when we plan meetings, revise the past, make jokes, invent absurd situations, or imagine how our institutions or society could be improved. Most of this imagining we do as co-construction. Of course, the dialogicality of mind also implies that even our lonely imagining is often done through the imaginary gaze of the other, or what we think some specific or generalized others might do or say in the future or under certain situations. Imagining a friends’ pleasure when choosing a gift or writing letter, a parent’s disapproval when dating a “bad boy” (Zittoun & de Saint-Laurent, 2015, see Chapter 4), is part of the guidance of one’s imagination. Arguably, most of the contents of imagination come from our social and cultural world. Imagination, which is often taken to be very personal, is in actuality quite similar between people within a given culture. This is evident, for example, in word association studies and brainstorming studies. Francis Galton (1879), who developed the method of word-association and presented the first systematic data on it, describes being shocked to find that his mind, which he had assumed to be free, would routinely make exactly the same association to a word as on a previous occasion. Moreover, when Galton examined seemingly free associations to common stimuli between people, he describes being “astonished at the sameness of our ideas” (1879, p. 158). Our imagination is nourished by representations, discourses, images and ideas that come through social interaction, through social media (reading, watching and playing) available in our sociocultural environment. Hence, imagination can be enabled and constrained by the uses of cultural resources that variously awaken, channel and enrich a person’s imagination. For example, experiencing a film entails entering into the alternative reality proposed by the script, the images and sound, and to place one’s trust in the unfolding narrative, to empathize with some of the characters or find personal resonance with some situations or emotional tones, and to allow oneself to be carried with, or guided through a series of fictional events, through which one’s emotions and empathies will be changed. A cultural, fictional experience is an experience of

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imagining, fully guided or channeled by a cultural element, which offers semiotic guidance in the very definite and ad-hoc created distal sphere of experience. In that sense, the cultural element creates a very specific zone of proximal development in which experiences are semiotically scaffolded (Vygotsky, 1971, 1994, 2004) – a transitional phenomenon (see Chapter 2; Winnicott, 2001; Zittoun, 2013a). Watching the Butterfly Effect (Bress & Gruber, 2004), a movie describing a young man who travels in time to try to undo some traumatic childhood events that determined the dramatic trajectories of three close friends, requires accepting the premises of the stories, that it is possible to travel through time, and to empathize enough with the main character to follow him in his attempt to correct the life trajectories of his friends, for whom he obviously feels guilty. Such a film also requires the audience to “feel-in” the sensual quality and emotional tone of various scenes, such as the smelly closeness of a shared university room, the kitsch of sorority membership, the tension created by an abusive parent, and so on. One might feel more or less convinced of the experience. After seeing such a film, it is possible to analyse it as a cultural artefact (e.g., how is it directed, written and produced?) or to question the personal experience it allowed (e.g., how do I feel about it? what would I have done? what does it remind me of?) (Tisseron, 2003). After having seen a film, one might even imagine alternative scenes endings, or consequences for the main fictional hypothesis. A cultural element is a strongly guided experience of imagining, but it might also open up a whole new range of further imagining. Doing so, it can also be further used as a symbolic resource, as means to contain or transform one’s personal experience (Tisseron, 2013; Zittoun, 2006; Zittoun & Gillespie, 2013). Imagination is one moment in the permanent exchanges of semiotic processes between the person and the environment, as much as breathing is one moment in the circulation of air, between being part of the world out there and a necessary part of the person. Similarly, what feed the imagination are meaning, images and narratives. Hence, the imagination of Sarah (discussed above) is nourished by social representations of womanhood, shared and partly implicit values related to marriage and passion, a recurrent theme in Victorian prudish and romantic literature, which highlight societal values (Shanley, 1993). Even seemingly non-social images or experiences of the world (e.g., lakes, mountains, sunsets etc.) are socially elaborated cultural images that nourish our imagination. An experience of the forest has some sensual, perceptive qualities (i.e., the smells, the whispers of the trees, the animals, shades of lights through the leaves, etc.); but such experiences are never “pure”. These experiences are also mediated by social meaning and values. The experience of the man who chooses to leave an easy life in town and is attracted by the “wilderness” of the forest (as built in collective narratives) (Krakauer, 1997), or by the painter who sees the forest as solitude (see for instance Munch’s etchings), or by the Yanomami Indian preparing a plant remedy are deeply different (Milliken & Albert, 1997). Beside the fact that these forests are objectively different ecosystems, what the forest means (i.e., the semiotic systems associated to it, the meaning fields to which

The loop of imagination  47

it belongs, etc.) is radically different. The categories that people use to read and understand the forest are different, and consequently the emotional and existential values differ. See for instance the changing meaning of the forest in the case of a small village (Chuengsatiansup, 1999), discussed in Zittoun (2012c), or the fascinating history of our relation to mountains written by Kirchner (1950), showing how mountains have shifted from being the domain of dragons, to obstacles, to challenges, to objects of beauty. Finally, not only is imagination nourished by general social meanings and values, these social meanings can also prevent, block and condemn paths of imagination (i.e., in contemporary society, imagining purchasing a consumer product is easy while less normative imaginations are sanctioned). First, it is clear that if some cultural elements are absent, then certain personal imaginations become more difficult. In a society where women are considered subordinate to men, and do not have the right to vote or hardly to work (as in many European societies at the beginning or the twentieth century and in Switzerland up to the 1970s), a whole range of imagination is prevented: few women will imagine becoming academics, politicians or artists, for instance, and few men will imagine a world in which they would have women as superiors or colleagues. Indeed, this is why repressive regimes try to control the circulation of books, films and social media (Bernal, 2006). Second, some specific imaginations might be seen as socially or morally inadequate; certain political, scientific or erotic imaginations might thus be condemned in a given social group. Censorship precisely aims at preventing some imaginations to be shared among groups of people (Coetzee, 1996). Third, the very fact of imagining is not tolerated in certain social defined situations: a teacher might convey to her students that it is inappropriate to share the imagined personal prolongation of a novel discussed in the classroom (Zittoun, 2014b; Zittoun & Grossen, 2012). Outcomes of imagining As proposed by Vygotsky (Vygotsky, 2004), imagination is the psychological process involved in creativity. As such, imagination can have various and sometimes important outcomes. On the one hand, the very process of imagining can change the person’s experiences, and in consequence, his or her relationship to the world. Imagining has short terms effects, for example, imagining something pleasant, imaging an act of violence, or imagining what a friend might say, could change one’s emotional state, or bring some pleasure (Oppenheim, 2012); anger might be reduced, one might feel “energized”, or a new perspective on the situation might come to mind (Pereira & Diriwächter, 2008, p. 175–176). This might in turn change the understanding a person has of a given situation. Imagining a solution to a concrete problem, such as how to store books or how to cook a specific dish, can lead to concrete courses of action and the actual creation of newness (i.e., design a bookshelf, a new recipe, etc.). The very fact of being able to imagine an alternative scenario might enrich a person’s experience, such as

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when inhabitants from Brazilian favelas who are engaged in artistic activities experience a transformation of their life conditions (Jovchelovitch & PriegoHernandez, 2013). Imagination can also lead to outcomes that are socially recognized as inventions, or, going even further, they can lead to societal change (Zittoun & Gillespie, 2015). In Chapter 7, for example, we will examine the role of imagination in the creation of utopian dreams (Elias, 2009) which can lead to social and political movements (Appadurai, 1996). Equally, nationalist movements, which shaped many geopolitical events in the twentieth century, are based upon a collective imagination of “the nation” (Anderson, 1993). Hence, at an individual level, on the longer term, imagining other courses of life, or possible holidays, might actually create bifurcations in a trajectory, by rendering new possible actions possible. At a more collective level, these imaginations change the state of the world: new meanings, objects or possible models of society will be created. The loop of imagining So far we have proposed a mid-range model to account for imagination – the idea of a loop. A loop occurs along a temporal sequence. If we admit that one person’s experience can uncouple from the here-and-now of shared experiences, then it appears that imagination can be triggered by some conditions which allow the person to engage in a distal experience. For imagining, the person uses a wide range of resources, some personal, some available in her social and cultural environment; and this loop might eventually end up, allowing the person to primarily experience again the here-and-now of proximal spheres of experiences. However, as we will argue further, because imagination demands a complex re-elaboration of diverse material, it can transform these proximal experiences, and hence have outcomes for the person’s life, and when shared, for a society. This sequence is depicted in Figure 3.2. Res

our ces

The loop of imagination

Outcomes

Triggers

Physical time

Figure 3.2  The sequence of the loop of imagination 

The loop of imagination  49

As a sequence taking place in time, imagination is always transforming one’s relation to reality. This first analysis allowed us to show the inherent social and cultural nature of imagination as individual psychic reality. Our argument is that, although imagination always brings about some change in one’s relation to the real-life, the amplitude of this change depends on many other aspects. In order to understand these variations, we now further refine the model by introducing a series of analytic tools.

The three-dimensions of imagination If imagination is a dynamic process that can be described as loop uncoupled and recoupled to ongoing activities, and if imagination might be about different things, in different spheres of experiences, where it might be mediated by more or less complex semiotic means, then it is important to give ourselves tools to describe these variations. For this, we expand the metaphor of the loop, to conceive that it takes place in a three-dimensional space – the space of imagining. As space, it can be seen as organized along three main dimensions. In what follows, we describe these dimensions. Our goal is, with these basic dimensions, to be able to account for the diversity of imagining we have identified so far. Dimension one: Temporal orientation The first and obvious dimension along which imagination can deploy is time (see Figure 3.3). From the here and now of the moment of imagining, the person can orient her imagining toward the past, or the future, or alternative presents. Hence, trying to re-experience one’s first day at school demands collecting memory traces of that day, yet also many other images or representations collected since that day; yet the imagination is oriented towards the past. In contrast, imagining where one will go on holidays, or the state of the world in 200 years, is about a time yet to come; and finally, imagining how nice it would be swimming in the lake rather than studying has no particular temporal property. These temporal dimensions,

Loop of imagination oriented towards the past (memory)

Temporal orientation Present Physical time

Figure 3.3  Dimension 1: Temporal orientation

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within the logic of the imagination, are not clearly distinct, for example, people imagine the future through experiences from the past (Schacter, Addis & Buckner, 2008). Of course, imagining is itself an activity located in time; and while a person imagines being in another time-space, time will actually have moved – so one never comes back to the same present that one left before imagining. Dimension two: Generalization Following the ideas of semiotic mediation and progressive hierarchical integration of semiotic means introduced in Chapter 1 (see also Valsiner, 2007a; Werner & Kaplan, 1963), imagination can utilize more or less concrete and specific or generalized and abstracted semiotic means (see Figure 3.4). A similar observation has been made by Freud on dreams: a child is likely to dream of strawberries after having been deprived of strawberries the night before, thus satisfying an unaccomplished desire imaginatively. The experience is simple, the strawberries refer to actual strawberries. An adult can, in contrast, dream of highly abstract matters, as when Freud reports one of his dreams where the core object was a slightly modified chemical formula (Freud, 1900/2001a). The same person can, as child, expect and imagine the next train passing, and as adult, imagine becoming a clinical psychologist combining the figure of a magician and an acrobat (Zittoun, 2007a). Dimension three: Plausibility The third dimension designates the relative “distance” to the paramount socially shared reality, or, plausibility (Figure 3.5). Hence, we suggest, it is not the same to imagine eating strawberries, than imagining eating unicorn pie: one is likely to be turned into real action (go the kitchen, open the fridge and eat a strawberry) while the other has no chance of realization or actualization in the paramount reality. The former is virtual and possible, the latter should remain unreal; yet both can bring satisfaction (it might be actually quite funny to imagine how one might eat pudding on the moon). Of course, these degrees of Generalization Loop of imagination about becoming a better person

Temporal orientation Present Physical time

Figure 3.4  Dimension 2: Generalization

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Generalization

Loop of imagination about implausible event (e.g., eating pudding on the moon)

Implausibility Temporal orientation Present Physical time

Figure 3.5  Dimension 3: Implausibility

unreality are relative. For example, the idea of going to the moon was initially very far from an actuality. The 1902 film, Le voyage dans la lune, imagined shooting people wearing top hats to the moon in a big gun. But by degrees the imagination of a voyage to the moon was brought closer into alignment with the demands of practical reality. Before the first landing of an object on the moon in 1959, or the first landing of a person on the moon in 1969, the plans were completely imaginary (in the sense of being thought about, visualized, and proceduralized without yet occurring) but simultaneously workable (as evident by the subsequent successes).

The culturally guided imagination The three-dimensions of the loop of imagination describe visually both the amplitude and directionality of the imagining. The model can also account for what nourishes imagination, the resources that enable the loop to expand, but also, that which constrains the looping. These centrifugal and centripetal forces can also be schematized as resources that are guiding and constraining. Our model allows regrouping many phenomena named differently (as seen in Chapter 2) as variations of imagination along three dimensions. Typically, remembering is imagination mainly oriented towards the past (Wagoner & Gillespie, 2014), a point also supported by recent neuroscientific research (Addis, Wong & Schacter, 2007). Counterfactual reasoning is oriented toward the past and is usually focused on quite concrete events, while personal life philosophies develop at a more generalized level. Anticipation, decision making and innovation involve imagination oriented toward the future, and can entail different levels of generalization. Daydreaming can be indifferently oriented in time, and is not bound by demands of plausibility, while decision making is generally rather plausible. Dreaming can vary widely on any dimension. Hence, notions developed over time typically designate specific variations of one central phenomenon. Saying this, we do not want to define types of imaginings; rather, we want to highlight the continuum between different aspects of the psychological life.

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Generalization Loop 1 Loop 2

Implausibility

Temporal orientation Present Physical time

Figure 3.6  Loops of imagination in a three-dimensional space

In Figure 3.6 two loops are represented. Loop one is oriented toward the future, it is not very general, and probably has some depth in terms of implausibility: it might be a person’s imagining of future holidays on an exotic island, while knowing it will not be affordable. Notice that the same cultural elements (such as touristic guides, websites, and hotel prices) can both serve as resources for developing this imagination and also for constraining it. For example, the author of this imagination might have nourished the imagination of travelling to India through watching relevant films, but, equally any such films can only ever portray a constrained image of what India could be to a tourist (Gillespie, 2007a). Loop two is oriented towards the past and is quite general: it could be an adult trying to identify the pattern of a friends’ behaviour through a series of past events. In that case, resources used could include childhood pictures. And again, such resources would serve to both enable and constrain the loop of imagination. The next chapter, Chapter 4, will explore in much more detail how cultural resources simultaneously enable and constrain imagination. The model of imagination as a loop within a three-dimensional space will be used to analyse diverse occurrences of daily imagining (Chapter 5), the variation of imagining in the lifecourse (Chapter 6), and imagination that can feed-forward into the creation of the social world (Chapter 7).

Agency and imagination Although imagining is always culturally guided and culturally constrained, it is also central to human agency. Without imagination, without the ability to conceive of non-existing (but potentially existing) alternatives to the present state of affairs, humans would be enslaved by their immediate situation. Human individuals are future oriented (Dewey, 1896). Although humans are not particularly accurate in their representations of the future (Wilson & Gilbert, 2005), they are, nonetheless, condemned to be guided by those representations of

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imagined futures. We will see this in subsequent chapters. For example, managing to get back to base camp with a serious wound entails imagining one’s future arrival (Chapter 5); setting up a business entails an imagination of future consumer demand (Chapter 6); and travelling to the moon entailed a rich pre-departure imagination of each detail of the voyage (Chapter 7). Humans’ future orientation is clearly evident in any community or joint activity. Indeed, even minimally, joint activity between two people requires a shared imagination of the future goal (Tomasello, Carpenter, Call & Behne, 2005; Leontiev, 1981). That is to say, any form of joint activity or collective action requires collective imagination; it requires the participants to share an imagination of an as yet non-existing future state. For example, opening a box with another person requires both parties to not only imagine the future state of the box (i.e., open), but for each party to imagine their own role in relation to the joint project (e.g., one person holds the box steady while the other person opens it with a knife). Human agency has been defined as acting independently of the immediate situation (Gillespie, 2012). We would like to take this definition further, and argue that agency entails acting on the basis of what does not, or does not yet, exist. If in the first sense, agency is to free oneself from a set of contingencies in the here-and-now of a given sphere of experience, agency, in the second sense, is the will to try and actualize an imagined possible future. Altogether, without imagination, without any vision of alternatives, the person’s environment would be bereft of possibility. A person without any imagination would, to paraphrase Köhler (1925), be trapped by the immediate environment, merely responding to this environment, rather than mastering the environment. In contrast, a person or community with the imagination of alternative states of affairs can begin to have agency vis-à-vis their environment. Note that in that sense, agency has a more restrictive definition than the ones that see in agency our basic capacity of making meaning out of situations (Oppenheim 2012, pp. xviii–xix). Perhaps the most extreme examples of the power of the imagination to unleash agency at both the individual and collective levels is the case of a prisoner’s resistance and of utopias (see Chapter 7). Prisoners, for example, have their freedom of movement and of interactions extremely reduced. Yet as mentioned above, it is through their mind-journeys that many of them have survived, as can be found in many testimonies. Moreover, it is through imaginary dialogues with distant and imagined others, that prisoners, such as Malcolm X (Gillespie, 2005b) or Vaclav Havel (Havel, 1988), developed new political visions which were strong enough to change the fate of whole countries. Equally, utopias, despite being defined by their lack of existence (or reality) can have very real outcomes, empowering people and whole nations to institute huge changes. Discussing the frontiers of utopian dreams, Marin (1993, p. 420) describes the place beyond the horizon of the known as ungovernable, and thus the wellspring of our liberty. That which is beyond the known opens up a space of possibility and imagination, which in turn, emboldens us. Thus, somewhat paradoxically, human agency exists because we can imagine that which does not yet exist.

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The status of the model of imagination as a loop The proposed model of imagination as a loop is a mid-range model. It aims to be mid-range between data and theory, that is, it aims to account for a diversity of specific empirical cases whilst also connecting to more general theoretical frameworks (Zittoun, 2012b). The rationale for such a model was formulated by Kurt Lewin in his attempt to propose an integrative dynamical psychology: The system of concepts capable of bringing together the different fields of psychology in an empirical manner would have to be rich and flexible enough to do justice to the enormous differences between the various events and organisms with which it must deal. It would therefore have to be oriented in two directions, namely, towards theoretical connectedness and toward concreteness. In other words, it would have to be equally suitable for the representation of general laws and of the characteristics of the individual case. (Lewin, 1936, p. 5) The process of developing such mid-range theories is neither simply inductive nor deductive, but rather abductive, that is, theoretical propositions are created so as to account for empirical cases, and these cases, in turn, become visible and readable through these new theoretical hypotheses (Burks, 1946; Marková, 2012; Peirce, 1958; Valsiner, 2012). Of course, these hypotheses rely on a certain number of contestable assumptions. The role of empirical facts is not to prove the theory, rather, empirical facts feed into the construction of theory, yet, the theoretical formulation necessarily goes beyond the those facts. The idea that models entail a degree of creation which goes beyond the immediately available facts might seem to violate the basic ideals of empirical science. However, this critique stems from a mirror theory of truth (Dewey, 1929; Rorty, 1981), the idea that theories are first and foremost meant to “map” or “mirror” empirical facts. Our epistemology, as outlined in Chapter 1, is grounded in pragmatism. This shifts the focus from the providence of a theory (i.e., methodological process and how the knowledge was obtained) to the consequences of a theory (i.e., what does it enable us to see? What does it enable us to do? Does it work?). Nobody criticizes Archimedes for coming up with the law of conservation while musing in the bath; his insight is not evaluated by its providence, but rather by its useful consequences in understanding and intervening in the world. The aim of the next three chapters is to explore the consequences of this triggerresource-outcome model. First, Chapter 4 will examine in greater detail the cultural resources that are used to construct the bricolage of imagination. Then Chapters 5, 6 and 7 will examine the model at different levels of analysis, with each chapter exploring specific case studies. Chapter 5 will examine the microgenetic sequence of imagination, that is, how the loop of imagination arises within specific action sequences. Chapter 6 will examine ontogenetic sequences of imagination, that is, how imagination arises in the life course, and also has consequences for the life

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course. Chapter 7 will examine the sociogenetic level, where we will consider how whole traditions of imagination come about and subsequently change the course of human history. In each case examined, and at each level of analysis, we hope to show that the processes identified in Chapter 2, together with basic idea of imagination as an uncoupling of experience from the immediate situation, and thus a “looping out,” is a productive frame for analysis. Altogether, we thus aim to show that, from our sociocultural perspective, imagination can be understood as core psychological process, which allows accounting for a variety of psychological phenomena on the one hand, as well as, on the other hand, for important sociocultural challenges.

Note 1 Hamburger & Hamburger grouped, edited and commented this epistolary romance in Contemplating adultery (Hamburger & Hamburger, 1991). The volume is made out of a series of chronological chapters built around large extracts of letters and retracing the growth and decline of the passion, and followed by an annex proposing seven full letters. These letters provide a window on an experience of imagination: the couple’s meeting and the adultery itself takes place only imaginatively, in each of the protagonist’s mind and through their letters. Although the couple never met, and the adultery was imagined, the consequences of discovery would have been very real.

Chapter 4

Resources for imagination

When we imagine – whether in daydreams, planning the future or remembering – there is a partial uncoupling of psychological experience from the immediate environment. In the moment of such imagination our experience is less guided by the environment and more guided by semiotic structures originating outside of the immediate environment (i.e., memories of personal experiences and cultural images and narratives). This uncoupling we have described as a “looping out” that unfolds along different dimensions, and which eventually returns to the immediate situation. In this chapter, we bracket aside the triggers of imagination and its consequences, and our focus is on the contents of imagination. Specifically, we ask, where do the contents of imagination come from? Typically imagination is assumed to be something individual, private and peculiar to the individual (as in cognitive or clinical approaches reviewed in Chapter 2). However, our sociocultural approach to imagination inverts this assumption: imagination is a semiotic process, and as such, it is enabled by culture. Socialization into a culture provides the individual with the cultural resources with which to dream, daydream, fantasize and explore possible futures. This is not to say that individual experience is not important. Individual experience provides a wellspring of images, sensations and memories that feeds the imagination. However, even individual experience is filtered through cultural meanings. In this chapter, then, we will grapple with the way in which culture and individual experience interweave in imagination. The present chapter will begin by reviewing a wide range of literature exploring how the social and cultural world nourishes imagination, before coming back to the more experiential bases for imagining. Our main entry her is that our sociocultural environment offers the many things that can be used for imagining. As such we can call them resources for imagining, as “things become resources [. . .] in the course of human action. [. . .] A resource, namely something that does not exist in itself but which comes into existence by enabling meaningful human activity” (Gillespie & Zittoun, 2010, p. 38). Whether the used resource expands, or constrains our experience, remains open. We will first show how societies set “imaginative horizons” beyond which it very difficult for its members to imagine. Then we will examine how people use social representations and cultural elements

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(such as stories, films and poems) as resources for imagining. We then focus on the role of other people and material objects in carrying and guiding streams of imagination. Finally, we return to individual experience, demonstrating how, out of the cultural basis of imagination, individual imaginative experiences emerge.

“Imaginative horizons”: Social and cultural guidance Imagining always takes place in a specific social space and historical time, the “paramount reality” (Chapter 1). This location in a given historical-cultural environment gives boundaries to what can be imagined. In the sixteenth century, when most Europeans believed that Earth was the centre of the universe (and believing otherwise was heresy) it was difficult for anyone to imagine either travelling to other planets or that there might be life on other planets. Imagining life on other planets became increasingly possible both with the idea of the heliocentric universe and advances in optics which enabled people to actually see other planets (e.g., Charles Burton’s observations of canals on Mars in the nineteenth century; see, Crossley, 2011). More recently appreciation of the age and size of the universe and the actuality of space travel have led to an explosion of new culturally and historically situated imaginations (i.e., science fiction films, UFOs, alien abductions, the role of aliens in building the pyramids, etc.; see, Geppert, 2012). The point is that imagination occurs within a culturally defined space of possibility; a Neolithic cave dweller could not have imagined space exploration as we do. The idea of the necessary limits of what can be imagined has been suggested by various authors (see for instance Byrne, 2007). This argument has been very interestingly developed by Crampanzano around the notion of “imaginative horizons” (Crapanzano, 2004). By horizon, he means something like a hinterland or an “arrière-pays” (Crapanzano, 2004, p. 15) – the “beyondness” of a specific symbolic universe, in which specific unrealities take place, and as such, which also specifically shape the present here and now: I am then particularly concerned with the paradoxical ways in which the irreality of the imaginary impresses the real on reality and the real of reality compels the irreality of the imaginary. These ways cannot be separated. They are in dialectical tension. They are like lovers so entangled in each other that any determination of a singular body – or soul – is almost arbitrary. (Crapanzano, 2004, p. 15) Crapanzano sees this imagination both as spatial and temporal; his exploration considers “various hinterlands: those of the future and the past, of hope and memory, of ecstasy and world-ending” (Crapanzano, 2004, p. 23), and examines how these hinterlands might be transformed and moved further. As an anthropologist, Crapanzano gives the beautiful example of a conversation between four Western Apaches: it is a short exchange about one participant’s brother, punctuated by much silence, and where not much else than the name of a few places

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is mentioned, before the four interlocutors abruptly come to an agreement about the brother’s deeds. In such a conversation, Crapanzano suggests, places have names that condensate complex situations and events, in which important events involving their ancestors took place, with their emotional and moral underpinnings. Simply mentioning these places in a conversation allows the participants to wander, in their minds, through these places, connected to ancestors’ deeds, and experience the complex sets of culturally shared meanings and emotions. Thus, with minimal talking, these Indians share: an intense form of daydreaming [. . .]: the evocative power of the place-name is greatest when [. . .] it is used as substitute for the story it anchors; for, then, speaking the name forces an interlocutor to relate directly to his or her personal concerns. Then you look “forward” into space, the Apache say, as you look “backward” in time. (Crapanzano, 2004, p. 23) Thus the imagination is a socially shared process, enabling us, through the guidance of complex semiotic constructs (i.e., place names with associated meanings), to connect the social and the personal, the past and the future, into the present. Imagination is thus a process by which the social and the personal are connected; it is an excursion that opens a field of bounded possibilities. The idea that the imagination links the individual and the social or cultural has also been emphasized in geography, albeit with more emphasis on space. For example the concept of the “geographic imagination”, developed in the 1970s, conceptualizes people’s placing of themselves in their social environment. The geographic imagination: enables the individual to recognize the role of space and place in his own biography, to relate to the spaces he sees around him, and to recognize how transactions between individuals and between organizations are affected by the space that separates them. It allows him to recognize the relationship which exists between him and his neighborhood, his territory, or, to use the language of the street gangs, his “turf.” It allows him to judge the relevance of events in other places (on other peoples’ “turf”) – to judge whether the march of communism in Vietnam, Thailand and Laos is or is not relevant to him wherever he is now. It allows him also to fashion and use space creatively and to appreciate the meaning of the spatial forms created by others. (Harvey, 2006, p. 212) A recurring idea is that imagination is normative: coming from society, it provides boundaries to the individual’s experience. Imagination is thus the invisible halo that delineates the portion of social and cultural reality which is relevant, and which provides semiotic guidance of people’s possible thoughts and actions. In this sense, imagination fixes the horizon of human possibilities. While Crapanzano’s

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analysis moves back and forth between specific cultural groups and their respective imaginations, trying to capture the evanescent idea that each culture creates horizons for the imagination, Harvey proposes the more formal project of capturing and translating geographic imaginations. Anthropologists like Arjun Appadurai (1996) and Benedict Anderson (1993) have put forward a different conceptualization of imagination, giving the concept explanatory power in contemporary discussions of globalization and nationalism. Their stance is that new technologies, especially new media, and increased human mobility, are transforming human imagination with societal consequences. Appadurai’s (1996) proposition is that with the increasing flows of information, (i.e., films, old media, new social media, etc.) people’s life horizon has changed. Instead of being bound, or trapped, within one life context, humans can now imagine diverse alternatives, with rich imagery provided by the multiple channels of media. That is to say, imagination has changed in the electronic age (McLuhan, 1964), specifically new technologies have changed the role and function of collective imaginaries in modern societies (Appadurai, 1996, pp. 5–11). More people than ever before seem to imagine routinely the possibility that they or their children will live and work in places other than where they were born: this is the wellspring of the increased rates of migration at every level of social, national and global life. Others are dragged into new settings, as the refugee camps of Thailand, Ethiopia, Tamil Nadu, and Palestine remind us. For these people, they move and must drag their imagination for new ways of living along with them. And then there are those who move in search of work, wealth and opportunity [. . .] But in every case, these diasporas bring the force of the imagination, as both memory and desire, in the lives of many ordinary people, into mythographies different from the disciplines of myths and ritual of the classic sort. The key difference is that these new mythographies are charters for new social projects, and not just a counterpoint to the certainties of daily life. (Appadurai, 1996, p. 6) Imagination is collectively produced on the basis of widely shared films, TV series, narratives and images. On the basis of these resources, so abundant in our digital age, people imagine alternative lives for themselves, they compare their actual lives to the imagined lives of others, and thus guide themselves into new personal and collective futures. According to Appadurai, previously few people where actively directing their lives on the basis of the imagination (i.e., priests, artists, elites and visionaries), while now everyone can lead a life supported by, or directed by imagination, itself nourished by our increasing access to resources for imagination. Bringing together these insights we arrive at one important idea: imagination is guided by society and individuals, but also, imagination guides society and individuals. Our collective space of imagination, the stage upon which individual imagination plays out, is a collective product that evolves in time, anchored in

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existing understandings and technological possibilities. While we can be confident that our imaginations are shaped by the horizon of our time, it is a horizon that we will only be able to see in hindsight, once it is transcended (Bruner, 1990), and, somewhat paradoxically, that breach of the horizon of our collective imagination will arrive as a leap of imagination. For instance, a distinctive imaginative horizon is clearly evident when we turn to the years before the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. Pavel is one of the participants to a longitudinal documentary, Studies of marriage, following six couples in Czech Republic for 25 years, from 1980 to 2005 (Třeštíkova, 2009; see also Chapter 6). Recalling the last 19 years of his life, Pavel summarizes his experiences before and after the end of communism in 1989: I don’t deliver sodas anymore which was my job back then [in 1986]. I’ve done quite a bit since then. For two years, I delivered coal around Prague. I walked about with a carrier. One of my nicest jobs. Then I went crazy and two years later I began carpet cleaning. I started a cleaning company at the end of the communist regime. Then I bought Ivanka a deep fryer and really liked the French fries it made so I decided to sell them to the public in the square on Otakarova Street. I put up a double axle trailer and sold fries from there. [. . .] At the time I came across a place on Stvanice, at the winter stadium and decided to put in a squash court but finally made it a billiards hall, a place people waiting for a bowling lane could play some pool. It ended up the other way around and today it’s billiards I make my living at. (Pavel, 1999, 19 years after the wedding, our emphasis; Třeštíkova, 2009) There is a strong change between Pavel’s professional activities during communism and after, both in the documentary that follows his activity through the year and in this report. During communism, it was clear that jobs were given by the State and not chosen; Pavel accepted and enjoyed his jobs of delivering soda and coal. The end of the communist regime radically changed the imaginative horizon, with individual initiative and ownership becoming central. Pavel, like many other men interviewed by Třeštíkova, could suddenly envision new opportunities and a wide range of future possible lives. The example of the deep-fat-fryer is emblematic here: not only did the revolution open Czech to consumer goods from the West, but it became a resource for going beyond the previous horizon of imagination and setting up a series of new business (see also the example of Stanislav, Chapter 6). The important point about the horizon of imagination being defined by a given society and culture is that it reveals the cultural basis of imagination. Imagination, no matter how personal or private, is framed within the meanings of a given society. The meanings circulating in society, in the form of ideas, images, narratives, and so on, are resources for imagination. The secondary point, which we take from Appadurai (1996) and Anderson (1993), is that the creation, circulation and sheer quantity of these resources for imagination is undergoing huge changes in our

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information age. The following sections “zoom in” on the various types of cultural resources which nourish and constrain imagination.

Social representations as semiotic resources for imagining The field of social representations research has been at the forefront of analysing the contents of culture as they circulate within contemporary societies. In his seminal work in 1961, Serge Moscovici defined social representations as follows: A social representation is an organized corpus of knowledge as well as one of the psychic activities that enables people to make the social and physical reality intelligible, they can be integrated within a group or in an everyday exchange relation, and which liberate the power of their imagination. (Moscovici, 1961, p. 27–28 our translation) Social representations research studies how people “turn the non-familiar into the familiar” (Moscovici, 2000b, p. 37), that is, how new meanings are assembled out of existing cultural resources in the processes of action and communication. It has been especially useful to study social communication around unfamiliar or emerging phenomena, such as the appearance of a minority group, a new illness or a new technology (Bangerter, 2008; Kalampalikis, 2010; Kalampalikis & Buschini, 2007). The strength of the approach lies partly in the dynamics it highlighted: on the one side, anchoring and objectification, which explain how specific groups ground and turn some unknown idea in something concrete and manageable; and on the other side, the different modes of diffusion of social representations (propaganda, diffusion, etc.) and their preferential channels. The conceptual power of the notion comes from the fact that it designates a combination of ideas, emotions, potential for actions, norms, etc.; its difficulty is its abstractness, which often brings authors to privilege one aspect over the other (Duveen, 2000; Marková, 2003; Moscovici, 2000a). In practice, the notion of social representation often leads to studies of how new scientific knowledge is appropriated and re-represented in common sense. Repeatedly social representations research demonstrates the power of the imagination, specifically how groups confronting unfamiliarity, a rupture in existing meanings, manage to re-construct their semiotic universes making the source of unfamiliarity communicable and actionable. For instance, the news of the first cloned sheep invited the media, and lay people, to develop over a couple of weeks a representation of first, a non-threatening and personalized animal (i.e., Dolly the sheep), and then, drawing on available science-fiction, a much more nightmarish representation of the mass-production of cloned sheep, and soon, humans (Einsiedel et al., 2002). In a search for meaning, narratives such as Frankenstein became resources for understanding (Bauer & Gaskell, 2002). However, despite imagination being central to social representations, it is a concept that has received little explicit discussion within that literature. There are

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three possible reasons for this. First, at a theoretical level, social representations designate semiotic streams diffused and diffracted in the social environment. Hence, the social representation of AIDS is not necessarily in anyone’s head, rather, it might be in the gesture of the person who hesitates to shake hands with a seropositive person, or in the headline of a newspaper. Second, at an empirical level, social representations designate the knowledge of the social, that is, of specific social groups, about a specific phenomenon, in certain circumstances. It is less often associated with individuals. In contrast, the imagination, despite as we argue being very cultural in its contents, tends to be studied at a more individual level. Third, the field of social representations research, possibly due to it being a response to attitude research, has tended more to focus on representations of what is rather than representations of what could be. In effect, studying the social representation of X brought authors to focus on the adequacy of the representation to X, not on the fact that the representation itself was mainly imaginary. In any case, our view is that social representations are precisely the sorts of things that can be used to nourish and give content to the imagination of both individuals and collectives. Social representations are particularly likely to become resources for imagination when individuals or groups experience a rupture, or when new knowledge about something unfamiliar is required. This is especially likely to occur when people face normative transitions (e.g., coming of age, becoming a parent or taking up a new role) (Wüthrich, 2011; Zittoun, 2004b), which were traditionally symbolically mediated by rituals such as rites of passage (Turner & Turner, 1978). It can also occur when people face less-normative, yet widely shared transitions (e.g., divorce, a tourism or migration) (Gillespie, Kadianiki, & O’Sullivan-Lago, 2012; Gillespie, 2006; Howarth, 2006). Social representations in effect offer under a semiotic form the available social knowledge on which people can draw when they themselves lack first-hand experience. In another longitudinal documentary following six adolescent for six years from their 12 to 18th birthday (Bakhti, 2010), young Rachel enters her teenager years curious for adventure, an interest she developed as a child for piloting or being a reporter, and eager to discover her femininity. Aged 14, she excitedly reports: “I’ve started to take an interest in the world of bad boys. Sometimes it scares me a bit to be involved in that world. I’m scared of things I didn’t used to be scared of. I’m discovering a new world”. (Rachel, 14, DVD2; Bakhti, 2010). Later we learn that this exciting world is that of a group of young people playing tough, petty delinquents going in and out of institutions, and who are recognized in the local media for the disturbances they cause – stories often emphasizing the immigrant background of these young men. Here, it seems, the “unfamiliarity” of especially exciting young men, was attractive to Rachel, who seemed to draw on various available representations to make sense of them as “bad boys” – a representation available in the media and in pop culture, through teenager magazine and video-clips, to which she soon also refers. In that case, then, we might say that the available social representation of the “bad boy” present in the media was used by Rachel both to make sense of these new acquaintances and their actions,

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but also, to develop an imagination out of her childhood daydreams, rendering this sphere of experience adventurous and thus enticing.

Cultural elements for imagining One of the most efficient means to feed and guide imagination are human artefacts that have been designed for that purpose, namely, cultural elements that support imaginary experiences, narratives from other times and places, images, sculptures designating distant gods or descriptions of the infinitely small or big. One of the earliest studies of such cultural elements focused, for example, on daytime stories played on radio stations in the 1930s and listened to by millions of American women (Herzog, 1941). Engaging with any cultural element for imagination demands the mobilization of personal memories and experiences, together with cultural knowledge, all guided by the semiotic properties of the cultural element itself: the sound of the melody, the moving colours and shapes of a film, the succession of words in time in a narrative, which all allow the new synthesis that is a cultural experience (Benson, 2001; Boesch, 2007; Hargreaves, MacDonald, & Miell, 2012; Lévi-Strauss, 1966; Persson, 2003; Ricoeur, 1978; Vygotsky, 1971; Zittoun, 2012c). As such, these cultural elements can become used as symbolic resources. In effect, this person is thus not simply having the cultural experience of watching that film or hearing that music, or even not solely of remembering it: she has that experience, or remembers it, in relation to something else, located in her social world or in her inner life. (Zittoun, 2007b, p. 343) Hence, cultural elements can be used a symbolic resource in acts of imagination, to imagine alternative identities, situations and possibilities. When a person has a cultural experience, through a cultural element (i.e., when it becomes a symbolic resource), then that experience leaves a trace in the individual. Regardless of whether the experience is explicitly remembered, whether it was internalized as part of the individual’s personal culture, assimilated into a new personal synthesis, or even forgotten, cultural experiences (like any experience) leaves a trace. Experiences become like sedimented layers on the basis of which imagination can draw. In other words, one very important source for feeding the loops of imagination are people’s past cultural experiences. This can be observed from childhood on. Many motives of children’s games, role play, drawing and narratives, are borrowed from stories they have been told or fictional images they have been exposed too. In their paradigmatic paper, Peggy Miller and her colleagues showed how two-year-old Kurt, preoccupied with the tale about a nasty Peter Rabbit, played out variations of the story through four weeks (Miller, Hoogstra, Mintz, Fung, & Williams, 1993). In their interesting research on children’s representation of God in Switzerland and Kazahstan,

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Pierre-Yves Brandt and his colleagues reproduce pictures in which children end up drawing god in the same way as portrayed in television series and comic books (Brandt, Danderova, & Fournier, 2010). Similarly, Frederic Cerchia demonstrates that children aged six who are asked to solve a difficult metaphorical task tend to draw on children’s books, TV series and folk tales to explain figurative expressions (Cerchia, 2009, 2011; Zittoun & Cerchia, 2013). Characters from children’s stories and television programmes also feature prominently in children’s imaginary companions (Gleason, Sebanc & Hartup, 2000; Watkins, 2000). The prevalence of cultural elements in children’s imagination has led to concerns about the negative effects of exposure to pop culture and especially new technologies and TV: is it not likely to “affect” imagination? Although the debates about the negative influence of films and TV are as old as these technologies (Zittoun, 2006 for a discussion), the question of their effects on imagination itself is more recent. In their 1994 review, Valkenburg and Van der Voort examine the effects of TV viewing on two aspects of imagination: daydreaming and creative imagination, in adult and children. With caution due to the variety of methodologies used, the prevalence of cross-sectional designs, and poor measures of both TV watching and daydreaming or imagination, Valkenburg and Van der Voort conclude that the literature tends to support a “stimulation” hypothesis: There is little doubt that TV encourages daydreaming via its role as information provider. Because in principle all experiences gained by people can be incorporated in daydreams, it is evident that the experiences learned during many hours spent watching TV can also induce daydreaming. (Valkenburg & van der Voort, 1994, p. 334) However, the authors distinguish daydreaming from “creative imagination”, which they define as “the ability to dissociate oneself from existing information, a reflective style of thinking, sustained effort, and the peace and quiet necessary to give a matter careful thought” (Valkenburg & van der Voort, 1994, p. 335). Their hypothesis is that TV encourages daydreaming yet has “adverse effects on information-processing habits [which] are responsible for TV’s reductive effect on creative imagination” (Valkenburg & van der Voort, 1994, p. 335). The answer to the question of whether the media impoverishes or enriches the imagination is more nuanced: it depends what images are seen, by whom, and under which circumstances. Mainly, researchers agree on the sort of spatial representations that games can develop in children (Gee, 2008). Yet there is also evidence that children need to be accompanied by an adult, to be able to share their emotional reactions to films and games, and to be supported in externalizing these reactions symbolically, not to become captive of these images (Tisseron, 2000, 2003, 2009, 2012, 2013; Tisseron & Stiegler, 2009). This being said, most qualitative studies of imagination in children and adults show the omnipresence of bits and pieces of the shared cultural fictional reservoir of cultural elements,

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adjusted to people’s needs and fancies, and transformed over time (e.g., Götz, Lemish, Aidman, & Moon, 2005). Cultural elements are used in all aspects of imagination, whether these are uncoupling of activities in the present, explorations of the future, or of the past. First, in their enquiry about daydreaming among University students, Pereira and Diriwächter report the testimony of a young woman imagining a prehistoric monster tearing her friends in pieces during a boring biology class, a reverie that she acknowledges as building on Jurassic Park (Pereira & Diriwächter, 2008, p. 170–171). On a more abstract level, thought experiments proposed by scientists and philosophers are also made possible through the use of fictional images available at their time (see Chapter 2). For example, Descartes (1641), in his Meditations, interrogates the nature of knowledge by imagining an omnipotent God who is deceiving him by orchestrating his experiences (Gillespie, 2006; McAllister, 2013), today, however, he might have made use of a film such as The Matrix (Wachowski & Wachowski, 1999). Equally, today, imaginations of the future are usually a bricolage comprising elements from science fiction narratives, films and video games; however, these are historically very recent cultural elements. Previously, imagination of the future was constructed using discourses of religion, prophecy, signs and premonitions. In contemporary society, in contrast, the role of cultural elements is even evident in small imaginations of the future, such as a pregnant woman using will-o-the-wisp to imagine her future child (Zittoun, 2004b), and such as tourists using films such as Seven Years in Tibet to imagine Ladakh before they travel there (Gillespie, 2006). The pervasive role of cultural elements in imagination is even evident in remembering. In their remarkable study of the transmission of the memory of Second World War in three generation of German families, Welzer, Moller and Tschuggall show how the memories of people who experienced the war, but especially of their children and grand-children, have been transformed through time. Among other things, imagination of the past is fed with images and representations from fiction: memories of heroic actions are mixed with scenes from Remarque’s novel (All quiet on the Western Front, Remarque, 1929/1996), and ellipses in narration are filled in with scenes from movies such as Schindler’s list (Spielberg, 1994) (Welzer, Moller & Tschuggnall, 2013). Similarly, Wagoner and Gillespie (2014) replicated Bartlett’s (1932/1995) classic sequential reproduction experiment, where participants were given an old and unfamiliar native American Indian story and asked to recall it at various time delays. They found that participants used contemporary Hollywood films, such as The Sixth Sense (Shyamalan, 1999) and The Others (Amenábar, 2001), to make sense of the unfamiliar narrative and thus reconstruct their own previous reading of the story. Thus, from daydreaming, to parallel realities, to imagining the future or remembering the past, cultural elements are powerful resources. The role of cultural elements in imagination, however, is not linear. There is no one-to-one correspondence. While there is certainly evidence to suggest that people who have had their imagination nourished by a rich range of cultural

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elements have diverse imaginary experiences (e.g., Spencer, 2001; Zittoun, 2014a), it is also possible to have a rich imagination in the absence of cultural elements. For example, it has been documented how prisoners in extreme conditions, often separated from many cultural elements, are able to maintain their psychological life through imagination (Levi, 1975/1995; see also the “Personal experiences” section below). The issue, as we will see, is not simply “how many” cultural elements one has absorbed, but rather, how these are used as resources.

The role of other people in imagination Other people can provide access to, give evaluative significance to, and participate in the construction and reconstruction of cultural resources and thus to imagination. Let us consider each of these points in turn. First, while we have been emphasizing the role of new media and technologies in circulating cultural resources, it has always been the case and it remains the case that much of our culture circulates and is reproduced in interactions with particular others. Significant others, such as family and friends, are gateways to vast cultural elements. For example, Rachel, the adolescent presented above, explains how it is with her girlfriends than they discuss and use images of women present in the media (Bakhti, 2010; Zittoun & de Saint-Laurent, 2015). Second, other people, particularly significant others, are important in steering the use of resources in the act of imagination. Significant others can provide legitimacy for certain resources while delegitimizing alternative resources (Zittoun, 2014b). Significant others can also provide motivation for pursuing imagined futures, such as the pride a child has in exceeding their parent’s expectations. Even at a more macro level, consider the collective effort of imagination that resulted in people walking in space and on the moon: these were motivated by national rivalry, and the need to be seen to be first (see Chapter 7). Third, at a deeper level, semiosis we maintain is social, and thus other people are always implied in any act of representation (Mead, 1922; Gillespie, 2010). Signs, Vygotsky argued, are internalizations of social interactions. The triadic relation of self-sign-world emerges out of the relation between self-other-world (Zittoun, Gillespie, Cornish & Psaltis, 2007). For instance, talking to another or talking to oneself both entail an internalized other, someone to whom the talk can be addressed. Given these ways in which other people are implicated in imagination, it is unsurprising to find that other people often become contained within imagination as well. Acts of imagination, from unstructured reveries to future plans, usually entail other people. This is most evident in narratives, the epitome of imagination. It is extremely rare to encounter a story with only one protagonist. And, in cases where this occurs, it is often that the lone protagonist dialogues with imaginary others (i.e., Dostoyevsky’s Notes From the Underground, 1864/1992) or with their past or future selves (i.e., Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, 1957/2009;

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and Bruner’s analysis of the fate of McCandless, Krakauer, 1997, in Bruner, 2003, pp. 78–79). The point is that voices of others permeate narratives (whether novels, films or stories told over dinner), and, likewise, the voices of other characters permeate the imagination of individuals. Consider the letters of Sarah Austin, populated with both her imagined suitor (Prince Hermann Pückler Muska) and the voices of society (her boring peers, and their potential disapproval of her fantasies). Equally, in the Studies of Marriage (Třeštíkova, 2009), the couples talk about their projects and plans in relation to other people – such as Pavel refurbishing the flat for his wife and family. The voices of others are common in play (Schwebel, Rosen & Singer, 1999) as well as in dreams and fantasies (Freud, 1900/2001a). They are evident in children’s imaginary companions (Taylor, 1999; Gleason, Sebanc & Hartup, 2000), and auditory hallucinations (Leudar & Thomas, 2000; Thomas, Bracken & Leudar, 2004). In short, the voices of others permeate the content of human imagination. This idea, that our psychological life is populated with the voices of others, has been central to research on dialogism (i.e., inner-alters discussed by Marková, (2006)) and the dialogical self (Hermans, 2002). Specifically, Hermans and Salgado (2010, p. 184) have recently examined “the role of imagination in the self”, concentrating on the imagination of others-in-self, or what rather appears as imagined others. They maintain that mind is like a society; it is an ongoing dialogue between I-positions, originating in ones’ socialization and present, past and future interaction with others. Hermans, Kempens and van Loon define the self “in terms of a dynamic multiplicity of relatively autonomous / positions in an imaginal landscape” (Hermans, Kempen & Van Loon, 1992, p. 28). The notion of “imaginal”, which is referred to Bakhtin (Clegg & Salgado, 2011; Salgado & Clegg, 2011) – precisely suggests an imaginary dialogue, or at least, an imaginary space within which a person moves. Yet unfortunately, although this theory has known many extensions over the years, little has been said about this “imaginal landscape”. However, more recent formulations of the theory explore its imaginary components. According to Hermans and Salgado (2010), imaginary dialogues play a central role in the daily lives of most people: interwoven with actual interactions, they constitute an essential part of our narrative construction of the world. There are many moments when we are outwardly silent, but find ourselves in a muted dialogue with our parents, critics, opponents, our consciences, our gods, the photograph of someone we miss, our reflection in the mirror or even a figure from a movie or a dream (Hermans & Salgado, 2010, p. 185). They also suggest that such imagined others can extend to (a) purely imaginary figures created in dreams and fantasies; (b) media figures with whom the individual engages in imaginary interactions; and (c) imaginary replicas of lovers, parents, friends who are treated as if they were really present. (Hermans & Salgado, 2010, p. 185)

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And in turn, real people inside oneself can be de-realized, or imagined, and thus become consider as “inside” oneself (in one’s heart, mind, etc.) or “out there” as impressive or important figures. However, the “entification” of inner-alters requires caution (Jasper, Moore, Whittaker & Gillespie, 2011). The lines between self and other, ego and alter, within the imagination are blurred and overlapping; even one’s enemy, when one imagines a negative outcome for them, is part of oneself. Thus, at the level of the dialogical self or the dialogical imagination, disentangling the voices is complex. In this vein, Barresi (2012) is more interested in accounting for dialogical processes than entities, and thus he emphasizes that imagination is the movement between positions: “Indeed, it is imagination that makes possible reflection upon distinct, relatively stable I-positions from different times and forms new, temporally extended meta-positions and eventually narrative meta-positions out of them” (Barresi, 2012, p. 50). Similarly, when tourists frame their own adventures through the lens of popular films (Gillespie, 2007a), then self becomes other, and thus the boundaries between the voice of self and other is far from distinct. Certainly, imagination is often dialogical in the sense of being multi-voiced, but disentangling that play of voices can be difficult (Gillespie & Cornish, 2010). Nevertheless, what remains evident is that the movement and tensions, or dialogue, between voices is an important dynamic in imagination. More generally, it might be our capacity to imagine the perspective of others that is central to our understanding of ourselves, our independence from others, and also our ethical being (Lévinas, 1991/1998; Mead, 1934). To objectify the Other, to treat the other as an “It” invariably results in an impoverished realization of oneself (Buber, 1958). In such a dialogical stance, self cannot be thought of, or conceived of, except in a relation with an Other. Being, and thinking dialogically, is having the exigency to take in account the unicity of that other as a person. Imagination allows us to see the other and adopt the perspective of that other, with us or in us (Marková, 2003, 2006, 2013).

Past personal experiences Imagination is also directly nourished by our experiences of the world, from early preverbal traces of experiences, to complex memories of relationships, situations and actions. Typically, imagining being on the beach rather than in one’s office, imagining the taste of the dinner before starting to cook, or imagining the joy of a friend receiving a gift one will be offering, is based on memories of similar experiences in the past. More fundamentally, imagining flying elephants demands memories of standard elephants, and so on. The preponderance of knowledge and memories in imagining has dominated theories of imagination, as seen in Chapter 2, and it reinforces the idea that imagination is reproductive, that it is simply the noncreative reverberations or traces of prior experience. Here, our point is that personal experiences are one of the many components of imagining – perhaps the most embodied, affective basis of representing; yet, as

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we have suggested so far, it is only one of the many components of imagining. Also it is important to keep in mind that there is little “pure” personal experience; all of our experience of the world is already culturally defined and shaped, even, for example, our very embodied and seemingly personal experience of food (Nelson, 2007; Valsiner, 1997, 2014; Zlatev, Racine, Sinha, & Itkonen, 2008). This being said, of course, imagination is in some cases mainly based on various memories and personal experiences. For instance, in their microgenetic analysis of daydreaming, Pereira and Diriwächter (2008) asked students to think aloud while exposed to a repetitive task (observing moving lines on a computer screen). Here is what one participant said: Green and some colour and can’t quite describe, tan-orangey, white kind of thing . . . whatever. There’s a lot of writing on this desk. I haven’t written on a desk since I was like, in the 6th grade. It’s so annoying to me that people, like, put their gum under their desk. And then it ends up sticking on my leg and then I got random different colour all over my jeans throughout the day just because of all the different desks I used to go to. (Pereira & Diriwächter, 2008, p. 173, emphasis original) In this sequence, the monotonous task leads the person to notice the writings on the table, which, according to the authors, function as trigger to the daydream (see Chapter 3, discussion of triggers). The daydream starts with a personal memory of writing on desks, the consideration of desks then draws on things under the desk, and gum, which is unpleasant. The colours of the screen seem to resonate with the diverse colours of gum, first under the desks and then on the participants’ jeans. The emotional tone of unpleasantness is pervasive. The authors’ point is that the microgenesis of daydreaming entails such transformations and new synthesis, constituting a general and consistent Gestalt. In that case, then, it is a series of personal experiences, as well as their associated emotional contents, yet also, their inherent social values, which is used as a resource for assembling the loop of imagination. Personal experiences can also be used as resources for imagining in much more dramatic situations, where access to other resources is far most constrained. For example, many survivors of longtime imprisonment in isolation or concentration camps report the importance of their ability to travel in mind, back to their homes or past lives, which then become independent spheres of experiences (Bouska & Pinerova, 2009). Among others, Uruguayan playwright Mauricio Rosencif, who spent more than twelve years in a small military cell, reports that he survived Dreaming. Imagination. Taking long walks with my daughter. Sometimes  .  .  .  I’d stretch myself for a sunbath on the beach . . .  I’d get hot and get off to get a nice, cold drink, then the problem became hiding the bottle, because the cell was searched daily . . . Hiding objects I acquired in my fantasy became quite a chore. (Weschler, 1989, quoted in Singer & Singer, 1992, p. 287).

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Using memories for imagining can also transform the memories. Research suggests that the relation between imagination and memory is reciprocal, as memory is an active process of construction (Bartlett, 1932/1995; Draaisma, 2004; Miller et al., 1993; Nelson, 1992, 1993, 2003; Perelberg, 2007; Reese, 2009). Memories, and especially autobiographic memories, depend on the person’s capacity to represent the events at the moment at which they happened. Early memories, or first childhood memories, differ if the events have been experienced before or after the child mastered language, with various aspects of language allowing changes of perspectives. These memories, however, are then transformed as they are subsequently recalled or narrated, with others or alone, through uses of various media such as language, drawings, or maybe supported by photographs. Freeman (2007, p. 139) thus suggests that telling one’s story is a process of narrative imagination, which demands selection and creation, and which is fed by all the “’second-hand’ sources as books, movies and other media – that are at once highly influential in shaping the process of autobiographical understanding but of which one may remain largely unaware.” Finally, as mentioned above, Welzer, Moller and Tschuggnall (2013) collaborators have shown how, over time, personal memories become mixed up with common narratives or fiction. Hence, as there is no “pure” (i.e., non-cultural) awareness of experience, there is no such a thing as a “pure” memory of one’s past – with the exception of traumatic events which seem “marked” in one’s psyche, beyond words (Tisseron, 2007; Zajde, 2010) – memory is always already reinvention of one’s past. One step further and more paradoxically, Adam Philips suggests that our lives are as much made of the memories of our experiences, than of the memory of our unlived imaginary lives (Phillips, 2013). That is to say, what nourishes the imagination is not only our past experiences, but our past imagination about those experiences.

Material objects for imagining In the tale of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, an important moment is the discovery of a magic oil lamp. When he is in trouble, Ali Baba can rub the oil lamp, and a powerful genie comes out of the lamp to help him. This story exemplifies the great power that objects can have to trigger, support and orient our imagination. By objects, we mean material entities, whether found in nature or created by humans, that have various affordances (Costall, 2014; Gibson, 1986), and which do not have as primary function to convey meaning under a semiotic form (although most do indeed convey meaning because of their insertion in human activities). Objects can afford imagination in various ways, directing it towards the past, the future or alternative presents. Objects that have a mnemonic function typically support imagination of the past, whether it is a stone brought back from holidays (Tisseron, 1999), a rock brought back from a mining accident (Gillespie & Zittoun, 2016), or national memorials (Edkins, 2003; Zittoun, 2004c). More interestingly, objects can also be used to feed imagination of alternative lives and the future: as mentioned above, Pavel could imagine a possible future selling fries

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with the help of his wife’s new deep-fat-fryer, and Stanislav started to imagine the world beyond its socialist and then terrestrial limits after having built a telescope in his garden (see Chapter 6). Also, accompanying their letter exchange, Sarah Austin and Prince Hermann Pückler exchange objects that play an important role in feeding their imaginary adultery. Sarah Austin thus writes: A thousand thanks for the lock of hair and for having it enclosed in such a manner that my lips can touch it. I am however afraid to wear the medallion [. . .] I must have the hair put into some concealed place where I may wear it invisible to all eyes but mine [. . .] Have you received my old shoe? (Hamburger & Hamburger, 1991, p. 242) Here, the objects have a very special function because Sarah and the Prince have never actually met. Not only do the objects serve to represent and remind, but, as if by a law of participation (Lévy-Bruhl, 1926), the objects create a physical connection between the Sarah and the Prince. The objects, by virtue of their providence, participate in the relationship, channelling emotional energy. However, the objects have a materiality that renders them visible to others, and could make this relation be more real than necessary (what if Sarah’s husband or daughter found the lock of hair?). Not only objects, but also, more generally, our material environment can become part and resource for imagination. Dreams are very often located in some versions of people’s homes, childhood rooms, places once visited, now distorted. Conversely, places evoke nostalgia of past experiences (Schuetz, 1945b), or can become the location of brighter past, present or future (e.g., the Golden Age, Eldorado or Utopia). More generally, some places are made to support imagination of the past, such as archaeological museums, which cultivate the imagination of the past, houses of worship, which cultivate the imagination of higher powers, or cemeteries, which cultivate the imagination of the departed (Josephs, 1998). People travel to places which have been used in films and fiction, such as Dracula’s castle in Romania or the Cheers pub in Boston. These places afford imaginary experiences, enabling a more vivid participation in the original film of fantasy (Reijnders, 2011). In other words, objects and places have, in addition to their material properties and their affordance, the power to crystallize layers of meanings, some which are more personal and symbolic, others which refer to more general social representations and values. In that sense, objects can become the materialization of further symbolic and semiotic resources.

The dialogicality of imagining For a sociocultural perspective, imagination is, far from being simply an individual cognitive or emotional process, a complex dialogical phenomenon. The idea of dialogicality in psychology usually refers to the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, itself

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developing his reflection on the basis of work of fiction (Grossen & Salazar Orvig, 2011; Linell, 2009; Zittoun, 2013a). Interestingly, Michael Holquist, the editor of the English collection of Bakhtin’s essays, called the volume The dialogical imagination (Bakhtin, 1982). The idea of dialogical imagination refers to the infinite polylogue or heteroglossia within novels, and to the dynamics followed by the reader who engages with that text. The dialogical imagination can thus been said to designate the movement by which the here and now, the position of the reader, guided by the text, its richness and declinations, its undertones and social and cultural echoes, enters in vicarious dialogue with other people, places, groups, periods or possible worlds. From this perspective, then, the dialogical imagination guided by arts is one displacement through many voices and perspectives, bringing to experience their contradictions and tensions (see also Benson, 2001). On this basis, and to summarize this chapter, imagination itself appears as fundamentally dialogical. It is a layering up of social representations, images from modern media, the voices of others, and personal meanings. The result is a polysemic heterogeneous field of meaning, within which the space of imagination is circumscribed. Any movement of imagining carves a trajectory through this space of possibility, drawing on a range of possible resources. The simplest imagining of the past – a nice holiday, for instance – usually demands the memory of an object and a past experience, themselves shared with others, and within a certain set of values and coloration. The objects we like or dislike are attached to other people, places and experiences. Imagining what we will do tomorrow or next year is guided by what the social world allows us to think, considering the perspectives of the other people we care for or that will constrain us, and is built up using our knowledge of places and situations. In that sense, imagination as loop demands complex recombination and creation drawing on a wide range of resources. Some of these resources allow expanding our imagining (e.g., when we free associate with friends over possible futures) and other resources constrain our imagining (e.g., when we use the news about regional conflicts to reduce the range of possible holidays). Hence, imagination is a loop, built though a complex dialogical fabric, some resources come to shape it as a centripetal force, while other resources shape it as a centrifugal force. As we have seen in Chapter 3, imaginings stem from an uncoupling of our relation to immediate situations, and can vary on three-dimensions – time, generalization and plausibility. One implication of this is that, although many imaginings are quite mundane, imagination can also radically contravene what is the case or what is acceptable. More fundamentally, because of its nature and the dynamics that constitute it, the distal experience generated by imagining obeys quite different laws than our everyday experience. In the paramount reality (see Chapter 1) time moves inexorably forward, step-by-step, and places are kept separate by material reality, such as oceans, mountains and walls. In people’s proximal spheres of experiences, events only

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intersect when they occupy the same point in space and time. However, when imagining, resources from very diverse spheres of experiences can be used, and disparate times and places can be combined. The vertigo and newness that comes out of such recombination of times and places have been widely explored in fiction. There is a profitable sub-genre of films which tickle the imagination of audiences by creating linkages between disparate times and places. Examples include Back to the Future (Zemeckis, 1985), Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (Herek, 1989), The Time Travelers (Melchior, 1964), or more recently Inception (Nolan, 2010), Source Code (Jones, 2011) and Interstellar (Nolan, 2014), and some films contain particularly jarring re-combinations, such as the film Cowboys & Aliens (Favreau, 2011). At an individual level these dialogical re-combinations and creations can open up new ideas, such as texts, dishes, relations or life options. This dialogical imagination also allows people to create alternative dream worlds or possible lives, some of which will never become true, yet, these persistent fantasies can be a very real part of who people are. The collective and repeated imagination can, over time, lead to the creation of stable distal experiences (see Chapter 7). People can share their dreams and imaginings; when two, three or 10,000 people start to share their resources and new imaginations, these can become stabilized. Some imagining becomes shared and manufactured, such as new cars or a film depicting a flying man in a blue and red robe. Yet other imaginations, however, remain imaginary, but have an existence carried over beyond individual imagination, such as the unrealized dream for a free nation or an alternative political system. In the coming chapters, we will now examine how this dialogical imagination functions, and how this richness comes to create new realities, individual and collective. We will therefore examine the sequence of imagining – what triggers it, what resources it uses and to what outcomes it leads. Cultural resources, which nourish imagination, work variously to guide the loop of imagining, to limit it or to expand it. We will explore this at three scales. First, we will examine sequences of imagination at the level of everyday practices (Chapter 5), where the multiple materials of imagining guides specific actions or feelings; at this microgenetic scale, we can observe the complex threading of semiotic work, and yet, these small scale processes, within one specific sphere of experience, can open up alternative, or initiate major life bifurcations. We then examine imagination at the scale of the lifecourse (Chapter 6). Here, we retrace the development of imagination, as well as how imagining shapes individual life trajectories. Here, it is thus at an ontogenetic level that we see how people leave and create new spheres of experience, through the interplay of the many resources the evolving paramount reality provides them with. Finally, we examine how people start to share their imaginings and externalization of their work of imagination, and how these feed into many more people’s imagining (Chapter 7). At this sociogenetic level, it is the paramount reality itself that is progressively transformed through cultural traditions of imagination.

Chapter 5

Imagination in situated activities

We have argued that imagination is pervasive, that it is evident in many domains and at the levels of individual action, life trajectories and cultural development. The model of imagination, which we proposed in Chapter 3, aims to facilitate the analysis of imagination across these diverse domains and levels. The present chapter is the first of three empirical chapters that will use the model. Here, our focus will be on the microgenetic level of individual situated action. Examining people in situations of classroom discussion, cooking, exercising sports or music, or solving scientific tasks, we can see how their activity engages loops of imagination. The chapter begins with elementary forms of imagining in infants. We then show that in childhood, imagination is not only important during play, but also in school activities. We then explore daily adult experiences such as work, sports and cooking. We finally examine more unusual cases of imagination, in science and life-threatening situations. In each instance, we show how and why there is an uncoupling from the ongoing activity, what resources are used for imagining, and what the outcomes are. We also show how it expands on the dimensions we have identified in Chapter 3: temporal direction, generality and plausibility. We show how the resources used constrain and enable the loop of imagination, and how these loops of imagination are actualized through processes of displacement, condensation and figuration. Across the diverse examples considered, at this microgenetic scale, we demonstrate the diversity of the loops of imagination. Yet, despite this diversity, all the instances of imagination considered can and do change the course of experiences, actions and events, and also, at times, trigger even more imagination, through recursive looping.

Imagination in the crib Studies on infants and little children show varieties of elementary forms of imagination in many basic and fundamental situations. Colwyn Trevarthen (2012a, 2012b; Trevarthen & Aitken, 2001), for instance, has led decades of studies on young infants, often neonates, and their mother or father. He has shown patterns of elementary dialogue based on mutual adjustment of rhythm and tone, that is

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melody, and he argues that “the voice is revealed to be the first bridge between imaginative and inventive minds” (Trevarthen, 2012c, p. 3). Specifically, he shows how infants produce an externalization, such as a vocalization or a movement; how the infant expects an adult to reply by imitating it, usually with some variation; and how the child will respond by imitating that response, again with some more variation. The quality of the similarities and differences can be shown by measures of rhythm, melodies, pitch and intensity, and sometimes modality (a song melody can be responded to by a movement of the body); a variation allows for the melodic pattern to be the same, yet with some improvization. For Trevarthen and others, these findings imply that some basic intersubjectivity, emotional and intentional, is at the basis of the construction of the person. Or, put another way, humans are fundamentally dialogical. For us, it is interesting to emphasize that Trevarthen (2009, p. 513) views these forms of communication as being “between imagination and memory”. In effect, the infant uses traces of very recent experiences, such as the adult’s expression, for a very elementary form of imagination, which anticipates the adult’s response. We could say that the child uses the material proposed and then transforms it, through displacement (from one semiotic mode to another, or from one pitch to another), which is then validated by others. Trevarthen thus presents the case of a small blind child who is communicating, responding and anticipating her mother’s vocal sequences, by a movement of her hand which is rhythmically and melodically totally in tune (Trevarthen, 2008). Even more, the child eventually anticipates the mother’s next intervention by a third of second, showing that she can proto-imagine what will come, using her recent experience (Trevarthen, 2008, 2012b, 2012c). Hence, the child takes a minimal distance from immediate experience, and she can use her very last experience to construct an immediate future event; such anticipative imagination is probably a minimal case of imagination. It is as if the infant’s immediate experience (of the mother’s vocalization) includes an apperception of the imminent future experience. That is to say, the infant is slightly oriented toward the future; this does not imply generalization, and is not going far in terms of plausibility. The outcome of this anticipation is the maintenance of a relation with an adult, a sharing of the immediate experience and a deepening of this mutual emotional adjustment. We propose to consider this as a liminal case of imagination. In Figure 5.1, we represent how the child in the crib engages in a very minimal loop of imagination. Indeed, the loop is at the border between being an apperception of the present leading to an immediate future within a proximal experience, and an actual loop of imagining towards an upcoming distal future. Even then it very soon alternates into a present situation, and a next anticipation. Hence it is a liminal case of braided imagination. This example suggests that early attunement is actually the locus of a very elementary form of imagination, which then slowly grows in complexity through diverse situations in everyday situations. As the infant becomes a child, then the loop of imagination expands, reaching out further beyond the immediate situation. Incrementally, fictitious scenarios, elaborate role play and humor become possible (Nelson, 2006; Reddy, 2008). In proportion to this development, the length of the

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Generalization

Implausibility

Minimal loop Temporal orientation Present Physical time

Figure 5.1  Imagination in the crib

sequences of imagination and the amount of past and future that is looped into the imagination expands.

Imagination at school School, as social setting in which children will spend many years of their lives, offers an important sphere of experience for imagining. Imagination occurs not only in role play, story-telling, creative activities at school, or even, for the bored child looking out of the window. Rather, imagination can take place in any taskbased activity, oriented toward the mastery of knowledge and skills valorized by the educational system. Many studies currently explore conditions that allow for children to become active of their learning, for instance by encouraging them to talk, offering them techniques such as “exploratory talk” to support debating, to do activities oriented toward the life out of school, and so on (Mercer & Littleton, 2007; Mercer, Wegerif, & Dawes, 1999; Muller Mirza & Perret-Clermont, 2009; Wegerif & Dawes, 2004). The following sequence collected by Antti Rajala (2014) takes place in Finland in a third-grade class, as part of the “learning bridges” programme, which tries to connect pupils’ school sphere of experience with spheres outside of school (Kumpulainen et al., 2009). The class has just come back from a field trip to a nearby forest, and the children were asked to take pictures and prepare research questions. In the classroom, the children discuss about this experience, and Maija introduces a new question. The teacher allows the students to engage in the question and gives the role of chair to Maija, who thus moderates the following discussion: Maija:

But tell me that where have the stones come from?

Teacher: You said where have the stones come from? Maija: Yea

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Jimi:

I have an answer

Ope: Does someone want to (pause) Do we- let’s see do we have here the question where have stones come from Kimmo: I think they have comeTeemu:

I think they have come from meteors

Teacher: Scribe [a student] will you write down the question where have stones come from? We got a new question (pause) well yes Maija is now the chair regarding this question Jimi:

Teacher I just had the floor

Maija: Pihla Pihla:

Stones have developed from sand

Joku:

I didn’t understand

Teacher: Uh huh does someone want to tell more about this Kimmo: I want to comment on that Maija: Can I say (pause) that if they have developed from sand, so you mean that stones grow Kimmo: No Ope:

Give the floor

Kimmo:  I think that they have come that there has been some rocks and then these rocks have perhaps sometime collapsed (Teemu: So where have rocks developed from) then it is possible that there have been (Maija: Where) well there is the rock and yes it can have collapsed Maija:

Where have the rocks developed then

Ope:

Maija is the chair, Maija can speak freely and give the floor to others

Kimmo: Well they have developed from earth Maija:

Um (pause) Saara

Saara: But it is. . .the question that how has the stones developed that how have it become such hard and that is exactly the question that if rock is stone, I mean sand, that how has it become as it is Kimmo:  It has developed over the years Saara:

How has it developed? From Rajala (2014, Excerpt 1 8 Feb, 2008, emphasis added)

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In this sequence, one child asks a question that disrupts the normal course of the activity on stones; in the first turn, Maija asks where stone have come from. The teacher, following the guidance of the programme on exploratory talk, opens a space for discussion, where the moderation is now done by the child. In other words, the proximal sphere of experience, framed as school activity, has now changed definition: the children have switched to another modality of discussion where they are allowed to guide their own exploration. Then the children propose alternative responses: stones have come “from meteors” (Teemu); they have come “from sand” (Pihla); they come from bigger rocks that broke down (“these rocks have perhaps sometime collapsed”, Kimmo); and, they have developed out of the earth (also Kimmo). Interestingly, one could think that the children have to draw on whatever knowledge they have about stones. We could make the hypothesis that the first answer from Teemu, stones from meteors, is using a symbolic resource: maybe he has seen a movie of falling meteors. Pihla draws on her knowledge about other natural things, to suggest, by displacement, that stones grow – but his proposition does not hold long when questioned. Kimmo explores another displacement using his knowledge on how you can produce something small by breaking something big; he then proposes another answer, probably drawing on more general intuition about the evolution of the planet: it comes from the earth and took a long time to be produced. In that sense, this loop of imagination that is produced and sustained by the group results in some new ideas, not present in the initial resources and answers (Vygotski, 2011b). In this everyday instance of imagination at school, the children take turns in engaging in looping sequences, so as to generate a possible answer to the question of where stones come from (see Figure 5.2). They use their past experiences, their domain specific knowledge, symbolic resources, and also each other’s interventions to build their answers using more or less concrete (to break down something big) or general reasoning (the result of a long time evolution). Finally, their answers vary according to their degree of plausibility. The children are somehow regulating each other’s answer, the last loop being at the same time quite general and quite plausible. Here the outcome of the looping is Kimmo’s new understanding of Generalization

Loops about the origin of stones Temporal orientation Present Physical time

Figure 5.2  Imagination in the classroom

Implausibility

Imagination in situated activities  79

some natural principle, and perhaps, his contribution to the shared knowledge in the classroom. This idea, we suggest, came out through imagination (Vygotski, 2011b), made in a sphere of experience defined as exploratory by the activity of the teacher and students, This second example of everyday imagination shows that even reasoning in natural science can be fed and supported by imagination. That is to say, imagination is not against reasoning, it is part of it. What distinguishes the use of imagination in science is the plausibility dimension, that is, combining imagination with logic, experience and/or testing. But, without a leap of imagination which goes beyond current knowledge, there would, arguably, be nothing new to test (see also Vaihinger, 1924) – as we will also see further below.

Imagination in cooking Most daily activities demand imagination, not only in children’s lives, also in adults – from decorating one’s flat to deciding what to wear, from taking care of one’s garden to sorting out photo albums. All of them are heavily constrained – by social norms, material limitation, and so on and so forth – but all of them demand some temporary uncoupling from one’s ongoing activity, anticipating the future and drawing on past experiences and resources. One of the most routine domains in which imagination occurs is cooking. Cooking can be done in many different ways; in a more amateur or expert way; it is limited by time and available ingredients; it can be more or less exploratory, that is, more or less constrained by striving to obtain a predefined outcome; and, finally, it also varies in terms of the skills and knowledge of the chef. It is one thing to state that one’s batter is too heavy, and another to know how to lighten it; and it is different to know that whipped egg whites can be used to lighten a batter, but it is another thing to have the skill to successfully whip the egg whites and fold them into the batter. Knowledge extends from knowing how to treat ingredients to the sociocultural norms of what is expected. All cooking entails a degree of imagination, a leap out of an existing situation with a predefined set of uncooked ingredients, to a future possibility of a meal. Cooking demands imagination at many steps: to find and choose products to be used, to combine them, to reach a certain result, and to imagine other eater’s reactions. Hence cooking is a complex process entailing using products, imagining possible outcomes, anticipating tastes and smells, and using cooking books, social knowledge and sociocultural norms as cultural resources to guide one’s actions. Greco Morasso and Zittoun (2014) examined the cooking of migrant women in London, finding it to be a microcosm of the migrant women’s experience of migration, adaptation and transformation. They found that the women transformed their cooking habits as they learned about their surroundings and the shops in which they can buy products relevant for their home-country recipes; they learned to use different products to simulate tastes; they learned to make home-country recipes more acceptable for their new local acquaintances; they also transformed recipes

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as they discovered new ways of cooking. Cooking was also guided by imagination of the homeland and the wish to maintain and link to the past, and by projects of integration in the new environment and social recognition. On a more microgenetic level, cooking is an activity that demands braided imagination, a constant coupling and uncoupling, where the outcomes of one’s imagination feed-back and feed-forward upon one’s immediate practice. See for instance this short narration made by a chef, in a research study on creativity in cooking (Horng & Hu, 2008): Artists present their ideas through music or paintings, and we do it with our cuisine. We are more creative. I was writing to a girl and my tears dropped onto the letter. So, I made a teardrop-shaped choux pastry as a present for her. The ingredients included cheese, coco powder, sugar powder. I put all my affection into the product; I made the story of my love for her real. Like Dewey said, emotions increase the depth of design. That helps my work come to life. (Horng & Hu, 2008, p. 229) The excerpt can be read at two levels: at one level, the cook is here very reflexive on his creative process, both seeing cooking as a form of externalization, a semiotic system, both enabling and guiding his expression, and identifying the role of emotion, through a quote from Dewey. At a second level, we see here how a choux pastry came to be created. The cook was writing a love letter, and in this sphere of experience, his imagination of the recipient was emotionally intense. As represented in Figure 5.3, the looping experience – the idea related to the girl in the past, and in the future as recipient – was brought into another sphere of experience through displacement, namely, that of cooking. The cook’s expertise allowed him to go through the choice of products whose properties (texture, taste, mnemonic or cultural association) he has sufficiently mastered, so that they become a means through which he can express his feelings. His imagination of his beloved one creates the overarching guidance for the more local series of loops of imagination with anticipated results (e.g., mixture of sugar and cocoa should be nice!) and thus the imaged and

Generalization Imagination of beloved Imagination in cooking acts

Implausibility

Temporal orientation Present Physical time

Figure 5.3  Imagination in cooking

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then created product. Thus, very clearly, we have the trigger (an emotional letter), the pulling in of resources into a loop of imagination (cooking skills and knowledge) with a specific outcome, a choux pastry. The pastry condensates these feelings and experiences, and present them in a figurative, socially acceptable way. Cooking, whether done on a daily basis at home or in famous kitchen by renowned chefs, entails a constant dialogue between norms, convention and technical knowledge, the affordances of available products, and imagination of what is possible. From fashion for occidental-adjusted sushi to Heston Blumenthal’s (Yeomans, Chambers, Blumenthal & Blake, 2008) smoked salmon ice-cream, food allows, both for the cook and the eater, a largely unconstrained multi-sensory voyage of the imagination.

Imagination in sports As we have seen in Chapters 1 and 2, imagination is clearly an embodied experience. In the previous example we have shown that imagination is situated, partly material, and dialogical, as imagination is externalized and guided through the use of cooking ingredients, practices, and recipient expectations. In our present examination of imagination in sports, we want to show that imagination can also be a fundamentally embodied experience. Fabienne Gfeller (2014) filmed Aikido practitioners during their training hours. As a martial art, Aikido demands pairs to execute harmoniously body movements which are highly stylized fighting gestures. Each movement is initiated by an “attacking person”, the “tori”, and received and transformed by the “uke”. Gfeller used a technique inspired by the “work clinic” analyst Yves Clot (Clot, 2001; Clot & Kostulski, 2011), asking the actors to comment on video-recorded sequences of their practice. One of the interviewees, Alina, explains how she has been rehearsing various gestures with different partners. Aikido functions as complex semiotic system, where every figure of attack or defense has a specific name (in Japanese). How these gestures should be linked together and how they should be executed is strongly codified. However, the Aikidoka’s freedom is in how they combine these figures, how they temporarily change these rules, and how they sometimes create new ones. In the following comment on a sequence, Alina, a practitioner, explains how she tries to find variations within a constrained field of practice: Again this ude garami [an attack/defense movement] which is not an ude garami yonkyo nage – by the way it is interesting because it looks like the kotegaeshi at the end. It looks like a real ude garami yonkyo nage. Only the fact to come back up against the center this comes from ude hishi gi. You see. But it is not really ude hishi gi because you don’t grasp the kimono and it is not the same position. It is like bits and pieces from stuff that works in this and that situation, you can put them together, to create a technique. And this I don’t frankly think about it beforehand. (Gfeller, 2015, p. 69)

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You see, there I am really moving at 2 per hour [i.e.,2 km/ph], I stop in the middle of the movement, I (pause) I am searching, where I could go, how I could put my hand, and so on. (Gfeller, 2014, seminar assignment, p. 1) In his situation, aikido demands normally to be in dialogue with the constant movement of one’s own body and the body of the other. However, when Alina starts to slow down the movement, or practices them alone, she actually temporarily uncouples from the ongoing present when she perceived a rupture – a movement which is not harmonious enough, one of the implicit rules of the practice. She explains how she then uses as resources her knowledge of different movements identified in the semiotic system of Aikido (ude garami, ude garami yonkyo nage, kotegaeshi, etc.). Also, the second source nourishing her practice is the other practitioner with whom she is in dialogue-in-action; her action is a constant answer to the gestures of the other. In other words, the semiotic system of this specific dialogical exchange is that of Aikido, partly embodied, partly linguistic and symbolic. Alina’s margin of work is very constrained: the movement has to remain within the boundaries of the rules of Aikido. Because of this strongly constrained field, she creates a threshold for having the space for imagining: she deliberately slows the speed of practice (“2 per hour”). In that expanded space, she engages her mind and imagination to explore alternatives, what movement could or could not follow, and the looping is actualized, and has as outcome in further movements. Alina’s imagination thus draws on the past and is in the present and guides the immediate future; it is quite concrete with abstract resonances (i.e., specific gestures that have categorical names yet also more spiritual meaning); it is very close to what is really feasible; and as already said, it is heavily socially constrained (i.e., constrained by the partner in the interaction, and also by the tradition itself). The outcome of the imagining is the realization of a creative, yet, tradition based, movement. Interestingly, in this case, the pleasure and satisfaction of the practitioners comes from finding the possibility of this embodied imagination within the small space of improvization offered by the very constrained situation. Note that, later in the same interview, Alina uses another way to expand and nourish her embodied imagination, a metaphor: I like the story of the cat that turns around you and that sticks to your legs when it is hungry. I find that iriminage [a movement which entails rolling around the leg of a partner] is really this. You stick to, and yes, some people don’t like it. (Gfeller, 2015, p. 70) In this excerpt one can see how previous knowledge, either a personal memory or an image from a cultural element such as a film (she mentions “the story of”) of cats-turning-around-legs, is used here to reconceptualize the Aikido practice, opening it up to reconfiguration. Such imagination then facilitates improvization

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Generalization

Braided imagination

Implausibility

Temporal orientation Present Physical time

Figure 5.4  Braided imagination in aikido practice

of the next movements, especially when confronted to the resistance of others who “don’t like” this close contact. Activities such as training, performing and so on, in a given cultural system is not only about imitation and automatic training; also, there is specific room for the work of imagination which leads to a creative practice (Tateo, 2014). In the sequence of aikido practice, imagination is braided (Figure 5.4): in the course of the ongoing experience, people shortly uncouple from the dominant embodied exchange, to try an alternative movement using a deviation of the convention, or using a metaphor then displaced in a bodily movement. These looping sequences allow the aikidoka to move through plausible, yet slightly more generalized experiences than the actual exchange; these looping sequences, in turn, allow the interpersonal dance of aikido to be pursued with more harmony, and experience and mastery to be increased.

Imagination in music Another domain in which we can examine imagination is for instance the practice of professional musician, as one of the many instances of work (Billett, 2001; Billett & Pavlova, 2005; Clot, 2002). In order to analyse the daily practice of musicians, Alexandre Diep (2011) used a self-confrontation method inspired by the same work than Gfeller (previous section). Musicians were asked to comment on sequences of their filmed rehearsal, and especially in moments of interruption or moments that stood out of the common. Here a musician explains how he practices: What I try to do is to play like Angus is playing it [Angus Young, the guitarist of rock band AC/DC]. So well I know very well that it is a G a F a A [. . .]; there are many written versions, but I listen more to the original version, and then I see a little. I imagine and I see. From what I hear, I know he is playing down the freeboard and not at the fifth or ninth box, and then I know he is going to do [he sings the part of the song Black in Black to which he is

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referring], and then, according to how I do there, I tell myself, that must be the same one! He is doing it the same way! And then I always have mate who can say: “I have seen how he did, he made it like this”. Or they say, you can go to see on YouTube, you can see how he plays on videos. (Diep, 2011, p. 50, our translation) This musician describes learning through imitation, a common feature in many working activities (Billett, 2014a, 2014b; Horng & Hu, 2008). Represented in Figure 5.5, the trigger for uncoupling is a difficulty in execution, as in most cases observed by Diep. The musician uncouples from the flow of music, and looks for resources to overcome the difficulty – how to continue the melody; he thus loops away to his musical memory of how Angus plays this piece, sings as if he were Angus, and then using his skills, imagines how Angus would have solved that difficulty; condensing expertise and expectations in Angus’ image, he then displaces this knowledge in his own practice. Imagination is thus looping through past experiences and feeding back into the immediate future. This allows the musician to master the piece, before being able to improvise with it.

Imagination in science Imagination at work does not occur only in artistic domains. It is also evident in the abductive (Peirce, 1974) leap that leads to new scientific theories and new ways of testing them. The imagination is also central to “thought experiments” that, although relatively rarely used, have had a significant impact of the development of science (Ludwig, 2007; McAllister, 2013; Norton, 1991). While there has been debate about whether thought experiments can be stated in logical terms (i.e., Norton, 1993) or whether they add something extra, being a distinctive method affording a special window on nature (i.e., Brown, 1986), those debates do not concern us. What is incontrovertible is that thought experiments can operationalize abstract concepts in a way that makes it easier to explore their consistency and consequences.

Generalization

Imagining how Angus could have played

Implausibility

Temporal orientation Present Physical time

Figure 5.5  Imagination in musical training

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One scientist, who made widespread use of thought experiments, and in so doing made profound contributions to science, was Albert Einstein. After receiving the Nobel Prize for his General Theory of Relativity in 1922, Einstein was in Japan and he gave an informal talk recounting how he came up with the theory of relativity. In the talk he recounts several aspects to the problem, but, central was the relativity of gravity. Specifically, he was grappling with the concept of weight and how it related to movement or inertia. He recounts: The breakthrough came suddenly one day. I was sitting on a chair in my patent office in Bern. Suddenly a thought struck me: If a man falls freely, he would not feel his weight. I was taken aback. This simple thought experiment made a deep impression on me. This led me to the theory of gravity. I continued my thought: A falling man is accelerated. Then what he feels and judges is happening in the accelerated frame of reference [. . .] A falling man does not feel his weight because in his reference frame there is a new gravitational field which cancels the gravitational field due to the Earth. (Einstein, 1922/1982, p. 47) The key insight here is that weight is relative to a frame of reference, and that the frame of reference can be moving. A man falling has, from his own frame of reference, no weight. A man in an elevator moving upwards has, from his own frame of reference, increased weight. Einstein’s recollection tallies with his writings from the period. In his early German publication, Einstein (1912) imagines a physicist who has been drugged and wakes up inside a closed box (Norton, 1993). If that box is uniformly accelerating, Einstein reasoned, there is no way that the observer (the physicist who has awoken) will be able to distinguish between the uniform acceleration and gravity; ergo, a uniformly accelerating object has a gravitational field. In this thought experiment, and many others (Norton, 1991, 1993), Einstein worked out the contradictions of the then current ways of thinking about ether, light, gravity and time. In the case of the above example, we see each step of the looping model (Figure 5.6). The initial conditions were doubtless his prolonged wrestling with a theoretical problem. The immediate triggers that he describes are sometimes just sitting at his desk (as above) or talking to a colleague. Within the content of the thought experiment we find sometimes considerably new material (as is the case with the drugged physicist in the box) or variations on existing known thought experiments (such as Galileo dropping items from the Leaning Tower of Pisa; Norton, 1993, p. 8). Nevertheless, despite the origins of the content from within Einstein’s cultural milieu, his genius was in recombining and reconfiguring these elements in novel ways. The recombination demands displacement from a theoretical problem to the sphere of free fall, condensation of diverse physical knowledge in that example, and figuration. The loop itself unfolds in general terms, and is temporarily engaging in non-plausibility: to allow the scientific reasoning, one need to suppress all knowledge about the possible state of mind

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Imagining a free falling man

Generalization Implausibility Discovering law of relativity

Temporal orientation Present Physical time

Figure 5.6  Imagination in Einstein’s thought experiment

of a man freely falling, which might be not only contemplation of the speed; and there is little chance that any man could be endlessly free falling. However, the outcomes of such thought experiments, needless to say, changed the direction of physics.

The triumph of the imagination So far we have examined imagination in relatively mundane activities, including being at home, working, learning and exercising, all of which relate to people’s daily spheres of experiences. But what about unusual spheres of experience? Is there a role for imagination in radical ruptures, in experiences where one’s life is threatened? In the following example, Charles, an elite sportsman, is interviewed on his use of cultural resources in coping with a life-threatening injury (Rebetez, 2014). Charles explains how, trekking in South America alone, far from his base camp, he walked barefoot on what looked like soft mud, but was actually molten lava. Deeply burnt, he had to find a way to go back to the camp where his girlfriend was waiting for him. Interviewer: So you were really in pain, pain? Do you remember your first reaction toward your pain? Physically? You are there with carbonized feet, what did you say to yourself? Charles: You don’t think, it is survival. In moments when you suffer enormously you. I had moments of discouragement, and then if she [his girlfriend] would not have been there I think I would have stayed on the floor and I would not have moved because the pain was so strong. [. . .] I could not think anymore, I was only pain, I was 70kg of pain. I was there, I did not know what to do. [. . .] My brain was disconnected. [. . .] then I had moments where I told myself, but these Tibetan monks – I have read many books on Buddhism and Hinduism – they

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can separate themselves from the pain, they say pain does not exist, that if you think the mental is stronger than the pain [pause] So I had moments during which I told myself [pause] I was saying, yes I am in the snow. Imagining myself in cold, in the snow, in- Not the whole time, but I could do it for a while, and then I was plunging back. But I was trying, I told myself, now is the moment [. . .] Interviewer: So you were really concentrating, you were in pain, but you were doing this psychic effort? Charles: Yes, I was sending white light, I always do that in difficult situations. White light [pause] I was imagining my feet in the snow, and the blisters closing down. And I had to tell myself that I was not yet an Indian Sadhu. (Rebetez, 2014, pp. 2–3, our translation, emphasis in original) In this example, imagination is triggered by a case of saturation of the real, where it was necessary to disconnect from the real in order to function. Here, Charles seems not to have spontaneously engaged in imagining; rather it seems to have been deliberate. Charles realizes he needs to imagine an alternative situation, to provide psychological relief from his immediate situation, and that this imagining needs to be guided. He uses two sets of resources. First, he uses symbolic and semiotic resources. These include his readings about Oriental religion and practices, his personal experience of snow, the image of “white light”, and perhaps some techniques learned through his sport training. Using these semiotic resources, Charles loops out of his immediate and debilitating pain, he uses the resource to imagine an alternative reality, namely, himself in the snow or in the cold; and the uncoupling, to the extent that it was effective, was doubtless a relief. The fact that Charles is “expelled” from this imagining, and brought back to his demanding pain, is precisely due to the looping nature of imagination. Second, he uses the memory and anticipation of his girlfriend waiting for him. The outcome of the looping is that it alleviates for long enough the pain, and that it concretely allows Charles to walk long enough to return to the camp and thus save his life. As we have seen in previous examples of the sequence of imagination, there is a conjunction of various resources into a dialogical tension; this tension both creating the possible space of imagination but also constraining the possibilities of the imagination (Figure 5.7). Charles is torn by pain and in actual danger of dying if he does not get back to his camp. Pain can be seen both as the condition and the constraint of imagining. The imagining loops to the past (Buddhist readings), to the future (getting back to camp), and to alternative realities (walking on snow). This loop of imagination is both abstract (white night and snow are general categories) and concrete (embodied pain, the sensation of snow); these are overgeneralized sensual experiences (Valsiner, 2007b). Finally, Charles’ imagining

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Generalization Imagination overwriting reality Implausibility Temporal orientation Present Physical time

Figure 5.7  Imagination overwriting pain

is quite un-plausible, as he ironically comments himself, he tried to imagine as-if he were an Tibetan monk. Moreover, his feet were not on snow. Indeed, this sequence of imagination is necessarily un-real for it to have its quite real outcome, namely, relief from the very real experience of pain. However, the outcome of this imagining is a triumph over reality, namely, Charles ability to make his way back to camp and, thus, save his own life.

Synthesis: Enriching situated activities This chapter has not only demonstrated the ubiquity of imagination at the level of everyday life and thought, but it has also demonstrated the widespread applicability of our model. From interactions in the crib to the most abstract and high level physics, from the mundane practices of cooking to the extraordinary overcoming of personal injury, in each case, one can analyse the looping of imagination sequentially. At the microgenetic level, which tracks sequences step-by-step, we can find, in each case, triggers, cultural resources and outcomes. In each case, an engagement with the immediate situation leads to an uncoupling, a period in which the contents and trajectory of experience are no longer guided by the immediate situation, and then a looping back to the situation, and a feeding forward into future feelings and actions. If we summarize these observations, we see that triggers can be accidental, as when a tear falls on a cook’s letter, as well as intentional, either deliberately started by the person, as in the example of the hiker, or induced by another person, as when a teacher creates a frame inviting children to imagine an answer. The resources used for imagining come from a very wide range of domains; semiotic systems specific to the activity at hand (cooking, music, embodied movements), diverse proverbs or metaphors, images and memories from book read or music heard (clearly symbolic resources), as well as bits of general social representations (of the Orient, of love, etc.). The specificity of the loop of imagination is that it operates

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with this material, displaces, condenses, transforms and makes it acceptable to the situated ongoing activity. Yet doing so, it develops freely as a looping movement which, we have shown, can be analysed on its variations on three-dimensions: how much it is oriented towards the past and/or the future; whether it operates on very specific terms or aspects of the situation or in ore general principles; and how much it is plausible with regards to the rules organizing the activity taking place or the elements used for imagining, or demands a radical bracketing of these rules (imagining the taste of more sugar in cake is very close to the local rules of activity; imagining interstellar space travel is less plausible within rules organizing human life). Finally, the power of imagination is precisely located in its capacity to loop back unto the unfolding activity, and thus enrich it. How can we understand the expansion of experience allowed by imagination? First, each loop of imagination creates a space which within which people can escape the constraints of reality and society. It can lead be used to stimulate a range of emotions, from fear to pleasure (Oppenheim, 2012). For example, pleasure can come from playfulness, as in the example of children or thought experiments, or from a search for higher goals of harmony or perfection, as in music or aikido practice. In this sense, rather than just being an escape from a dull or painful experience (see also Cohen & Taylor, 1992), imagination is an enrichment of mundane experience. Second, the expansion of possibility opened up by imagination also underlies human agency. It imagines people to carve out new paths of activity: answering the teacher, expressing love or surviving a burn. In Chapter 6 we will also see how this agency is exercised not only within situated activities, but across the whole lifecourse. Finally, the loop of imagination takes place within a sociocultural world, and as such, it always participates in the reproduction of that world, contributing (to some extent) to future culture. In the infinite sum of human experience, a new proto-dialogue between a blind baby and a mother is a new variation of a historical theme; a tradition such as cooking can be enriched by a new detail; and a thought experiment, however unlikely, can change the course of modern physics. In these three ways, imagination expands human experience and activity.

Chapter 6

Imagination in the lifecourse

Imagination accompanies us throughout our lives and it can play a crucial role in shaping the course of our lives. In Chapter 5 we examined imagination in a range of specific situated activities (e.g., aikido, tourism or cooking). But how and what a person imagines changes over a person’s lifecourse; that is to say, imagination itself has a developmental trajectory. As people move through the social world, they accumulate experiences and uses of cultural resources, and find themselves in new situations, all of which can both nourish and constrain the imagination. Moreover, there is a “recursive looping” whereby the emerging imagination guides the life trajectory of the individual, and that trajectory, in turn, shapes the development of the individual’s imagination. In the present chapter, we examine the development of imagination over the lifecourse. Rather than examining the specific process of imagining in a microgenetic episode (see Chapter 5), we examine here how it changes along, and feeds into, the individual’s lifecourse. That is to say, we now move from the microgenetic level of analysis to the ontogenetic level. First, we examine how the capacity to imagine develops with age. Second, we examine how a given person’s imagination develops along their lifecourse. Finally, we explore how the trajectory of individuals is, in part, guided by their own imagination. Hence, we will show that the lifecourse of each person can be seen as a potential outcome of imagination.

The development of the imagination Imagination appears very early in life, initially in very elementary ways, such as the expectations of response in dyadic interactions with neonates (Trevarthen, 2005; see also Chapter 5, imagination in the crib). It develops together with the other capacities of the child, through interactions with others, mediated by objects and semiotic resources which are progressively internalized. Imagination in early childhood is actually often empirically present in everyday joint activities such as story-telling, playing, communicating about past and future events and humorous word-play (Nelson, 2007; Reddy, 2008; Tomasello, 2005). To understand the development of imagination in children, we can turn to the very abundant literature on imagination in the sociocultural tradition, which is

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largely based on examinations of children’s play (de Moraes Ramos de Oliveira & Valsiner, 1997; Klausen & Passman, 2006; Li, 2013; Rubin & Livesay, 2006; Russ, 2003; Singer & Singer, 1992; Smith, 1984), which sometimes extends to the development of narrative (Fivush & Nelson, 2004; Miller, Hoogstra, Mintz, Fung, & Williams, 1993; Nelson, 2003) and rational capacities (Harris, 2000). All these researchers see a deep connection between the development of play and imagination. However, there are two contrasting hypotheses about this link (which we will call the continuity route and the parallel route) and there is a third, which we will argue for, namely a dialogic approach, that we call “recursive”. 1 The continuity hypothesis A prominent conceptualization in the literature can be called the “continuity hypothesis”. This conceptualization sees play and imagination as basically the same activity; in play the activity is visible and in imagination the play has become internalized, under social demands, into fantasy, daydreaming and imagination. This is the position held by Freud (1959), Vygotsky (1931/1994) and Winnicott (1959/1989, pp. 57–58) (see also Zittoun, 2006, 2013a). Adolescence is, according to this approach, the period in which play becomes personal fantasy or diary writing (see Chapter 2). Whereas the child repeats and transforms his or her daily adventures through role play, the adolescent will redo or undo them in daydreams or diary writing. Fantasy is thus the internalization of play. More precisely, for Vygotsky, imagination, as the ability to decompose experiences and then recombine and synthesize them into new experiences, depends on the cognitive development of the person, and thus the development of the imagination is closely related to both increases of experience (Vygotsky, 2004) and to concept formation (Vygotsky, 1931). Singer and Singer’s (1992, 2005) work, based less on clinical practice or phenomenological insights and more on a systematic review of the empirical literature, proposes a similar developmental process. Singer and Singer describe how the imagination develops from infancy through to adulthood, from the first forms of pretence turning into pretend play in childhood, and on to more sophisticated social games and plays in middle childhood, progressively augmented with cultural resources (such as literature, films, theatre and music), to become people’s dreams, daydreams and fantasies in adolescence and adulthood (Singer & Singer, 1992). What they “are suggesting is that, for most people, the make-believe of childhood, with its elements of freedom from the constraints of psychosocial structures and time- or person-boundedness lives on in the privacy of thought” (Singer & Singer, 1992, p. 278). The Singers also show how the development of children’s imagination depends on adults’ recognition and emotional marking of cultural resources (e.g., adults telling stories, validating films, tolerating imaginary friends, entering into imaginary scenarios etc.). Their review shows that, although it is clear that the psychological processes and function of children’s play, the validation of that play, and later adult fantasy and imagination are closely

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related, it does not mean that the one is the strict predictor of the other. Rather, what develops is potentiality, which may, or may not, become actualized. Although Singer and Singer’s review was necessarily limited to research published before 1992, their synthesis of the literature has yet to be superseded. Their core proposition, that in adulthood, daydream, dreams, the capacity to be involved in fiction, empathy, the generation of possibilities and to some extent problem solving, are all variations of the make-believe capacities developed in childhood (Singer & Singer, 1992, Chapter 11) remains widely accepted. Moreover, the principle of a continuity and progressive transformation of the capacities involved in pretend-play that become imagination, creativity and various other mental capacities, is assumed by numerous authors (see for instance Gillespie & Martin, 2014; Golomb, 1995; Harris, 2000; McMahon, Lytle, & Sutton-Smith, 2005; Root-Bernstein & Root-Bernstein, 2006; Russ, 2003). The continuity hypothesis is intuitively sound and based on the wellestablished Vygotskian principle of progressive internalization of actual conduct, through semiotic processes, under maturational dynamics, social interaction and cultural guidance. However, the literature often seems to over-simplify the continuity. The fact is that play and imagination coexist, even at a very young age. A child can both engage in pretend play about a rabbit, and listen to a story about a rabbit, while vividly imagining the rabbit, and subsequently remember the story and therefore imagine the rabbit without external supports (Miller et al., 1993). Similarly, the clinical observations made by Winnicott (1996b) and Freud (1909/2001c) suggest that children can fantasize, play and dream of comparable conduct. In other words, beyond the continuity hypothesis, the authors quoted so far would probably also admit that imagination develops in parallel to play, and that imagination does already exist, to some extent, before play is turned predominantly into internal dynamics. 2 The parallel hypothesis Bogdan (2013) has recently proposed an alternative developmental hypothesis, which we will call the “parallel hypothesis”. Relying on evolutionary and cognitive research, his argument is that exploratory play is adaptive: it is triggered by events that demand the repetition and exploration of possible action schemes. Drawing on Piaget (1945/1992), he suggests that the child who plays mother and child with a doll is rehearsing activity cycles, using the doll as a prop to activate and rehearse the scripts guiding interaction with the mother, in the same way that a cat “plays” hunting with a plastic mouse. Interestingly, a similar idea and analogy was put forward by Mead (1910/2001). However, Bogdan’s hypothesis is that the development of imagination is independent from these activities, or from children’s relation to things, because both the development of play and imagination occur in parallel. For Bogdan, the development of imagination takes a second, very different route: it comes about when children are able to meet social others. Hence, according

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to Bogdan, after 4 years old, the child is exposed to new sociocultural and “socio-political” pressures (such as meeting other children on the playground), and children develop meta-representational capacities. They can take the perspective of others on things (they see what others see), and, consequently, they can start to see themselves as others (this hypothesis is of course consistent with dialogical and neo-Meadian approaches, see Gillespie & Martin, 2014). This capacity to see oneself like another is connected to autobiographical memories (distinct from episodic memories, because self is narrated from an external standpoint) and also strategic thinking (i.e., deception, lying, etc.), which then allows for imagining alternative realities. Hence, according to this hypothesis, there are two developmental routes: one that goes through exploratory and pretence play to the mastery of various scripts; and one other that goes from experiencing other’s perspective on self, through imaginary companions,1 to fully fledged imagination (Bogdan, 2013). Although this parallel hypothesis is elegant, it can be criticized for creating a false dichotomy: why should the social route leading to imagination be disconnected from the material route of interacting with things? Developmental research shows to the contrary that interactions with things and interactions with people are deeply interconnected: it is because children communicate with others about things that things become meaningful, as much research on early triangulation demonstrates (Fonagy, Gergely, Jurist, & Target, 2005; Trevarthen, 2009, 2012b; Zittoun, Gillespie, Cornish, & Psaltis, 2007). In effect, developmental observations show that the infant first has experiences which are quite intense emotionally and experientially, and which are difficult to distinguish and delimit, especially when they are ignored or not talked about by adults (e.g., physical experiences or pleasure, hunger, anger, etc.). As the infant grows, he or she experiences regular situations in which some aspects of themselves and the environment are acknowledged and supported by others, while other aspects receive less social recognition or even negative emotional marking. Mutual recognition, translated into patterns of tuned movement or rhythmic and multimodal mutual adjustment (Trevarthen, 2012a; see Chapter 5), is complemented with things. For example, words are used in the interaction to name and designate specific experiences (such as hunger or happiness) and things (such as blankets and bottles) and these words (with their associated links) can then be internalized and used by the child. See, for instance, the research on self-soothing in 4-month-old children, supporting the idea of transitional objects (Burnham, Goodlin-Jones, Gaylor, & Anders, 2002). The infant develops interactions with things around him or her, especially if these contribute to the relationship with others, and thus progressively learns to use them in canonical way (Rodriguez & Moro, 2000). Children also internalize semiotic elements, and usually around the age of 2 can vocalize and subsequently talk to themselves as others would do, or console themselves, or use other semiotic means to regulate and shape their current state of being (Berk, 1994; Nelson, 2006). The development of language as well as the use of other semiotic systems and resources seems to play a key role in children’s capacity to name states of the

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world, and progressively think about them independently of actually using or doing them, or pretending to do them through play (as observed in longitudinal case studies in a clinical setting, Diatkine & Simon, 2005). With language comes the progressive mastery of rules of narration that allows for the disconnection of events from time (i.e., past and future events can be talked about in the present) and thus language also opens up play with variations and alternative possibilities, as can be observed for instance in the longitudinal case study of Emily reported in Nelson (2006). In this way children and then adults develop various dialogical capacities, including refined abilities to interact and communicate with others (e.g., taking their perspective while experiencing being recognized by them), interacting with objects and their material and semiotic properties, and various forms of internal dialogue – with real others met in other times and places, with imaginary companions, or with any other variations of self or others such as alternative selves, generalized others, possible voices and so on. Any form of internalized dialogue is in this sense imaginary, and because such imaginary dialogue is a moment in the flow of consciousness, it is a loop of the imagination. Hence, empirical evidence suggests that imagination is greatly allowed by our relationship to others as well as our relationship to objects; it demands internalization and uses of semiotic resources, and these dynamics are always already social. From a dialogical perspective, the parallel hypothesis hence should be excluded. 3 The recursive hypothesis The final explanation for the development of imagination, which is the one we will defend, can be called the “recursive hypothesis”. This hypothesis stems from our dialogical approach, and is based on the observations reported in the previous section. The idea is that imagination grows out of relationships that children and then adults have with others and the world, and is progressively distinguished from other modalities of experiencing and playing through differentiation and generalization, within social interactions, with cognitive maturation, and the mastery of more complex semiotic systems, including language. This account is “recursive” because all the elements work together, feeding into one another, even with the outcomes of imagination feeding into the process, bootstrapping the development of the imagination. The recursive hypothesis admits, like the continuity hypothesis, that although some patterns of play are progressively internalized into imagination, imagination seems actually to appear in elementary forms very early as well, like in the parallel hypothesis. However, the parallel hypothesis proposes that play and imagination develop, for the former, in children’s interactions with the world, and for the latter, in social interactions with other people. We consider this dichotomy untenable and therefore propose a recursive account that departs here from the two former accounts in three main aspects. First, we take from empirical data that imagination develops through interaction with others as well as interactions with things. Imagination is nourished through the use of semiotic resources, applied to things and people, and it also

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needs the recognition of others. Imagination requires both internalization and uses of resources, and these two psychological processes are facilitated by other people, who can be more or less distant. This double relationship we have captured with the model of a prism (Zittoun, 2007b; Zittoun et al., 2007). Hence, it is more parsimonious to consider that there is only one process with two components that can have different relative importance in every imagining. In this sense, play is a variation of imagination. What, however, may become progressively differentiated, is the intention, or the aboutness of imagining: whether it is about others or about the world or things. Second, imagination itself can be exerted differently in various spheres of experience, where different resources, internalization and recognition occur. Moreover, the resultant different experiences of imagining can enrich each one another. Hence, as with any psychological function (Werner & Kaplan, 1963), imagination changes as semiotic capacities are progressively differentiated and integrated in various spheres of experience and along the lifecourse. In that sense, imagination can use more complex resources to expand, and become more differentiated; yet in some cases, imagination entails the reverse, that is a fusing or de-differentiation, which in the extreme could be called “aesthetic contemplation” (Baldwin, 1915/2009, p. 231; Benson, 2001). Third, our recursive approach does not view imagination as operating on a different ontological plane to other people and things, rather, the approach is “recursive” precisely because the outcomes of imagination feed forward into the individuals relations with other people and things, which in turn feeds forward into future imagining. Imagining the mother coming back with food allows the young child to regulate his or her emotional state that in turn enables the child to wait, which in turn is reinforced by the mothers actual return. Imagining romantic scenarios allows the adolescent to release some tension but also start to shape his or her interactions with potential partners, interactions that will feed-forward into future imaginations. More generally, as we will argue in this chapter, imagining one’s life can play a major role in the trajectory that one’s life takes. In other words, imagination changes people’s relation to themselves, others and the world. Our recursive hypothesis leads us to focus in the following sections, not only how the imagination develops or how people develop through imagination, but also on how the outcomes of imagination feed forward into human development.

Imagination across the lifecourse What is imagined and how it is imagined changes over the lifecourse. In some spheres of experience, or in relationship to some specific objects, imagination can mature through being nourished in the cultural environment, becoming the object of attention and social exchange. The more it becomes the object of attention, social exchanges and mediation, the more it can be differentiated and integrated as a semiotic system. This could be, for instance, the case of Einstein’s thought experiments, illustrated in Chapter 5, which constituted a

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relatively stable, differentiated and integrated semiotic system of ideas that has outlived Einstein himself. In other cases, imagination might become less differentiated, more diffuse, as for instance in some forms of poetic contemplation (Baldwin, 2009). In what follows we will examine how imagination develops within and across spheres of experiences. Imagination develops within spheres of experience Our first proposal is that whatever is frequently experienced by a child along his or her trajectory will tend to have progressively more complex representation, through the processes of differentiation and integration (Gillespie & Zittoun, 2013; Werner & Kaplan, 1963). Hence, a child who is brought to play a lot in a forest will learn to differentiate trees, bird songs and plants. The child will likely learn climbing, hiding and maybe foraging. These experiences will be particularly salient if they are shared with significant others. Thus the sphere of experience related to forest-exploration will become a domain of “expertise”, with associated strategies, representations and narratives. Having had these experiences, having differentiated and integrated them, this child will have little problem creating an imaginary scenario of an adventure in the forest. This child would have rich resources for imagining forest-related scenarios, and would likely not need any support from cultural artefacts (e.g., a toy animals or a hunter’s hat) or symbolic resources (e.g., the story of Little Red Riding Hood). However, the same child, when having to imagine within an unfamiliar sphere of experience, such as a conservation liquid task, might need considerable external resources and social scaffolding. This argument might explain why it is so difficult to explain scientists’ and artist’s work in terms of their “greater” childhood imagination. For instance, Root-Bernstein and Root-Bernstein (2006) have had limited success in trying to find a link between great creators and having a paracosm as children. The point is that children, and also adults, are engaged in different spheres of experience which feed into imagination and which are also cultivated by imagination. Psychoanalytic treatment is based on creating a safe sphere of experience, within an otherwise tumultuous world, in which emotions can be acknowledged. Diatkine and Simon (2005) report on the treatment of a young girl from the ages of two-and-a-half to four-years-old. In the safe space of the clinical setting, the young girl, who first acts out most of her emotional movement (she throws things, breaks things, has psychosomatic reactions, exhibits parts of her body, engages in infantile eroticism, etc.), is exposed to an adult, who, unlike any other adult, is not condemning these emotional and embodied movements, acknowledges them and names them. The little girl progressively does less angry things, and instead begins to find semiotic ways to externalize them; through playing, painting, and eventually through language, even commenting, aged four, on the fact that these things should be said, not done. In this case, the safe therapeutic frame, as a contained sphere of experience, allowed the girl to develop a semiotic repertoire and an emotional imagination that few children have.

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Thus, emotional experiences can become the object of deliberate and reflexive knowledge, as emotions are mastered in a systematic way by actors or clinical psychologists, or embodied experiences by sportsmen and women. In most cases, however, these layers of experiences might be engaged in imagination yet without being clearly conscious, and to use an old Freudian metaphor, the conscious part of our imagination being the tip of a wide iceberg. Thus, according to our recursive hypothesis, people engage in different imagining in different spheres of experience; and in each sphere, imagination can be more or less mediated and socially shared, which gives the imagination more or less differentiation, and allows people to be more or less reflexive in their imagining. Of course, on the basis of these masteries, the person can still imagine in a less generalized and undifferentiated way; the forest-playing child can be engrossed in his feeling of being at one with the forest, which is a form of aesthetic contemplation, that perhaps a less forest-cultivated child could also enjoy. Imagination develops across spheres of experiences Not only does an individual’s imagination develop within spheres of experiences, it also develops across, or between, spheres of experience. We thus make a second proposal: that the products of imagining can, because of their emotional quality, be generalized, or lead to new constructs, which can then move to different spheres of experience, and subsequently be used to develop new spheres of experience. As we have seen above, imagination can develop to some degree independently within each sphere of experience. Consequently, imagination in certain spheres of experience, in relation to certain issues, can be precise and reflexive, while in different spheres of experience it might be much less defined. In the absence of available cultural elements, collective discourse or positive social recognition, the individual imagination struggles to make ideas concrete. However, when elements are scarce or constrained in one sphere of experience, people might draw on resources taken from another sphere of experience, as the two following examples suggest. Paul Otlet attempted to imagine something like the internet in the 1930s, but, being so far ahead of his time he only had available ideas from his time about television, microfilm and indexing systems as resources (Rayward, 1991). He used his knowledge of television to develop an imagination of a vast network of live television feeds extending into all the libraries in the world, such that all the information in the world would become available to everyone. This was both far ahead of its time and also profoundly limited by the ideas and technologies of his time. Equally, Lawrence and Valsiner showed how a young woman growing up in a very religious environment could not imagine any other possible lives, until she came to read an encyclopaedia; in some way, the possibility of moving away from the community was so unspeakable that it was not imaginable before the young person could use new symbolic resources (Lawrence, Benedikt, & Valsiner, 1992). Hence, when people experience highly constrained spheres of experiences, they may find in other spheres of experiences the resources to

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expand their possibilities for imagination. Paradoxically, some experiences which are taboo in a given environment might become the topics of vivid imagination, especially if many artefacts exist to nourish them, such as, for example, Sarah Austin’s desire for romantic adultery in Victorian England (discussed in Chapter 3; Hamburger & Hamburger, 1991). Altogether, imagination in the young person or the adult is present in daydreaming, memories and regrets, fictional activities, parallel experiences and exploring possible futures – all being more or less explicit and deliberate. If we admit the dynamic nature of imagination, we can then also see how playing, daydreaming and activities in the world might mutually enrich each other, and so patterns of imagination can create long chains of dominant themes in a lifecourse. In other words, some themes, semantic or emotional contents of imagination might be maintained through time, and also, progressively enriched and developed in specific spheres of experiences. Typically, an adolescent’s preferred fantasy, inspired by a novel, about becoming a free trickster, acrobat and adventurer – a clear distal experience coming from the use of a novel – can, with the years, transform into a fantasy about how to be a successful psychologist. In effect, the same motive becomes displaced and attached to a new sphere of experience (first studies, than work), where it condenses the general notions of being free, habile and distanced, and becomes a way to exert the skill of a profession that demands intuition in diagnosis and distance in interpreting (Zittoun, 2007a). Hence, dynamics of imagining in one sphere of experience can diffuse and find echoes in other spheres of experience, and thus, imagination can become more diffuse, and expanded across spheres. The development of imagination can thus be traced back through longitudinal case studies. Jerome Singer (1966) introduced autobiographical evidence to reflect on the development of imagination. He reported that his preferred pretend games and childhood plays might be seen as continued in his later adult choices. Hence, enjoying playing the detective, decoding secret messages and traces, might have fed, and thus turned into, his later interest for psychodynamic processes (Singer & Singer, 1992). Similarly, in our research (Zittoun, 2010), we have shown how a young girl’s preferred play theme, might feed into, and develop into, her young adult vocational choices. As a child, Mary would be read, with her grandmother, a richly illustrated book of the story of Cinderella. Her attention got caught by the beautifully painted dresses of princesses, and the imaginary world the dresses designated. Later, bought to museum by her mother, she would again by impressed by painting such as Edgar Degas’ dancers, with their tutus and postures. As a school aged child, she and her friends started drawing themselves in this style, and she developed a talent for sketching bodies. At school, her teacher would praise her talent for colouring and etching. Hence, different uses of symbolic and other resources (a book, a classical painting, friends, the institutional setting of a class), combined with social validation, allowed one specific sphere of experience to develop, namely, an artistic sphere demanding the mastery of observation, drawing and painting skills. However, this was considered to be a secondary distal

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sphere of experience by Mary; she had to leave school quite early and she started to work in the commercial sector. However, after a few years, Mary met, by chance, her former art teacher, who enquired about her activities. Mary realized that she had abandoned her artistic sphere of experience and decided to reorient her life by taking art training (Zittoun, 2010). This does not mean that all children’s preferred play themes shape their professional lives, which would be absurd, but it is merely to recognize that there is very often a continuity and progressive transformation in a person’s imaginary world, the sorts of imagination they engage in, and the choices they make in their adult life. Circumstances, of course, intervene: not everyone is lucky enough to engage in a professional career close to their initial passions, in which case, maybe early imaginations remain only in the realm of personal daydreams and fantasies. Hence, it is not only the general faculties or competencies that have continuity, it is also the nature or content of one’s imaginary spheres of experiences. Hence, the recursive hypothesis can help us to understand how imagination develops across the lifecourse: it is based on a wide range of cultural resources; it occurs with the validation and guidance of real or distal others; it expands with the mastery of different spheres of experiences; and it is shaped by the experience of the outcomes of imagining. Thus, as any complex psychological capacity, imagination can progressively become generalized. Imagination develops through generalization As imagination develops in and between spheres of experiences, it gets richer, and expands and extends into diverse possible spheres. It can also become more distanced, and addressed to a wide diversity of situations and times. One of the by-products of this maturation of imagination is what Valsiner (2007b, p. 317; Zittoun et al., 2013) calls “personal life philosophies”, which are the motives, or the lessons learned from one’s life trajectory. These are highly generalized principles, with a powerful metaphorical, or imaginary, status, and often having a guiding function in future decisions. How the loops of imagination can develop into more general motives and themes has been captured by the vertical dimension (temporality), or second dimension (generalization), described in Chapter 3. An example of the emergence of a personal life philosophy, as a generalized meaning structure, which transcends any specific domain and which begins to colour multiple spheres of experience, is found in the case study of June (Zittoun & Gillespie, 2015b). June is a young woman who wrote a diary through the years of World War II in England, as part of the Mass Observation project (Sheridan, 2000). We analysed these diaries as they followed June’s life transitions through diverse contexts, affording various spheres of experience – her home community, her life in the fields as member of the homefront, and her life at the reception of a hostel for homefront workers (Gillespie, Cornish, Aveling, & Zittoun, 2008; Zittoun, Aveling, Gillespie, & Cornish, 2012; Zittoun, Cornish, Gillespie, & Aveling, 2008; Zittoun & Gillespie, 2012). When June lives with her family before World War II,

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she participates in her community’s opposition between two stereotypes, namely, decent women and promiscuous women, clearly denigrating the latter. However, as she leaves home, works in various gardens, and begins to meet many charming men, her behaviour changes, she begins dating multiple men, and begins to find out that a little promiscuity can be fun and flattering. The problem is that this causes a tension with her former commitments. She struggles to resolve this tension in the following excerpt from her diary, written the night after a dance: Sat June 28th the dance there. I thoroughly enjoyed it. My airmen of last night was there & persisted in making a date for Sun night. I did not have to dance with him half the time as all his pals asked me to annoy him & he had to catch 10.15 train. After he had gone I had a good change round & in last dance made another date for Tues night with another airman from a different aerodrome. We were cycling home & 2 boys caught us up & cycled with us. We had danced with them during the evening. They also were trying to make a date. I thought by this time in any case I was going to get in a hell of a mess so left them without any promises. I shall keep the 2 dates as they seem both nice fellows providing my soldier doesn’t turn up on either of these nights! I don’t know what is becoming of me. I wouldn’t have dreampt [sic] of doing this sort of thing at home. I wouldn’t have been allowed to for one thing. I don’t know if the land is demoralising me. I sometimes think so! Or else the war. I know I should not have done it before the war. Oh well I shan’t be young for ever & my looks won’t last, so now or never. (From Zittoun & Gillespie, 2015, p. 31) June is excited by being intensively courted by so many men, she is enjoying being desired. But her enjoyment is short-lived, as there is an intrusive introjection: “I don’t know what is becoming of me”. Here June steps out of her behaviour as if to view it from the standpoint of her home community in general, and maybe her mother and sister in particular (“I wouldn’t have been allowed”). So here underlined, we have a first imaginary loop, as June’s semiotic stream loops out of her immediate enthusiasm, with the result that she feels demoralized and debased. However, her experience during the war, her many dates with men, have also led to a generalized personal philosophy, a meaning structure that although it originates in her wartime context, it is strong enough to dismiss the voice and attitudes of her home community. She says: “Oh well I shan’t be young for ever & my looks won’t last, so now or never”. With this emergent life philosophy, June is better able to direct her own imagination; she can silence any feelings of shame, and she can enjoy planning her multiple future dates. Thus what becomes evident is that the imagination is both bound into specific spheres of experience (e.g., family life before the war, gardening, going for tea with her sister, working in the garage, and now, dating many men), but also, transcending these spheres. The imagination of what her family might think of her current behaviour intrudes into her present situation. But, equally, the personal

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life philosophy that generalizes, in part from dating men, spills over, out of this sphere of experience, and impacts upon her future life choices, such as her decision not to get married (Zittoun & Gillespie, 2015b).

The role of imagination in the lifecourse The literature reviewed so far suggests that imagination develops in a given sphere of experience, as when expertise is acquired in an art or technique, and allows for specific outcomes. We have also seen how imagination can develop across spheres, when these start enriching each other, potentially even producing generalized meaning structures, as well as personal life philosophies that contribute to the guidance of the individual’s life trajectory. Imagination can guide life trajectories in three ways: by opening new possibilities in periods of transitions, by creating alternative realities, and because of the guidance power of life-philosophies. How imagination contributes to the making of a life is now illustrated with a case study of Stanislav’s lifecourse. In this section, we will first illustrate two ideas presented so far – that imagination develops in specific spheres of experience, and that it generalized through them. Based on this case study, we then highlight two other ways by which imagination participates in the development of the lifecourse: first, imagination play an important role in transitions and bifurcation point; second, imagination can generate new spheres of experiences, and therefore new life trajectories.

Stanislav is one of the young men followed by Czech film director Helena Třeštíkova as part of her Studies of Marriage (Třeštíkova, 2009), a series of six documentaries, each documentary film following a couple over 25 years. The six couples were married in the same town hall in the centre of Prague, by the same mayor, over a period of two months in the winter of 1980. The documentaries show each couple right before and during the wedding, and then two weeks, six months, and one year after the wedding, and then more or less every six months. The participants answer a series of questions about their hopes, fears, the meaning they confer to life, their marriage, and so on. Třeštíkova thus produced a cycle of six 30-minute black and white films, about the six young couples during the six first years of their marriages, between 1980 and 1986, Manželské etudy (Studies of Marriage, 1987). In 1999, the filmmaker visited the couples again, and resumed shooting on a relatively un-regular basis until 2005, with a more open style of interview. The result is another six colour hour-long films continuing the original cycle, Manželské etudy po dvaceti letech (Studies of Marriage 20 Years Later, 2006). The two films were edited, and now it is possible to see six two-part documentaries, named after the first names (continued)

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(continued) of the participants – (i.e., Marcela & Jiří, Ivana & Pavel etc.), with each documenting 25 years of a the life of a family. Zuzana and Stanislav marry in December 1980 when he is 19 and she is 18-years-old and pregnant. During the two first years of their marriage, they each live with their parents, he in Prague, and she with their son Honza in a small town 100km away. Stanislav is working as an electro-mechanic, and he visits Zuzana and their son every weekend. At his parents’ home, he has a room in which he builds low-voltage systems, automatic lamps and transistors. When he visits Zuzana, he also spends some time fixing a motorbike with Zuzana’s brother. In 1983, after his military service, Stanislav changes job so that they can live together. In their new flat he has a room in which he works on his hobbies. The couple then have a second child, Zuzka, a little girl. In 1985, Stanislav is, in his free time, programming a computer, including making video games for the children. He also builds a telescope in the family garden. The couple divorce in 1995, and the documentary meets Stanislav again in 1999, when he lives with a new girlfriend in Prague. Stanislav started an advertising company, then quit, and was subsequently working as a translator. In 2005, Stanislav builds an ecological house in preparation for his retirement.

First, as suggested, we can observe how a person’s imagination unfolds differently in specific spheres of experiences. At the beginning of their married life, Stanislav shares his life between work, where he is electro-mechanic, at home with his parents, and at the house of his wife and their young son, an inconvenient arrangement imposed by the difficulties in finding housing during the communist years. In terms of spheres of experience, Stanislav moves every week from being a young employee at work having professional skills, to being a young father at his wife’s’ parents’ house, where he actually does not have many parental skills, to his parents’ home, where he spends most of his time in a room building small transistors and electronics objects (see Figure 6.1).

Work

Home

Zuzana

Life trajectory Hobby

Figure 6.1  Stanislav’s early life trajectory through spheres of experience

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Generalization

Loop of imagination Implausibility Temporal orientation Present

Figure 6.2  Zuzana imagining a flat

Stanislav’s spheres of experience are differently invested. In the first few years of marriage, every time the film crew comes, Stanislav explains with great detail what he is trying to build and how the apparatus should work. However, we also know from Zuzana’s complaints that he does not do much to help her daily life with a small child. As we will see, Stanislav imagines a lot in his technical universe, but he does not seem to imagine much in the sphere of his private life with wife and child. On her side, Zuzana, who is taking care of the child on a daily basis, wishes for a change. Accordingly, she imagines moving flat, specifically moving into a flat with Stanislav, and thus reimagining her domestic sphere of experience. As she explains in 1983: We’re hoping for a flat so we can move. I don’t know when. It has to be furnished which isn’t easy. When we’ll be on our own, it’ll be better. I don’t like it like this anymore. The imagination of having a new flat, as illustrated in Figure 6.2, is located in a near future; it is also quite plausible, and nourished by various representations of what a well-furnished flat is (for instance, Zuzana will be very proud of having orange kitchen furniture). In 1986 there is an intersection between Stanislav’s hobbies and his home life. As part of his hobbies, he creates a video game, which is something that he can share with his family, and this seems to enrich his relation to his children. However, much of his work with computer programming does not intersect with his home sphere of experience. Here is Stanislav explaining his interest in computer programming: This is a program that calculates classical biorhythms. It also has the extra feature that there’s sound, like it can also talk, de facto, even if it’s not that understandable. What can the computer do? It’s really wide open. On its own it does nothing. It can only do what you program into it. So, for example, this

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program “condiciogram” is more of a fun demonstration program. You can play different games on it but that’s not its main function. It can really help simplify calculations. I wrote a program in conjunction with the telescope to calculate the parameters of the optics, and a calculation which would take me 45 minutes, with this it takes me 20 seconds to input the data and the computer has it calculated in a second. So that’s a huge time saver. Here we can see that these developments have brought Stanislav to build a telescope, his interest for small electronics moving into the new sphere of astronomy and optics: The observatory came to me through sheer luck, in an article. I started by buying a lens for 20 crowns and a length of plastic tubing. The result, even with such abysmal optics, was pretty surprising so I began polishing mirrors for a reflecting telescope. That result was also absolutely amazing so I started polishing bigger and bigger mirrors. The biggest telescope I now operate weighs about 200 kilos. And it’s all, of course, electronically operated. It’s quite a monster. And you get a good feeling because not everybody could do this. When you look at the moon in 200 magnifications, it’s a very breath-taking, aesthetic experience. It’s not just what you see; it’s also that you start thinking about it, start reading books about it, about the creation of the universe, the Big Bang, where it is assumed everything exploded from a single place. What was before that? You can’t think about it too much because you realize how tiny you are and the universe is immeasurable and man is just a speck of dust. The question is if one should even consider these things, one should be looking for them. You shouldn’t rip yourself away from reality. This sequence illustrates several aspects of our model of imagination. The recursive looping of imagination is evident in how Stanislav started to develop imagination of what a telescope is by reading an article (a symbolic resource), this led him to try to build one, the result was a telescope with the outcome of raising more questions about what a telescope could allow him to see, and this, in turn, leads him to read more articles and books, and eventually, to imagine and then build a bigger telescope. This larger telescope, in turn, opens up questions about the planets, which leads to more reading, which then leads to some fundamental and difficult to imagine scenarios (i.e., the Big Bang). In other words, here we have an instance if imagination developing in a specific sphere of experience; it is nourished by articles, books and personal experiences, and perhaps also by science fiction and social representations about the space, and so on. Imagination becomes highly skilled within this sphere, with the mastery of new tools, skills and discourses. The imagination is recursive, and generative; it opens up a sphere of experience, enriching that sphere of experience, which in turn catalyses imagination within that sphere. This is what Stanislav says in a more reflexive utterance: “it leads to somewhere”.

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Recursive imagining

Physical time

Figure 6.3  Stanislav’s recursive imagination of the stars

What Stanislav’s case demonstrates is the generativity of the imagination; his imagination opens up a sphere of experience, making him a competent actor within that sphere of experience, which in turn catalyses imagination within that sphere. Moreover, where this catalysing process leads is unknown. For Stanislav to find out where this process leads is an adventure. The lifecourse of that adventure is a recursive looping process with increasing scope (see Figure 6.3), beginning with some vague imagination about the stars, Stanislav builds the means (i.e., a telescope) to cultivate this imagination, which in turn motivates the imagination. And all of this occurs within one sphere of experience, much to the chagrin of those, such as Zuzana, who is in another sphere of experience. Imagination in life transitions As we have seen in Chapter 1, the lifecourse can be theorized from an observers’ perspective. This allows researchers to retrace the specificity of lifecourse decisions as compared to other people comparable situations (Sato, Yasuda, Kanzaki, & Valsiner, 2014). Such analyses have shown that many life paths can lead to equivalent points, yet similar points can lead to different outcomes (Vygotsky, 1994). In the analysis of such life paths, bifurcation points stand out as moments in which trajectories differ. For instance, in contemporary England or Switzerland, the end of compulsory education is an important bifurcation point: in these social and economic environments, entering the job market at 15 or pursuing higher education tends to lead to very different life paths (Bradley & Devadason, 2008; Goodwin & O’Connor, 2005; Jindal-Snape, 2009; Roberts, 2006; Ryan, 2001). An equifinality point is the opposite: it is where different paths seem to coincide. In Switzerland it is thus possible to join University both after high-school, and after a longer path through vocational training and specialization. Describing such life paths entails taking a birds-eye-view on the differentiation and characterization of a given group of people. Hence, studying the life trajectories of the six young couples followed by Třeštíkova (2009) allows retracing bifurcation and equifinality points (Zittoun,

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in press). For instance, a first equifinality point would be the moment at which all the couples got married in the same town hall in Central Prague between winter 1980 and spring 1981. They were all married by the same mayor, and the weddings were followed by equivalent dinners at a restaurant. In contrast, a bifurcation point would be that of the possible birth of a child six months after the wedding. Four of the six couples were expecting a child when they married, and their children were born about six months after the wedding. In the words of one participant, Mirka, she said she married: “First because we love each other. And second, because we have to” .2 Thus, six months after the weddings, a bifurcation occurs when only some of the couples become parents. In the life of these young people, their entry in the job market was more of an equifinality point than a bifurcation point because during communist times in Czechoslovakia people would be provided with a job after completing school training (Fialová & Kučera, 1997). Because it radically changed the paramount reality, the collapse of communism in Czechoslovakia in 1989 was perceived as a collective rupture – it was called “the Revolution” by Czech people. A whole population saw the end of a regime, and found themselves in a situation where the rules of social life fundamentally changed. Each of them had to engage in a transition from a regime where jobs were given, to a liberal economy, where everyone is responsible for their own professional path (Fialová & Kucera, 1997; Koldinskà, 2007). In that sense, the collapse of communism becomes a major bifurcation point. For the young people filmed by Třeštíkova, but also more generally, for people in their 20s and 30s in the country, it is a bifurcation point: some create successful companies, some accumulate wealth, some move from job to job, and some become low wage employees. Some, however, remained in companies that became privatized, maintaining their life standards or, became new working poor with the loss of social support. We can see this clearly by comparing people in Třeštíkova’s documentary. For example, Pavel opened a squash centre and then managed a billiard hall; Antonín tried to have his own garage, which didn’t survive the concurrence, and eventually worked as manager for a large car-pieces company; Stanislav started his advertisement company but then came back to work as translator for a company; Václav started his own furniture shop; Vladimír opened a successful photographic studio in New York. This diversity of trajectories thus demands that we understand more qualitatively the key decision points in making these trajectories. How can we explain the differences in bifurcations? And how can we understand how these people all made different decisions and oriented to the rupture in differing ways? We think that, more than a case of sense-making (see for instance Sato et al., 2014), understanding the emergence of new life-paths within transitions demands an explanation in terms of imagination. From the perspective of the person, a bifurcation point rarely appears as the choice between two clear options. Phenomenologically, it is rather a moment of confusion or uncertainty induced by a rupture. This is typically a moment where imagination might be called upon, to draw upon the past, to imagine the future or to consider alternatives (Figure 6.4).

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Imagination at bifurcation point

Life trajectory

Figure 6.4  Imagination in life trajectory transitions

Imagination can be seen as the process through which possible pathways emerge out of the mist of uncertainty. In such times of transition people’s strong distal experiences, spheres in which imagination has been widely developed, might play a very important role. In effect, the more a person has been experiencing certain types of imagination, the more likely these are to come to the fore, and possibly, contribute to the emergence of new pathways. After the collective rupture that was the collapse of communism, among the six families filmed by Třeštíkova, three tried to develop new professional pathways in the field that they had invested their leisure time, in which they had strongly been committed, had developed various imaginations, and had developed skills. For example, Václav liked working with wood in his leisure time, and he abandoned his job as architect so as to open as furniture shop; Antonín, who liked playing with car pieces, opened a garage; Vladimír who liked photography turned it into his job. Quitting his delivery job, and after his attempt at selling fries, Pavel discovered billiards in 1995, became passionate, and eventually became the manager of a billiard hall. All these men say that they were lucky enough to do their “dream work”. In effect, in a moment of collective rupture that affected each of them and where everything, including the imaginative horizon, was to be redefined, each of them mobilized their imagination, and especially, drew upon the spheres of experiences that they had invested their imagination. In turn, imagination became the resource to generate new pathways, and to concretize them into actual professions, companies and lifecourses. The emergence of new spheres of experience The study of lifecourses suggests that imagination appears in given spheres of experiences, across them, and in bifurcation points. Yet in addition, the outcome of certain distal spheres of experience, is to create new possible pathways. In other words, the outcome of imagination might be the creation of new real forms of life. After the collapse of communism, Stanislav, who had developed his strong interest for communication technologies, first developed a successful international

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company with a friend, which he abandoned after the stress that success caused him. He then, somehow surprisingly, became a Czech to German translator for technical companies. The documentary shows that, actually, this profession also comes from a skill initially arising within one of his hobbies, in one of his distal spheres of experience, as a response to his technical imagination: Before the revolution [i.e., the collapse of communism] I built a satellite receiver. Suddenly our living room was a place where these instant, cool images flashed through, with words we didn’t understand. What could you do with that? We bought a book and began teaching ourselves. Zuzana quit after a while. And today I make my living as an interpreter. Thus, Stanislav’s passion for electronics allowed him not only to see the stars beyond the earth, but also the life beyond the closed borders of his country. It is his curiosity and imagination about that foreign life that led him to learn German. That distal sphere of experience, developed through his imagination, supported by technical resources, had the outcome that he learnt German and subsequently fedforward into his becoming employed as a translator. The skill of speaking German could thus be transferred from this distal sphere of experience to the proximal reality of his work life, and it turned out to be a very useful post-revolution skill.

Life-paths as outcomes of imagination Not only does imagination develop in the lifecourse, but also, we maintain, imagination contributes to the development of the person along their lifecourse, or more precisely, the shape taken by their trajectory. The psychology of the lifecourse or the lifespan has been the focus of much research (see for instance Berk, 2009; Johnson, Bengtson, Coleman, & Kirkwood, 2005; Magai & Haviland-Jones, 2002; Overton, 2002; Sapin, Spini, & Widmer, 2007; Zittoun, 2012a; Zittoun et al., 2013). There are different ways to represent how the trajectory of a life unfolds through time. Most authors agree on the mutual determinations of social, cultural, individual, biological and relational aspects. Most also emphasize the importance of life transitions and turning points, and their outcomes, which can be more or less socially guided as well as normatively evaluated (Elder, 1996; Elder & Giele, 2009; Giele & Elder, 1998; Levy, Ghisletta, Le Goff, Spini, & Widmer, 2005; Oris, Ludwig, de Ribaupierre, Joye, & Spini, 2009; see Chapter 1). The idea that imagination plays an important role in the lifecourse is based on the dialogical and sociocultural assumptions developed so far (see also Zittoun et al., 2013). Our main argument is that, because a great part of our lives is actually imaginary, one cannot fully understand the lifecourse without understanding the main role of imagination in life trajectories. In this chapter, we have shown that imagination develops along the lifecourse, and that its effects can be identified at different points on developmental trajectories. First, it can take place within a sphere of experience, where it can expand and bring various changes, as

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seen in Chapter 5. Second, it can lead to transformation across spheres of experiences, thus readjusting priorities and choices, as we have seen in Stanislav’s case. Third, imagination can have a main role in ruptures and the creation of new life-paths (Zittoun & de Saint-Laurent, 2015). On the one hand, imagination can be the origin of ruptures, as when distancing reveals the limitation of one’s life choices, or reveals destabilizing alternatives. Sometimes it is the imagination itself that threatens reality. For example, in the case of the imaginary adultery (Hamburger & Hamburger, 1991), it is clear that the imagination of the relationship Sarah Austin has with her imagined lover might actually cause a rupture in her marriage. Finally, imagination can create new spheres of experiences, such as Stanislav entering into the worlds of astronomy or German television. Of course, imagination does not always lead to new life options. Sometimes daydreams and fantasies remain at the level of imagination. People might imagine alternative life choices – of living in the countryside, of becoming independent, of being an artist – which never become reality. Even so, these “unlived lives” (Phillips, 2013) or “possible selves” (Markus & Nurius, 1986), these variations of our lives, are a very real part of who we are (James, 1890). Even though a person might never become an artist, her not-being an artist might colour her evaluation of her actions, guide her leisure time activities, or orient her choices of friends.

Synthesis: Creating one’s life In the current chapter, we have considered imagination in the lifecourse. From our sociocultural, developmental perspective, imagination develops as people explore their proximal spheres of experience and develop interactions with others, together as interactions with things, in emotionally significant situations. As with any other developmental principle, the explorations of privileged situations, in specific spheres, allows the person to develop a rich experience, both of what is, but also, of what was, will be and could be (or not). As people move through life, proximal experiences turn into distal ones, and as the person explores the diversity of experiences than society, present and past, offers them, these can be enriched. Imagination can thus best be defined as emerging as recursive process, through one’s experiences in the world, so as to generate possible worlds, which in turn affect the lived worlds. At this ontogenetic level, imagination is triggered by many daily situations, and again, can be nourished by a variety of resources on which the child or the adult can grow. Imagination has diverse outcomes, from immediate emotional release and contemplation, to the creation of new objects. At the scale of the lifecourse, imagination might in addition participate in the creation of life bifurcation and the orientation towards one or another, to the emergence of new life paths, and the subsistence, as distal experiences, or life-paths never lived. Imagination thus plays a key role in the personalization of our lives, or in what can be called in the “emergence of the subject” (Zittoun, 2012b, p. 259). People may live in the same circumstances, face comparable difficulties, or confront the same limitations; yet imagination, although it is culturally guided, is every person’s

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unique creation, and freedom (Zittoun, 2014a). In that sense, one of the main outcomes of imagination at the scale of the lifecourse, is that is contributes to the “melody of our living” (Zittoun et al., 2013, p. 1). There is a unique style with which each of us deals with the unexpected; a style that evolves with time, like our style of handwriting or painting, yet, despite changing, it also retains continuity. Hence, rather than locating human individuality in personality traits, we would place it in the individuals culturally guided, but nonetheless unique, continually developing, but nonetheless continuous, imagination and the spheres of experience that it opens up.

Notes 1 The notion of “imaginary companion” has been popularized by Taylor (1999), who defined it as: “an invisible character, named and referred to in conversations with other persons or played with directly for a period of time, at least several months, having an air of reality for the child, but no apparent objective basis. This excludes that type of imaginative play in which an object is personified, or in which the child himself assumes the role of the person in the environment”. (Svendsen, 1934, p. 988, quoted in Klausen & Passman, 2006, p. 354) 2 In communist Czechoslovakia, being married facilitated access to housing and enabled to have a wedding loan to start a life as a couple. The young people depicted in the six movies are quite typical of that time: sociological studies describe that in the 1980’s, a large proportion of people were marrying very young – just after secondary education – 55 per cent of children being conceived before wedding due to poor access to contraception (Fialová & Kučera, 1997; Fialová, 2007).

Chapter 7

Imagination in societal change

While experiences of imagination are necessarily individual, the human imagination is also deeply cultural and often distributed in time and within a community. It is cultural because the contents of imagination utilize cultural resources; ideas and images from stories, books, films, games and common sense in general contribute to both the structure and content of imaginary experiences (Zittoun & Cerchia, 2013). The horizon of an individual’s imagination is partially set by society (Chapter 4). It is an obvious, but revealing, fact that for the vast majority of human history it was impossible for people to imagine space travel, intelligent robots, or even telephones. The earliest attempts at such imaginings seem limited, and saturated with the culture of their time. That is to say, imagination that significantly escapes the semiotic universe of its time is exceptionally rare. Moreover, it is to say that the majority of imagination does not necessarily entail novelty, and that in a mundane sense, most imagination flows quite predictably along the currents of contemporary culture. Our focus in this chapter, however, is not so much on the cultural nature of imagination (which has been reviewed in Chapter 4 and demonstrated in Chapters 5 and 6), but rather upon the way in which imagination is distributed in communities, that is, how members of a community of imagination can incrementally build upon one another’s imaginings to create and maintain imaginary universes, entire semiotic universes of possibility that are usually far beyond the capacity of a single individual to create. Thus, in the current chapter, we are dealing not with individuals per se, but with traditions of imagination. In these cases many people participate in the same imaginary scenario, contributing to it and feeding into it, and, as we will see, this can unleash the power of collective action. Communities of imagination can become galvanized by a vision of the future and seek to institute it, leading to sociogenesis, that is, the development of society itself. There is a continuum between, on the one hand, personal imagination which is idiosyncratic and pertaining to the life of the given individual and, on the other hand, more distributed imagination in which many people have similar imaginations about issues of collective concern. For example, Sarah Austin’s imaginary adultery is quite personal both in its content and its effects (although, of course, it draws upon shared cultural resources). In contrast, in Třeštíkova’s (2009) Studies

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of marriage, we have seen many of the partners participate in a collective imagination about the possibilities opened up by the end of communism in what was then Czechoslovakia (Chapter 6). These more shared imaginings are sustained by a community, not only are the resources drawn from the community, but also the triggers and consequences pertain to the community. This chapter will explore how distributed imagination is built up within traditions and communities and the potential consequences of these imaginations. First, we will examine how humans have imagined the moon, specifically the imagination which led up to the moon landings. Second, we will examine less successful and more turbulent utopian imagination, which have led many to walk the path from dreams to revolution. In each case we will see how imagination is distributed in a social milieu, not only drawing on cultural resources, but also galvanizing communities of practice, with imaginings building on prior imaginings, until whole semiotic universes adrift from paramount reality begin to guide the trajectory of societies.

Agency and imagination Beyond proximal experience lies human imagination. European maps from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries tend to have Europe quite well mapped, with the details getting fuzzy around Africa and Asia, and then, beyond the known, there would be drawings of wonders and dangers, treasures and sea-monsters (Mittman, 2006). Consider, for example, the Hereford mappa mundi painted around 1300. The map includes known landmarks, cities such as Jerusalem and Paris, and established sea routes. However, towards the edges of the map things become more fantastical: angels, monsters, golden cities and demons appear. On the one hand there are the familiar landmarks of Babylon and Jerusalem, while on the other hand there is a Minotaur, violent tribes, potential riches and people battling a griffin. Although the boundaries of what is known have shifted, the same happens today. People imagine life on other planets being either a source of wisdom and technological advance or an impending invasion with the resultant subordination of earth (or, in many Hollywood variants, the heroic resistance of humans). The point is that in each case, beyond what is known becomes a projective canvas for both our hopes and fears. In the process of exploration Europe “discovered” the New World of the Americas (Elliot, 1970). This encounter opened up a projective canvas. Were the natives peers, barbarians or pagans who needed new rulers? Or, were the natives living in a Golden Age? Was this new land dangerous and diseased? Or, was this the wellspring of untold riches and opportunity? The New World was used by critics of European society to point to alternative idealized societal configurations without greed or money (Elliot, 1970). In short, early representations of the New World reveal more about Europe’s concerns than about the New World per se. European’s imagination of distant lands shaped international relationships. For instance, in the eighteenth century, many visitors travelled to Tahiti with the

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expectation of finding a paradise, but that is not the reality that they found (Childs, 2013). Equally, in the nineteenth century, Japan was so much beyond what was known in Europe, that using the imagination was advocated as the only way to apprehend it. Hence once of the promoters of Swiss-Japan exchanges wrote about the difficulty to understand Japan with scientific methods, encouraging readers of his accounts “to give free reign to imagination” (Humbert, 1870, quoted in Gonseth, Doyen, Knodel, & Mayor, 2014, p. 14). While there can be little doubt that the imagined other beyond the borders of our own experience is a product of our own desires and anxieties, these images of the possible also serve an important function: they are part of a collective semiotic guidance system (Valsiner, 1998), encouraging society to explore, and to voyage into possibility. Indeed, all human travel, and exploration in particular, is motivated by an imagination of a future that lies beyond the horizon of the present and which is as-yet not actualized (Gillespie, 2007a). Embarking on a journey is an act of agency in the sense that it aims to turn an imagined possibility into actuality. But the human imagination is not only “real” because it transforms the future, but also because it impacts paramount reality. The human imagination in itself can change how humans think about themselves. Today the earth has been sufficiently mapped so as to limit the possibility for new encounters, and accordingly the human imagination has increasingly made the leap to other celestial bodies. Actual others and real encounters are not necessary. As we will see, there is a long tradition of imagining encounters with beings from other planets, and, despite being imaginary, these encounters have had a significant impact on the course of human history. Imagined trips to the moon, trips to Mars, conversations with Martians, and utopian visions of the future have all had an impact on human’s sense of self – without any “real” encounters taking place. One domain in which we can clearly see imagination leading collective agency is in the imagination that led people to walk on the moon. Rather than imagination reflecting actuality, or being derivative of actuality, it fed forward into the construction of what became actuality. Moreover, as we will see, this imagination enabled humans to imagine themselves in a new way, as collective members of planet earth.

Imagining the moon: From fantasy, to science fiction, to actuality The moon, by virtue of its size in the night sky and regular orbit, has been a salient object in many societies. While it had practical uses for marking time and navigation it has also been the subject of art and imagination in many societies. For example, both the ancient Greeks and the Romans had goddesses for the moon, called Selene and Luna respectively, both of whom have been lavishly depicted riding a chariot that pulls the moon across the sky. Selene, a personification of the moon, was often depicted with a crescent moon on head or shoulders. Such objectification of the moon, arguably, enabled the ancient Greeks to make meaning about the moon and thus domesticate the moon into their world view.

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The idea that one might travel to the moon only became possible once the moon was conceived of as like the earth, that is, as a landscape that one could conceivably traverse. This Copernican view of the universe gained significant momentum with the invention of telescopes. In 1609 Galilei observed that the moon is not smooth, as had previously been assumed. He observed and mapped a landscape of mountains and craters – which were assumed to be volcanic. Thus telescopes, as tools, enabled people to see the moon as a landscape, and thus they spurred the imagination of the moon as a place that might, like the earth, be walked upon or even inhabited. While no serious scientist maintained that the moon might be inhabited, it was an idea that caught the public imagination at various times. For example, in 1835, there was a spoof article in the Sun, a New York newspaper, which reported “findings” from Sir John Herschel, a prominent astronomer of his time, showing that the moon is inhabited. The premise to the article was that Sir John Herschel had been in possession of a new powerful telescope that had revealed bison, unicorns, bipedal beavers and bat-winged humanoids inhabiting the moon. Figure 7.1 is one of the drawings which accompanied the article. While obviously a spoof article, it was a successful spoof precisely because many people of the time were taken in by it. Once the moon was imagined as a place, with a landscape, then the possibility of traveling to the moon gained in ascendency. Initial ideas were fantastical. Lucian, in True history, has his characters deposited on the moon after seven days caught

Figure 7.1 Bat-winged humanoids on the moon (1835, Licensed under Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons)

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in a whirlwind (Fredericks, 1976). Johannes Kepler, in his 1608 Somnium, utilizes a combination of dreaming and spirits (Chen-Morris, 2005). Francis Godwin, in the 1638 story The man in the Moon, has his hero carried to the moon by a harnessed flock of swans (Godwin, 1638/1971). However, in the nineteenth century technology begins to provide more plausible means of travelling to the moon. Jules Verne wrote two books, From the Earth to the Moon (1865/2009) and Around the Moon (1870/2005), which had a huge impact on the popular imagination of the moon. Although these stories do not go into any detail on what might be on the moon, they are notable for the detailed discussions of how one might actually get to the moon. Specifically, Verne introduced the idea that a projectile containing humans might be shot towards the moon, an idea anchored in the cannon technology of his time. It is important to recall that at this time heavier-than-air flight had not yet been demonstrated (hot air balloons were popular, but they had altitude limits). Specifically, Verne appropriated existing knowledge about large cannons, and speculated that even larger canons might be able to shoot humans beyond the earth’s gravity. This idea, grounded in the existing technologies of cannons, marked a key move from the fantastical toward the possible (McCurdy, 2011). Verne even introduced the idea, later put into practice, of steering space projectiles by means of rocket power. The imagination of inhabitants on the moon returns in H. G. Wells’ The first men in the Moon (1901/2003). The plot is that two men use new technology to travel to the moon, where they find an exotic landscape, magnificent fauna, and an alien species called Selenites (after Selene the goddess of the moon for the Greeks). Initially, there is a radio transmission between earth and the moon, with a lot of potential for human learning from the Selenites. However, the transmission ends abruptly when the Selenite leaders learn of the human propensity for war. This ending stimulates critical reflection: Do humans have a propensity for war? This question only becomes possible once alternative species enter our imagination, and thus we see how the mere act of imagining that there are other beings can recursively stimulate a change in our self-representation. Arguably a high point in the imagination of the moon comes with Georges Méliès’ 1902 film, Le voyage dans la lune. This short film builds upon previous ideas. The means of traveling to the moon utilizes a cannon technology similar to that previously described by Jules Verne. Once on the moon, the landscape is rugged and mountainous, as described by Galilei. Incorporating prior ideas of new fauna and alien species, Méliès’ film also has rapidly growing mushrooms and Selenites who explode when hit. Another common theme in this emerging genre is “earthrise”, which occurs when the intrepid explorers whether in space or on the moon, turn back upon earth, to see it rise in the darkness of space – in just the same way as the moon rises for us. Figure 7.2 shows the explorers in Le voyage dans la lune gesticulating and waving their top hats and umbrellas in excitement as they watch earthrise. As with previous imaginings of the New World or alien worlds, Le voyage dans la lune is also a reflexive social comment on the society from which it emerged.

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Figure 7.2 Earthrise in Le voyage dans la lune (Licensed under Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons)

Specifically, it can be seen as a comment on the attitude underlying scientific progress and imperialism. The explorers encounter an alien species, from which there could be so much to learn. But, rather than engage in any meaningful dialogue with the Selenites, the explorers discover that they are easily killed. They proceed to kill several, then they kill the Selenite king, and they return to earth with a Selenite – who is paraded and ridiculed in the streets, while the explorers are handed oversized medals for their triumph. The superior and aggressive attitude of the explorers, their disregard for everything of interest on the moon, and their disrespect of the Selenites is arguably a critique of European colonial attitudes and imperialism. Indeed, if the moon is replaced with the new world, then one has a not too fanciful account of the conquest of the new world. Le voyage dans la lune reveals the key aspects of the loop of imagination. First, there are triggers, such as the dissatisfaction with colonialism and the emerging techniques of film. Second, cultural resources are utilized, such as specific ideas and tropes about the moon and space travel. Third, we see how the imagination of an individual, in this case Georges Méliès, exists within a larger collective imagination which spans many decades. Finally, the consequences of this loop of imagination, range from the short to the long term. In a most immediate sense, Méliès’ film excited audiences across Europe and the USA, and it is considered the original science fiction film. But, in a longer term sense, the emotions it

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aroused and the possibilities which it toys with, likely contributed to the fact that in the 1960s humans did land on the moon. The imagination of going to the moon reached a new height when injected with Cold War anxiety. In the 1930s and 1940s technological advances in rocketry moved science closer to travelling to the moon, but, the idea did not fully catch the public imagination. However, in 1957 the conditions for the imagination changed fundamentally when the USSR successfully put a satellite into orbit. Neither the USA nor the USSR were likely fully aware of the significance of this event on the global imagination. Sputnik 1 was not designed to gather data, rather, it was designed to broadcast a radio signal. Orbiting the earth every hour-and-a-half, it let it be known to all that the space race had begun. In the USA the popular imagination exploded: Was the satellite spying? Could it fall from the sky? Was the satellite carrying a nuclear weapon? (see McCurdy, 2011, for a good account of these public anxieties). In the USA the Dow Jones fell over 10 per cent and Eisenhower saw his popularity fall over 20 points. The number of UFO sightings in the USA in the months before Sputnik 1 was 46 per month, while immediately after it was over 200 sightings per month (Condon, 1969). In short, Cold War anxieties provided a massive trigger, or spur, to the imagination of manned space flight. Indeed, this imagination became so intense that in 1961 President Kennedy was forced to announce the ambition of putting a person on the moon – despite there being little practical or scientific benefit to putting an actual person on the moon (as opposed to sensing equipment). Thus, we see not only how triggers can operate at a global scale (nationalism and Cold War anxieties) but also how a community of imagination, such as the USA, can commit vast economic resources to turn what had been inconceivable and then fantastical into actuality. As the space race between the USA and the USSR gathered pace, the imagination about the moon became more concrete, less fantastical and more guided by practical concerns. New knowledge removed the crevices of the unknown in which the fantastical imagination thrives. In 1959 the USSR successfully landed the probe Luna 2 on the moon, and the probe was not greeted by Selenites. Thus, the popular imagination focused increasingly on the technical details such as how to escape the earth’s gravity, how to land on the moon without crashing, how to live in zero gravity, and so on. As the horizon of the known expanded to include the moon, so the horizon of the unknown in which imagination thrives, was pushed further out into space. First the imagination moved to other planets, such as Mars (e.g., Meredith, 1939), Venus (e.g., Farley, 1924) and even beyond our galaxy. Imagination of intergalactic explorers was evident in the surge of reports of UFOs and alien abductions that preceded the moon landings (Bowen, 1969). In Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clark’s 2001: A space odyssey produced in 1968, the journey takes viewers not only distant planets, but also to another dimension of existence – arguably, operating at the very edge of what could be imagined at the time. Of course, there has been an active minority who have insisted that the moon landing never occurred, and as such, they have escaped the constraints of established knowledge.

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As our knowledge of the moon expanded into what had been imagined, we can see how the imagination had a guiding influence on that expansion. One can trace technical details and overall design details moving from the realm of imagination into the realm of actuality, albeit, usually with substantial modification. For example, the very idea of using rocket power, using controlled explosions to slow descent, having orbiting satellites and space stations all originated in science fiction. But more than these details, the imagination provided the guiding ambition, the vision, and even the emotion which led countless people to dedicate their lives to this task. Borman, with his colleagues Lovell and Anders, were the first humans to fly around the moon as part of the Apollo 8 mission. Borman, referring to the Jules Verne books, wrote in a letter that “Generations of American schoolboys – including Capt. Lovell, Maj. Anders and I – have been fascinated by the books [. . .] In a very real sense, Jules Verne is one of the pioneers of the space age” (Daytona Beach Morning Journal, 1969, p. 37). These books are also known to have inspired Arthur C. Clark, who in turn, inspired a generation of rocket scientists and astronauts (McCurdy, 2011). But, in a larger sense, what really made the moon landings happen was that the American public participated in the imagination. It was because it was a huge community of imagination that the coffers of government were opened, and more than one hundred billion dollars (normalized to 2010) was committed to the task (Lafleur, 2010). Not only did imagination lead people to the moon, but people going to the moon transformed the human imagination of the earth (Farr, 1999). LIFE’s publication 100 photographs that changed the World (2003) selected “earthrise” for its front cover. The image of the earth, as seen from space, was a motif in many early narratives of going to the moon (i.e., see Figure 7.2). Anderson (1993) argued that the imagination of a national community, a community larger than any one individual could ever encounter, only really became possible with the advent of the printing press and the mass media. What the preceding history of our imagination of the moon has revealed is that imagining encounters on the moon enabled humans to imagine themselves as war-like (The first men in the Moon) and imperialist (Le voyage dans la lune), while the image of earthrise enabled humans to imagine the earth as fragile (earthrise became an iconic image for the environmental movement) and vulnerable or easily dominated (hence the race between the USA and USSR to control space). In just the same way as the imagination of the moon itself has been heterogeneous, equally the consequences of those imaginings on our self-representation have been heterogeneous, with some viewing the occupation of space through the lens of national pride and others fearing domination. As with the earliest maps of the world, the space beyond the horizon of the known contains an imagination charged by both hopes and anxieties. These potent imaginings have led humans to embark on projects to turn the fantastical into actuality, as with the moon landings. However, more often than not, pursuing imagined futures leads to unintended outcomes (Merton, 1936). The failure to actualize that which has been imagined is, perhaps, best illustrated with the utopian imagination.

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Utopia: Imagination vs. actuality The idea of utopia, a place where everything is perfect, is longstanding. However, the term was introduced by Thomas More in 1516 as part of a fictional narrative about an island in the Atlantic with a very perfect form of life, which he termed “utopia” from the Greek meaning “no” (ou) and “place” (topos). Utopias, by virtue of being “no-place” and relating to an impossible perfection, are quintessentially products of the human imagination. Yet, despite being “fantastical” dreams of utopia have exerted a powerful influence on human history. Thus, as we will see, utopia is used both to describe a non-existing place that is used to critique the present and as a blueprint for societal reconstruction. First, let us consider the collective imagination of utopia itself, its social history, and the accumulation of cultural resources for imagining utopia. Arguably, humans have had a very long history of imagining the perfect life, the good life or the Golden Age. However, the concept of utopia really begins with Thomas More’s (1516/2002) book Utopia, in which a very earthly vision of societal perfection is described in great detail. Utopia is set in contrast to the social ills of Europe, such as war, crime, disease, poverty and starvation. The island of Utopia is an administrator’s dream, the villages and households are of equal size, everyone is productively engaged, and everyone is so satisfied that strife both between people and between Utopia and other nations is minimized. A defining feature of Utopia is the idea of property being held in common. This basic idea also appeared in Bacon’s (1624/1901) New Atlantis, but Bacon adds into the mix an emphasis on science as a means to advance the utopian community, and becomes a core ideal underpinning socialist utopias. More and Bacon both used utopias as a foil to critique European society. By imagining how things could be different, they opened up a space for critiquing the status quo (Elias, 2009). Other authors, however, took a more programmatic stance, aiming to work out the details of how society could be improved in the direction of Utopia. An early example is provided by Gerard Winstanley, in seventeenth century England, who set up communities on common land, distributing the fruits of the collective labor to the collectivity. Winstanley argued that there was nothing in nature implying that only a minority should own the earth: “that part that hath the earth, hath no right from the law of creation to take it to himself and shut out others; but he took it away violently by theft and murder” (1650/2006, p. 164). One can also find traces of utopian ideals in the ideas behind the American and French Revolutions. But, arguably, a culmination of this tradition of utopian thinking is in The communist manifesto, written by Marx and Engels (1848/1967). This manifesto advocated abolishing land ownership, stopping all inheritance, introducing free education and letting the state organize labor based on scientific principles. This utopic vision of societal progress has been central to many communist revolutions, from the Paris Commune to the Cuban Revolution, but we will focus only on the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.

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The role of art and imagination in spurring the utopian dreams that led to the Bolshevik Revolution has been emphasized by Stites (1989). The early 1900s was a time of huge technological change, and beliefs about the potentials for progress were in ascendance. In both Europe (Beaumont, 2009) and America (Roemer, 1976) utopian imaginations were surging. Stites (1989, p. 3) describes pre-revolutionary Russia as undergoing a “surge of futuristic fantasy”. One of the most popular novels of pre-revolution socialist utopian fiction was Red star, by Alexander Bogdanov’s (1908/1984). Bogdanov was a Bolshevik revolutionary, moving between being front line on the barricades and prophesizing the future socialist utopia (Stites, 1989). He chose to set his communist utopia on Mars, a choice likely inspired by observations of canals on Mars which had captivated the public imagination (Lowell, 1906; Crossley, 2011). The novel begins with the hero, Leonid, caught up in the 1905 Revolution. Leonid becomes aware that one of his colleagues is from the planet Mars which has a thriving socialist utopia. Leonid is invited to make the trip to Mars. During the flight to Mars there is the familiar motif of looking back at earth. Leonid looks at the peaceful vista imagining the emotional intensity of the struggles and suffering upon the surface. He is reminded of the blood being spilt in the revolution for a better future. One of the Martians replies: “in order to wage a struggle one must know the future. And it is for the sake of such knowledge that you are here” (Bogdanov, 1908/1984, p. 47). When Leonid arrives on the “red planet” he finds an advanced socialist society, with comfortable living quarters set among gardens above ground, and productive factories beneath the surface. The economy, being centrally planned, is well ordered and productive. The populace are educated and well taken care of. Children are particularly well cared for in children’s colonies, where all age groups mix together into a microcosm of society. Leonid explores the Martians approach to all aspects of society, including factories, art, love, divorce, education, politics, science, illness, death and, of course, the canals. Red planet and similar utopian novels were popular in pre-revolutionary Russia, Stites (1989) argues, because they answered to the anxieties and fantasies of administrators, peasants and the intelligentsia. The administrators felt that Russia, sprawling from the Baltic to the Pacific, was difficult to govern, defend and modernize. The peasants, positioned as in need of modernization, were anxious about controlling the direction of change. The intelligentsia celebrated the peasants but they were also shamed by the peasants’ oppressed and basic condition. In short, the major sectors of Russian society wanted something better, something that could be called progress. Arguably these anxieties were triggers not only for enjoying communist utopian fiction, but also for the motivation to turn these utopian dreams into actuality. The Russians were not the first to try and institute communism. One can find traces of the idea in the “leveling” movement led by Gerrard Winstanley, whose followers occupied land and farmed it in common during the seventeenth century in England (Shulman, 1989). The idea of levelling inequality was also evident in the French Revolution, specifically in the writings of François-Noël Babeuf and

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Sylvain Marechal, and in the Paris Commune of 1871, specifically in the writings of Charles Fourier (Fourier, 1829; Beecher, 1990). In the Russian Revolution, “levelling” wealth inequality was also common, but as the idea met with reality, it took many diverse forms – such as redistributing clothes, rent income, land and surplus production (Stites, 1989). Thus gradually, imagination led actuality, but at a collective level, and also at the level of individual lives, with authors such as Bogdanov moving from the writing table to manning the revolutionary barricades. Step-by-step and in a range of different societies utopia moved from being a fictional nowhere to a potential future state which could become institutionalized through a reorganization of society. Moreover, rather than being something inevitable, the images of utopia often became something which had to be instituted through effort, and maybe even sacrifice. Indeed, Lasky (1976/2004) has argued that utopian dreams invariably lead to violent outcomes as the dream clashes with reality. Utopias, Lasky (1976/2004, p. xx) argues, tend to fail, and this leads to revision, dogma and heresy because they are founded upon a “triple error: utopia conceived as a sterile monolithic harmony; revolution as a dogmatic commitment to total change and violent reconstruction; principles of hope and belief transmogrified into an orthodoxy incompatible with heretical dissent or critical opposition”. Lasky’s point is that visions of utopia are as dangerous as they are seductive; one’s desire for them seems in proportion to their implausibility. Accordingly, taking up the challenge of turning a vision of utopia into reality entails confronting reality and the implausibility of the dream. But, rather than recognize the need to adapt the vision, to compromise the vision, the tendency has been a slide towards violent revolution, dogma and then heresy and associated persecutions, as the focus is upon adapting reality to the vision rather than the vision to reality. What is interesting in Lasky’s observation is that it shows clearly that sometimes reality does not dissolve untenable plans for societal reconstruction, instead, it is reality that is subordinated to the utopian imagination. Grand utopian visions gained a poor reputation in the second half of the twentieth century. After two world wars and many revolutions there was growing skepticism of meta-narratives (Lyotard, 1984). The collapse of the USSR, arguably the world’s most ambitious utopian project to date, also undermined the possibility of imagining communist utopias (Fukuyama, 2006). The march of progress towards a scientific-inspired utopia became questionable; dystopia, the antithesis of utopia, became an as-imaginable possible future (Moylan & Baccolini, 2003). However, the urge to imagine a better future has not been erased, and arguably, can never be erased. Ernst Bloch (1989) argued that the utopian imagination is evident, in small ways, in most disciplines and cultures. From science to architecture, from art to politics, there is an urge towards improvement. Most religions, he argued, evidence a utopian imagination. This primal urge, Bloch argued, was, however, often not given full expression by our contemporary culture. The scientific focus on the facts, or, the psychoanalytic focus on the past, he argued, held back our future orientation. While Bloch did celebrate Marxism, as a full expression of the utopian imagination, more recent authors tend to focus on smaller

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utopias. Little utopias (Unger, 2007) and “real utopias” (Olin Wright, 2010) entail small steps at improving the human condition, without the demand for a grand unifying narrative which is held above immediate practical and ethical concerns. Real utopias, according to Olin Wright, include local gardening projects and Wikipedia. Such utopias are a long way from the “nowhere” described by Thomas More, they are more tame, less threatening and much more plausible. The utopian imagination cannot be entirely erased because it is intrinsically linked to human agency. What our brief survey of utopian imagination reveals is not so much that utopias tend to fail, ending in dogma and millions dead. Rather, what they reveal is that there is a powerful human urge to make the world a better place (even if history teaches us that this urge is often misplaced and filled with unintended consequences, Merton, 1936). As Levitas (2004, p. 39) writes: “what is important about utopia is less what is imagined than the act of imagination itself, a process which disrupts the closure of the present” (Levitas, 2004, p. 39). In resisting the closure of the present, utopian dreams open up paths of action for the future. In being inspired by a utopian vision, humans find a way to make their own futures. In a sense, we imagine ourselves into our future existence. The problem, of course, is that despite creating our own futures, these futures rarely correspond to what had been imagined.

The sociogenetic imagination The loop of imagination entails a “stepping out” of the immediate situation, which can, in turn, have consequences for the immediate and future situation. We have seen this at the microgenetic level (Chapter 5), the ontogenetic level (Chapter 6), and the sociogenetic level (this chapter). At the sociogenetic level, the loop of imagination, however, is somewhat different from the microgenetic and ontogenetic levels because it subsumes the former. The sociogenetic level entails innumerable microgenetic instances of imagination, moments of individual reverie and daydream, which draw on the same resources and stepwise contribute to the development of the given imaginary sphere of experience. Equally, within the sociogenetic level, countless lifecourses are given shape and meaning from the shared dream. When we examine imagination at the sociogenetic level, we find “traditions” and “communities” of imagination. Within these semiotic streams it is difficult to pick out singular acts of imagination by particular individuals. Rather, what we observe is a “chain of distributed imagination” in which each generation appropriates and reconfigures the imaginings of the previous generation. For example, the Greek goddess Selene was a resource for many authors in the nineteenth century to imagine inhabitants of the moon as Selenites. There was continuity in how authors imagined the landscape of the moon and its fauna (with giant mushrooms making a regular appearance, in much the same way as canals would become a staple of the imagination of Mars). Jules Verne’s mechanism of getting to the moon using a cannon, was taken up and refined by Georges Miles. Moreover,

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Verne’s idea of steering spaceships using rocket power became reality in actual space travel. The sociogenetic imagination expands by building upon existing resources, utilizing images and narratives circulating in culture, but, also, its horizon is set by these resources. Jules Verne, Georges Miles and Alexander Bogdanov were all limited in their respective imaginations by the knowledge, technology and expectations of their time. Nonetheless, incrementally, step-by-step, this tradition of imagination escaped the confines of the actual, and a stable organized universe of meaning emerged; a shared province of meaning which, itself, could feedforward into even more extravagant departure from what was real. Each tradition of imagination is carried forward by displacements, condensations and figurations of pre-existing ideas or artifacts. For example, Verne’s spaceship is a condensation of cannon and vehicle, and, in Figure 7.1, we see inhabitants of the moon condensing properties of bats and humans. Thus, incrementally, with one psychological movement at a time, these traditions of imagination accumulate into elaborate and complex spheres of distal experience that run parallel to paramount reality, with their own internal logic and even with their own history. The Anglo-Saxon tradition of imagining the moon or Mars builds, over centuries, into a rich province of distal experience, that is, it becomes an independent semiotic realm with its own assumptions, reference points and even words (i.e., Selenites). Within this tradition individuals and authors are not free to imagine the moon or Mars anew; their imaginations invariably conform to the expectations of the given narrative universe. However, each act of imagination is also a building on and, in a limited sense, a re-imagination. Thus each act of imagination within the tradition feeds-forward, a recursive looping, reproducing and reconfiguring the resources that will form the basis for the next iteration within the given tradition. Thus, at the sociogenetic level the entire representational system, or province of meaning, evolves. Like a snowball accumulating mass, the representational system pulls into play resources in order to build an increasingly rich platform for distal experiences. The triggers driving the sociogenetic development of elaborate representations, platforms for distal experiences, such as landing on the moon or socialist utopias, are to be found in the concerns and anxieties of the age. The Copernican revolution and telescopes promised a new age of discovery. Concerns about war and imperialism motivated moral tales. Russian dissatisfaction and the desire to control progress motivated communist utopias. It was the fear of Soviet control of space that spurred the American project of putting people on the moon. The consequences of the sociogenetic imagination operate at the three levels, namely, microgenetic, ontogenetic and sociogenetic. First, at the short-term microgenetic level of individual experience, it is likely that fantastical spectacles of trips to the moon or communist utopias provided enjoyment, and release from mundane or even oppressive social conditions (see Chapter 5). Second, at the level of the individual lifecourse, these utopian dreams have contributed to the guidance of countless individual life trajectories (see Chapter 6). Third, at the

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longer-term level of society, these imaginations culminated in the multi-billion dollar project of putting people on the moon and the deaths of millions through revolution. But, beyond material outcomes, at a symbolic level these imaginings changed nations’ self-representation and thus the course of history. From the outset, More and Bacon used the foil of utopia to critique existing social arrangements. Imagining sophisticated and peaceful Utopians, Selenites or Martians can make us feel barbaric, imperialistic and war-like. Imagining the earth from space fosters imagery both of the “global village” of humanity, but also, our vulnerability. In short, imagining building these distal spheres of experience has changed human’s self-representation, enabled humans to re-imagine themselves.

Synthesis: The consequences of imagination In this chapter, we have examined imagination at the sociogenetic level, that is, the level of culture and society. The emphasis has been on the power of imagination to provide alternatives to the actual, and sometimes to provide possibilities for action. Of course, imagination does not always lead to action; sometimes it ruminates on the past, and sometimes it enjoys an inconsequential reverie. But even in such cases, the imagination has power, the power to engender certain feelings or, indeed, to escape certain feelings. The focus of this chapter, however, has been on the larger scale consequences of imagination. Even initially fantastical imaginations about the moon, we have shown, progressively created a sufficiently elaborated understanding of the moon so as to motivate and guide the project of landing people on the moon. The power of the imagination to alter the course of history is, perhaps, most evident in utopian projects. This is not to imply that utopias tend to be successful, indeed the historical record shows that they are spectacularly unsuccessful in fulfilling the original vision, but rather to say that it is in the clash between visions of utopia and actuality that history is made. Examining imagination at a sociogenetic level leads us to the central paradox of the imagination; although imagination is defined in opposition to “the real”, imagination is central to human’s agency and thus a basis for a process of worldmaking which will have very real effects (Gergen, 2015). Imagination fills in the space between what is, what could be and what will be (Vaihinger, 1924; Valsiner, 2014a). Even utopias, defined as nowhere and impossibly perfect, can have real consequences in their critique of actual states of affairs (Elias, 2009). Wars, revolutions, exploding spaceships and footprints on the moon are all very real, but the causal roots of these outcomes, which arguably are as real as the outcomes themselves, grow out of the human imagination.

Chapter 8

Imagination as freedom

The model of imagination that we introduced in Chapter 3 described imagination as a sequence: triggers lead to an uncoupling from the “here-and-now”, the looping out of the imagination pulls into play various cultural resources, and the subsequent return to the immediate situation can have a range of outcomes varying from the transient to history making. These loops of imagination vary on the dimensions of time, generalization and plausibility. Also, the loops can also be small, big or recursive – with each loop feeding-forward to subsequent loops. In the preceding three chapters we have used this model to analyse imagination within situated activities, along the lifecourse of the individual, and in societal change. In this final chapter, we will evaluate the proposed model. We conclude by broadening out, and demonstrating the importance of imagination for psychology. Specifically, we will argue that imagination is central to both agency and the emergence of the human subject.

How should one evaluate a model? As Habermas (1968, p. 3) has written, much of philosophy can be summarized as the attempt to answer the question: “how is reliable knowledge possible?”. What is striking is that the answer to this ostensibly simple question remains problematic. In line with our pragmatist assumptions, outlined in Chapter 1, we propose that theories cannot be evaluated in terms of how well they “mirror” reality (Dewey, 1929; Rorty, 1981). Rather, the reference point for evaluation needs to be human interests, that is, the extent to which the model opens up fulfilling paths of action. Models, within the pragmatist tradition of thought, are tools for fulfilling human interests; rather than mirroring the world, they enable us to interact with the world, to coordinate our actions in relation to the world, and, with variable success, make the world serve our desires (James, 1904). Thus the question becomes: “how well does a given scientific model serve the interests of its users?”. Human interests are, of course, variable. For the purposes of science, Habermas (1968) argues that there are three main human interests, namely, hermeneutic (understanding and insight), technocratic (prediction and control) and emancipatory (transcending our constraints). Within such a scheme, we argue that the model

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of imagination that we have outlined serves both hermeneutic and emancipatory interests. In the following subsections, we will show how the model provides insight, can guide research, and lead us to a more reflective and actionable (i.e., emancipated) relation to the human imagination. Description and insight In Chapters 5, 6 and 7 we used these concepts to describe and provide insights on specific cases of imagination at microgenetic, ontogenetic and sociogenetic levels. Our theoretical framework enabled us to reveal commonalities between phenomena that might otherwise have seemed quite different. For example, the model was able to describe both Charles managing to return to his camp with seriously burnt feet (Chapter 5) and also the trip to the moon (Chapter 7). In each case, and across all levels of analysis, we find not only the same sequence (i.e., triggers, content and outcomes), but we also find the same content (i.e., cultural resources, such as representations, symbolic resources, etc.), and we find that each instance of imagination can be described in terms of its temporal orientation, the extent of generalization and the degree of plausibility. Thus the model enables us to see all of the phenomena analysed in the preceding chapters as variants of the same process, namely, imagination. Revealing these linkages between ostensibly different phenomena has two implications. First, the model gives us a possibility to integrate and articulate disparate fields of psychology that are too often separated, or framed in opposition to one another. Our mid-range model was developed through our reading of diverse literature, from across developmental psychology, social psychology, anthropology, psychoanalysis and the history of ideas. More fields of research could be explored using the model, and this would lead to revisions in the model, making it more generalizable. Thus, the model could become a means to resist fragmentation in the psychological sciences (Yurevich, 2009; Zittoun, Gillespie & Cornish, 2009). Second, as a consequence of integrating such diverse psychological phenomena, the proposed model reveals the pervasiveness of imagination. Rather than being a strange, divergent or primitive phenomena, we have seen that imagination takes place in an wide variety of daily situations, as well as in exceptional events; that it occurs in the life of infants as much as amongst adults; that it can be very individual, but also, that it can be shared and lead to social transformation. Beyond the concrete examples we have shown, we actually claim that imagination is a pervasive, universal phenomena, playing a key role in the life of people and societies. The hermeneutic interest is to understand the world differently. The proposed model, we argue, enables us to re-conceptualize disparate domains as inter-linked, enabling us to see a common sequence (triggers, cultural contents and outcomes) across many psychological phenomena. We also hope, but only the reader can provide the evidence for this, that the model provides insight into the experience of imagination; that this model enriches, by virtue of conceptualizing it, the process of imagination.

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Future research on enhancing imagination A good theoretical model does not just describe a bunch of hitherto disparate stuff, and point out the commonalities; it should also point to the future, opening up the phenomenon for research and/or intervention. In this regard the proposed model is also useful. Specifically, if imagination has clearly defined triggers, moments of uncoupling and recoupling, used cultural resources, outcomes, and dimensions along which imagination may vary, then we have also identified points of focus for future research and/or points to target intervention. Creativity research has developed many techniques to support creativity, in schools and in companies (Osborn, 1953; Paulus & Yang, 2000). These tend to rely on models of divergent thinking (McCrae, 1987; Runco, 2004, 2006), with interventions focusing on being non-judgmental, relaxation, using metaphors and using stimulus material (Baer, 1996; Kaufman & Baer, 2006). Due to a relatively narrow focus on cognitive processes, these models have been criticized, with new approaches emphasizing the sociocultural processes underlying creativity (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997; Glăveanu, 2012; Glăveanu, Gillespie, & Valsiner, 2015; Tanggaard, 2014), with exciting research showing the links between personal experiences, life trajectories, and creativity (Maddux & Galinsky, 2009). The preceding chapters propose another sociocultural route for supporting creativity. In effect, our model goes beyond the simple idea of divergent thinking: it gives orientation to imagining. Hence, remembering, as imagination of the past, is often a condition for imagining the future, such as when teenagers think about their childhood dreams to define their future (Zittoun & de SaintLaurent, 2015); in the craziest dreams about the future are often ideas to guide the present, as in the case of Stanislav’s exploration of the stars (Chapter 6), or the trip to the moon (Chapter 7). Imagination can also be guided toward very concrete entities, such as a refurbished flat, or very general ones, such as the origin of the universe; and exploring implausible situations might be a good way to then explore more plausible ones, as the literature on thought experiments demonstrates (Brown, 1986; see Chapters 2 and 5). Hence, by identifying the dimensions upon which imagination itself varies, the proposed model provides a framework for supporting and guiding imagination in self and others. Being able to describe imagination using the dimensions of time, generalization and plausibility, opens up questions about whether a given attempt at being creativity has pushed as far as it might on these three-dimensions. Alternatively, if imagination runs dry, the model suggests seeking out new resources, with which to nourish the imagination, and so on. Finally, the model opens up the potential for a critical analysis of imagination, asking, what are the constraints upon imagination in a given context, whether these are social or whether they are embedded within the cultural resources themselves. Becoming aware of the dimensions of imagining, we can also become more observant of dangers to individual and collective imagination; as we will see below, political powers that suppress access to potential resources for

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imagining, or censor engagement with even implausible imaginary experiences, actually undermine people’s very capacity to imagine alternative futures. Cultivating resources and spaces for imagination Imagination, we have shown, is central to humans adaptation to an incompletely known future. It is part of our cultural heritage that enables us to think ourselves out of the immediate situation, to conceptualize alternatives, and thus to question the status quo. Thus, cultivating the resources and spaces for imagination is fundamental to having flexible, critical, and psychologically emancipated citizens. As we have seen, imagination is a response to triggers, often to uncertainty or dissatisfaction at both individual and collective levels. Imagination is the generating and simulating of alternatives, some of which might be very consequential, such as alleviating pain, overcoming fear, or creating new developmental paths for individuals or societies. In other words, imagination can play a role in challenging and changing the life of people and societies. Our future, in short, depends upon our capacity for imagination. If imagination is our way of dealing with the unknown, and if our future contains unknowns (as it surely does; Taleb, 2010), then we must treasure our resources and spaces for imagination, as these will be central to our capacity for meaning making and adaptation to the unknown. Let us consider how resources and then spaces for imagination can be cultivated in turn. First, fostering imagination demands preserving, in a given social environment or state of society, a wide set of cultural elements which might potentially become resources for imagining. Our proposal is that a rich set of resources for nourishing the imagination makes people and societies more adaptable and resilient in the face of ruptures. Throughout our enquiry, we have seen the importance for people and groups to have access to resources for developing rich imagination. This point is particularly illustrated by the situations in which political or social powers control access to cultural elements. Decades of communism in the former Eastern blocks led to cultural homogeneity; housing, clothes, music, lifestyle, movies, dreams were normalized; authors, film makers, musicians, politicians whose ideas fell out of a main line were treated as dissident, forbidden and sometimes threatened. This, to some extent, helps us to understand the relative homogeneity of the first years of marriage life of the young couples filmed by Třeštíkova (2009). In contrast, it also allows us to make hypothesis about the creative paths pursued by Pavel (Chapter 5) and Stanislav (Chapter 6) after the end of communism. In effect, both generated new possibilities for developing their activities and lifecourse; both had access and used resources from abroad that expanded the range of what could be generally imagined with – Stanislav with a satellite that gave access to German TV broadcast, Pavel when eating his first French fries. Such reflections must not end with the fall of the Berlin Wall; it is merely easier to see the constraints upon imagination in hindsight.

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Closer to us, we can consider the case of the financial crisis of 2008 (Ivashina & Scharfstein, 2010). The interesting thing about this crisis was that it was relatively unexpected and, moreover, ways of dealing with it were unclear. Economists, traders, bankers and politicians did not, on the whole, imagine that such a crisis would happen, and accordingly, the safeguards were not in place. Learning economics used to require an education in history, politics and psychology, but it had been increasingly reduced to a rationalist mathematical core (ISIPE, 2015). The textbooks had increasingly propagated a single vision of neo-liberal economics such that alternative ways of thinking were lacking both in the lead up to the crisis and in its aftermath. Accordingly, since the crisis there has been resurgence in exploring alternative economics models (e.g., Basu, 2010; Lucarelli, 2011). Moreover, there have been political movements aimed explicitly at broadening the curriculum on economics. For example, the “rethinking economics” movement, which is led by students of economics across the globe, explicitly aims to bring in more plurality to a discipline that has become overly narrow. Second, fostering imagination demands for a given social setting to maintain and preserve spaces for individual and collective imagining. It is not enough to protect cultural elements to guarantee that people will be free to use these resources to explore alternatives. The practice of imagination requires material, social and symbolic conditions that allow for exploratory thinking and imagining (Perret-Clermont, 2004; Zittoun, 2014b; Zittoun & Iannaccone, 2014). Spaces for imagining can be places allowing public debate, verbally or through the media, formal and informal discussions; urban or delocalized spaces for art and creation; as well as the possibility to write a diary or to use any other form of externalization of one’s experience, such as painting or music. In repressive conditions, it is not only cultural elements that are destroyed; it is the very possibility to speak about alternatives that are controlled. Such control is exerted via limitations of the media and the Internet, perceived or actual surveillance, and the cultivation of cultural norms that view such explorations as dissent. Controlling the spaces for imagining is an attempt to prevent the emergence of thoughts about alternatives, and thus prevent the emergence of action directed at such alternatives. Such control, in short, is an attempt to channel human agency in non-threatening directions. Resistance to such control usually begins with the double processes of finding access to forbidden cultural elements and developing safe underground spaces to create and discuss ideas (for instance in North Korea; Ahn, 2014). Such underground imagination tends to lead to abrupt revolutions. Conversely, a nation-state or a local community that protects and preserves spaces for imagination creates the conditions for deliberative and gradual changes at both the level of the individual and society. Generalizing, our enquiry has led us to a simple proposition: to be able to adjust to upcoming challenges and uncertainties, people and societies need to be able to play with alternatives (i.e., imagine), and this can only happen if they have access to the relevant cultural resources and if they have safe spaces for imagination. It is in the abundance of the most mundane and fantastic dreams that the ideas that will

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define a life or a future vision of society will emerge. An implication of this is that the diversity of literature, music, arts, history of ideas (and the museums, libraries and universities which house these cultural elements) need to be preserved and cultivated as potentially important future nourishment of our individual and collective imagination in the face of unknown challenges of tomorrow. The limits of imagination One might argue that our model of imagination, as a trigger-content-outcome loop, is too broad, and that according to this model almost all semiotic activity is imagination. The boundary condition for imagination is to be found in the concept of “looping”. Looping is the semiotic stream uncoupling from the immediate situation, and being guided by meaning structures from outside the situation, sometimes referred to as “stimulus-independent thought” (Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010, p. 932). That is to say, we have defined imagination as only pertaining to distal experiences: when peoples’ bodies are in a certain situation, but their minds, and thus their experiences, are, at a phenomenological level, originating from a different province of meaning. As we made clear in Chapter 3, our conceptualization does not include apperception and the ways in which imagination might infuse the direct perception of the immediate situation. Our definition of imagination encompasses fantasy, remembering, prospective planning, thought experiments, daydreams and reveries. Imagination is not the same as symbolic thinking, or thinking in general. Imagination does require symbolic capacity, namely using symbols to designate distal things, but not all symbolization or sign activity is imagination. For example, there is no necessary imagination in communicating either with another person or oneself. Imagination is different from thinking because the latter includes modalities that are far removed from imagination, such as hypothetico-deductive rationality, causal reasoning or symbolic logic. Moreover, because imagination can have different objects in different spheres of experiences, often distal, it can suspend the obligation to follow the laws of mathematics or logic. As shown by Harris (2000), a child knows that a bit of wood rubbed on a teddy bear in a box becomes a sponge to wash the bear in its bath, which allows her to deduce that a sheet of paper is a towel. The child could also decide that the bathtub is now flying away and that the water has become syrup, hence breaking the need to follow the rules of the proximal sphere of experience. In other words, imagination can build on reasoning or deduction, imagination can expand it, but, imagination is not constrained by it. One complex question concerns the extent to which imagination is limited by personal experiences. There is a tension here that we have to acknowledge. A central thrust of our conceptualization of imagination is that it enables people to go beyond immediate experience, to escape direct sensation, and participate in scenarios that have never existed. But we have also maintained that an individual’s life experiences are the primary resources for imagination, hence the importance of life trajectories (see also Gillespie & Zittoun, 2013; Zittoun & Gillespie, 2015b).

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To sharpen the point: to what extent can someone who has never experienced psychosis imagine what such an experience is like? To what extent can someone who has never experienced extreme violence or a near death experience imagine what such experiences are like? We would not want to propose any fundamental limits on the imagination. Technologies of the imagination have improved in the past (i.e., narratives, novels, films and video games) and they will likely become increasingly powerful in the future. Not only will the existing traditions of imagination become increasingly elaborated, with an increasing number of supporting cultural artifacts, but also new technologies of imagination will become available (i.e., virtual reality, more powerful psychotropic medication, or direct neural stimulation; Gillespie & O’Neill, 2015). Yet, despite there being no fundamental limits on the human imagination, we do maintain that directly having had a diverse range of experiences will nourish the imagination. Finally, let us consider the absence of imagination. It is certainly the case that some conditions reduce people’s conscious access to imagination or their capacity to express them. Social pressure or certain substance induced states can reduce people’s imagination, such as when soldiers during World War I tried not to think about the battles to come, through a focus on everyday life, letters to their homes and consuming a large amount of alcohol (Rousseau, 2003). Also, alexithymia, a diagnosed state of reduced emotional response, is often described as going with a reduced capacity to imagine (Leising, Grande, & Faber, 2009). However, such claims are based on experimental tests which have diverse conceptualization of imagination, from mental rotation (Czernecka & Szymura, 2008) to guided imagined scenes (Campos, Chiva, & Moreau, 2000) and make it very hard to determine if people have difficulties imagining, reflecting on their imagination, or verbalizing these. Altogether, we believe that there is no such thing as non-imagination in human beings (with the exception of catastrophic brain damage).

Imagination: Goal direction and agency The link between pathology and imagination raises the more general question of the extent to which people guide imagination or are, in a sense, guided by imagination. That is, to what extent is imagination a volitional act? One possibility would be to oppose cases in which imagination is intentional and goal directed (e.g., when someone is imagining what bookshelf would fit in a given space on a wall), while others are not (e.g., when one’s work is interrupted by a reverie). But, what if thinking about the books lying around, leads one to spontaneously have an idea for a new design of bookshelf? Conversely, what if a person’s undirected reverie leads them to make a life changing decision? We proposed distinguishing three aspects to the relation between imagination and agency. Firstly, there is a minimal form of agency in imagination, which is inherent to the act of imagining. In that basic case, imagination pertains to inner freedom or elementary agency, and lies in our basic capacity to uncouple from a proximal experience. Hence, agency occurs in all the instances where imagination

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takes place, in a not very deliberate manner, when our mind wanders, without any observable outcomes. This, minimally, allows us for some pleasurable time, relaxation or emotional change (Oppenheim, 2012). In extreme cases, it actually allows people to preserve some elementary freedom; for instance, if a person is in solitary confinement, imagination can provide an indispensable “escape” (Cohen & Taylor, 1976/1992). Secondly, agency can become more active, and applied on various aspects of the loop of imagination. This is the usual range of agency in imagination. Agency can bring to deliberate activity, in any aspect of the imaginary sequence. Hence, one can deliberately trigger uncoupling, by giving oneself time to imagine possible solutions to a task, by turning on the television to be guided in a distal experience, or to smoke marijuana to have one’s mind wandering. One can also more or less deliberately guide one’s imagination; for instance, by imagining tastes or colours to compose a dish, to explore situations more or less distant in time according to needs and social demands. For instance, typically, teenagers learn to engage in thinking about their future (after school or as adults) when asked by teachers and parents; this demand can become internalized and deliberate. Finally, people usually learn to control their way out of imagining. In addition, people can become deliberate and reflexive in their uses of resources (Gillespie & Zittoun, 2010), for instance by watching cheerful films when they need to relax, based on their passed experience; similarly, people become reflexive about their imagination and able to provoke and control them – as when imagining happy outcomes before a challenging event, or worse-case scenarios in order to be well prepared for an upcoming activity. Agency becomes more particularly evident when these distal experiences “override” the demands of the immediate situation. We have seen this transcending immediate situational demands occur at microgenetic, ontogenetic and sociogenetic levels. For example, at the microgenetic level, we examined the case of Charles (Chapter 5) who was able to overcome the pain in his burnt feet and make his way back to his camp by imagining that he was walking in snow. At the ontogenetic level, we examined the case of Stanislav (Chapter 6) who was guided in his life trajectory not so much by the immediate demands of his family as by his imagination of the stars. And, finally, at the sociogenetic level we examined how utopian revolutionary movements (Chapter 7) subordinate problems and dissent to the more distal utopian vision. Thirdly, the upper limit case of agency is that when imagination of an achievable future leads to deliberate actions. Such agency is based on what imagination has produced, and turns this product into a motive for an actual activity. For instance, after imagining a new bookshelf in one’s room, one might order wood to turn the idea into an actual shelf. In other words, acting on the basis of an imagined future is agency, which occurs at the moment when there is recoupling with the ongoing everyday situation. When dreaming to fly to the moon became a political, technical and scientific project, then the outcome of imagining became the motive and goal for socially shared activities (Chapter 7).

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We maintain that imagination always has an outcome, that even vicarious or gratuitous imagination leaves a trace. Imagination always has as minimal outcome some emotional experience; indeed, even at this minimal level it displays our fundamental freedom. Imagination is co-extensive with agency; whether it is experienced as inner freedom, as the subjective freedom of the mind, or whether it is the guiding beacon for individual or collective activities, is then a matter of where in the sequence of imagination it occurs. One can be the agent of the trigger, become active and deliberate in the use of resources and the direction of the imagining loop, or one can be subjected to imagination, but manifest agency in pursuing, or actualizing, the outcomes of imagination.

Subject and society emerging through imagination We have shown how the individual imagination is deeply cultural and collective. But, this is not to say that imagination “determines” either our subjectivity or our actions. Although it is produced through social processes, imagination can give us independence or agency from those same social processes. Human beings live in a complex and changing world, with experiences produced by a unique interaction of our living bodies with material, social and cultural environment. To make sense of their experience and to be able to act, humans and societies create relatively stable entities that remain reference points within the passage of time. These institutions, contexts, and semiotic constructions usually subsist over time, from one interaction to another one. However, the paradox is that these entities, which we have designated by the term spheres of experience, not only provide stability to experience in the flow of time: they also impose some force on people, giving experiences a direction. That is to say, spheres of experience make demands on people: schools cultivate good students; companies expect industrious workers; the institution of the army demands obedient soldiers, and so on. Moreover, these spheres of experience tend to be egocentric, demanding that the larger social world accommodate them: life is meant to adjust to the demands of work; friendship expects precedence over other friendships; loyalty to one religion precludes other religious convictions; joining one political party makes voicing the views of another political party heresy and so on. How, then, do people move out of coercive spheres of experiences, and through the tensions generated by their mutual contradictions? We believe that imagination is at the core of human freedom and agency, precisely because it allows navigating through these experiences, reflecting upon them, and defining one’s own standpoint and experience. As we have seen, imagination occurs as a microgenetic process, which allows leaving a given proximal sphere of experience. It allows exploring a personal or shared distal sphere of experience. Yet imagination is movement: it is the looping out, and looping back in, between distal and proximal experiences. Imagination allows us to disengage from any sphere of experience, and reassess one’s position in it. Imagination, in this sense, entails becoming an object to oneself (Gillespie, 2007b).

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As we have seen, imagination is inherently linked to agency; from the very basic assertions of inner subjectivity (Zittoun, 2007a, 2012b), to the more deliberate capacity to direct one’s imagination. Through the constant movement of our mind, and through the looping dynamics of our imaginings, we constantly recreate and assess our agency. In other words, we believe that imagination plays a central role in the emergence of the subject. One way in which the subject, as an agent, emerges has been discussed by Zittoun (2012b). The proposal is that the individual is at the intersection of several semiotic streams, including, the proximal experiences provided by the immediate situation, and various distal experiences provided, for example, by past experiences, shared discourses, norms, cultural artefacts and collectively produced images of possible futures. While many of these streams are not unique (other people participate in the shared discourses, cultural artefacts and images of the future, and equally, other people likely had similar past experiences and they may be in the same immediate setting), individuality, and the uniqueness of a person’s subjectivity, arises from the intersection of these streams. Specifically, these streams are very likely to be discordant, there can be a disjunction between the desires of the individual and the social norms, between past experiences and future plans, between the immediate setting and the available cultural artefacts. These tensions create the space in which subjectivity manifests (Zittoun, 2012b). Hence, subjectivity and agency entail creating distance from oneself, or as Mead (1934) wrote, becoming other to oneself by reacting to oneself as one reacts to others; imagination allows taking this distance and thus become subject and agent. At a societal level, these processes can have major consequences. Although it is individuals who do the imagining, at a psychological level, the cultivated spheres of distal experience can be shared with others, becoming increasingly crystallized into cultural elements, which in turn offer other people to have access to comparable distal experiences. Eventually distal experiences become real goals and motives for social change, and these transform society (Chapter 7). In other words, it is also through imagination that society has the power to recreate itself, whether to adjust and react to unexpected changes and difficulties, or as result of the initiative of some people or group. We have seen this occurring from Martin Luther King’s (Hansen, 2005) “I have a dream” speech, to social movements leading to the fall of the Berlin Wall (Engeström, 1999), to the Arab spring (Wagoner, Jensen, & Oldmeadow, 2012), and to new forms of economics and attempts to turn towns into green ecosystems. Thus, whether at individual or collective levels, human imagination is not disconnected from what is commonly called reality, it is part of the historical development of reality: there is a “recursive looping” between imagination and actuality. The actual stimulates and nourishes the imagination, and the imagination guides the actual – from microgenetic activities, to ontogenetic life trajectories, and even historical events (such as revolutions and going to the moon). This leads us back to the original relation between imagination and reality (Chapter 2). On the one hand, Aristotle’s theory of mimesis (Greek mimic/imitate): Art is

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judged to be beautiful and good the extent that it “mimics” reality. Art, according to this tradition, should reveal the timeless truth. Art, in short, is reproduction. The other side of the argument is Oscar Wilde’s anti-mimesis thesis that “Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life.” Wilde’s argument is that good art is a lie that inspires and changes humans. Art, and by extension the human imagination, is not meant to reproduce reality but rather to guide the creative energy of people to create their own future actuality: Schopenhauer has analysed the pessimism that characterizes modern thought, but Hamlet invented it. The world has become sad because a puppet was once melancholy. The Nihilist, the strange martyr who has no faith, who goes to the stake without enthusiasm, and dies for what he does not believe in, is a purely literary product. He was invented by Tourgenieff, and completed by Dostoevski [. . .] Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose. (Wilde, 1889/1995, p. 15) Hence, there is a “recursive loop” (Hacking, 1996) of the imagination, feedingforward into the future of the world, creating future personalities and events. Imagination is part of this feed-forward system that is culture: culture produces the imagination and imagination produces culture (Valsiner, 2014a).

Refocusing psychology on the imagination The empiricist movement in psychology superseded introspectionism over 100 years ago (Danziger, 1980). Empiricism shifted the focus from the study of mental life to the study of that which was observable and measurable. While this paradigmatic shift produced many insights, it also produced one major casualty; discounting the human imagination. The imagination suffered within this paradigm shift because it was associated with the non-real, non-observable and thus non-empirical. The empiricist movement tried to understand human behaviour in terms of past and present stimuli – both of which could be observed. But, it is also widely recognized that humans are not only motivated by what empirically exists or has existed. Across the psychological sciences it is accepted that humans are selfregulating goal-directed beings (Bandura, 1991; Zimmerman, 2000). But if humans are goal-directed then we need to confront the fact that humans are often guided not by what is, but what might be. Humans, as we have seen, spend much of their psychological lives amidst that which has no existence beyond the imagination. Contemporary psychological science, we suggest, has been excessively constrained by studying what is, or what was, because of an unexamined intuition that imagination is non-empirical. The preceding chapters, however, show that an empirical examination of the imagination is possible. There is no opposition between what is real and the imagination. Rather, the imagination is very real at a

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psychological level, and, moreover, it is often the source of very real outcomes in the life of the individual or society. Consider the natural science question of whether humans can build machines that enable flight. First it was not possible for humans to fly, and then it was possible; what was “untrue” became “true” – through a huge human effort. The gap between the imagined possibility of flying and actuality was hundreds of years of the recursive looping of a whole tradition of imagination, and many failed attempts. To understand how humans made a future in which machines can fly, one needs to take the human imagination seriously. In the psychological sciences the focus has been on what is (i.e., cognition, personality, social influences, genes, attitudes towards objects and representations of objects) or what is happening (i.e., migration, social movements and changing patterns of political preference or consumerism). But in so far as humans have agency, what humans are and what they becomes is inextricably bound up with humans representations of what might be, of alternative states of affairs, and event fantastical imaginations which set the outer limits of what is even conceivable. The seed of what is to come usually germinates in the imagination. For example, the name which a child receives, which becomes objective reality for the child and all who know them, begins as a possibility, as one option among many, as the surviving possibility after countless names have been discarded (Zittoun, 2004a, 2004b). Equally, every lifecourse is one path through an innumerable array of imagined possibilities (Chapter 6) and for every attempt to instantiate a utopian dream, there are countless dreams (Chapter 7). Not only have we argued that much change at individual and societal levels stems from the imagination, but also, that the absence of change can also be due to an absence, or an active curtailment, of imagination. Our enquiry has also shown that the study of imagination tends to be kept apart from the study of “real” issues. Imagination and playfulness tend to be limited to the domains of children and psychoanalytic settings. The proposition that we would like to conclude with entails a shift of perspective: in order to understand the individuals and society in the process of becoming, it is necessary to reintegrate imagination as core component of what is. Imagination is a phase in the process of change; it is produced by culture and society, it is fed by individual experience; but imagination also feeds-forward, changing individual lives and societies. Imagination is a key phase in the process of change precisely because the imagination is not constrained by what is; rather, imagination is freedom, it is a liminal space, a potential space, in which new ideas, alternatives to the status quo, can be explored. Imagination is the horizon of individual and societal becoming.

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Author index

Addis, D. R. 31, 50, 51 Ahn, J. H. 129 Amenábar, A. 65 Anderson, B. 6, 48, 59–60, 118 Andrews, M. 18 Ansermet, F. 6, 26, 37 Appadurai, A. 48, 59–60 Archambault, A. 19 Aveling, E.-L. 12, 44, 99 Bacon, F. 119, 124 Baer, J. 127 Bakhti, B. 1, 62, 66 Bakhtin, M. M. 67, 71–2 Baldwin, J. 95, 96 Baltes, P. B. 6, 10 Banaji, S. 22 Bandura, A. 135 Bangerter, A. 61 Barresi, J. 68 Bartlett, F. C. 16, 65, 70 Basu, K. 129 Bauer, M. 61 Beaumont, M. 120 Beckett, S. 66 Beecher, J. 121 Beghetto, R. A. 22 Benson, C. 63, 72, 95 Bergson, H. 4 Berk, L. E. 93, 108 Bernal, V. 47 Billett, S. 83–84 Bloch, E. 121 Boesch, E. E. 2, 63 Bogdan, R. J. 20, 32–5, 92–3

Bogdanov, A. 120–1, 123 Bouska, T. 11, 39, 69 Bowen, M. 117 Bradley, H. 105 Brandt, P. Y. 64 Bress, E. 46 Brinkmann, S. 40 Brown, J. R. 34, 84, 127 Bruner, J. S. 2, 31, 60, 67 Buber, M. 68 Burks, A. W. 54 Burnham, M. M. 93 Byrne, R. M. J. 18, 20, 32–4, 57 Campos, A. 131 Cerchia, F. 15, 18–19, 21, 64, 111 Chen-Morris, R. 115 Childs, E. C. 113 Chuengsatiansup, K. 47 Clegg, J. W. 67 Clot, Y. 81, 83 Coetzee, J. M. 47 Cohen, S. 39, 89, 132 Cole, M. 2, 7, 15, 19 Condon, E. U. 117 Cornish, F. 5, 12, 44, 66, 68, 93, 99, 126 Cournarie, L. 15 Craft, A. 22 Crapanzano, V. 57–8 Crossley, R. 57, 120 Csikszentmihalyi, M. 39, 127 Czernecka, 131 Danziger, K. 2, 16, 135 Davies, D. 22

162  Author index Decety, J. 31 De Moraes Ramos de Oliveira, Z. 19, 91 De Saint-Georges, I. 12 de Saint-Laurent, C. 7, 45, 66, 109 Descartes, R. 16, 65 Dewey, J. 3, 40, 52, 54, 80, 125 Diachenko, O. M. 18 Diatkine, R. 94, 96 Diep, A. 43, 83–84 Diriwächter, R. 26, 43–4, 47, 65, 69 Dostoyevsky, F. 66 Draaisma, D. 70 Duveen, G. 61 Edkins, J. 70 Edwards, C. P. 31 Einsiedel, E. 61 Einstein, A. 34, 85–6, 95–6 Elder, G. H. J. 6, 10, 108 Elias, N. 48, 119, 124 Elliot, J. H. 112 Engels, F. 119 Engeström, Y. 134 Epstein, S. 37 Farley, R. M. 117 Farr, R. M. 6, 118 Favreau, J. 73 Fialová, L. 106, 110 Fonagy, P. 93 Fourier, C. 121 Fredericks, S. C. 115 Freud, S. 17, 19, 23–7, 29, 37, 50, 67, 91–2 Frith, C. 32 Fukuyama, F. 121 Furlong, E. J. 15, 18 Galinsky, A. D. 127 Galton, F. 45 Gaskell, G. 61 Gee, J. P. 64 Gendler, T. 15, 18, 32 Geppert, A. C. 57 Gfeller, F. 81–3 Gibson, J. J. 70 Giele, J. Z. 108 Gilbert, D. T. 26, 43, 52, 130

Gillespie, A. 9, 12, 20, 23, 31, 44, 46, 48, 51–53, 56, 62, 65–6, 68, 70, 92–3, 96, 99–101, 113, 126–7, 130–3 Glăveanu, V. P. 23, 127 Gleason, T. R. 64, 67 Godwin, F. 115 Goffman, E. 7 Goldgar, A. xii Golomb, C. 18, 92 Goncu, A. 19 Gonseth, M. O. 113 Goodwyn, J. 105 Götz, M. 12, 65 Greco Morasso, S. 79 Green, A. 26, 69, 134 Grossen, M. 4, 7, 47, 72 Habermas, J. 125 Hacking, I. 135 Hale, B. D. 35 Hall, G. S. 11, 60, 101, 106–7 Hamburger, J. 1, 41–2, 55, 71, 98, 109 Hamburger, L. 1, 41–2, 55, 71, 98, 109 Hansen, D. D. 134 Hardeman, M. 19 Hargreaves, D. J. 12, 43, 63 Harris, P. L. 12, 18–20, 91–2, 130 Harvey, D. 58–9 Havel, V. 53 Herek, S. 73 Hermans, H. J. M. 67 Herzog, H. 63 Hobson, J. A. 37 Horng, J.-S. 80, 84 Howarth, C. 62 Humbert, A. 113 Ivashina, V. 129 James, W. 4, 16–19, 21, 38, 109, 125 Janet, P. xii Jasper, C. 68 Jenkins, R. 26 Jindal-Snape, D. 105 Jindra, I. W. 6 Johnson, M. 35 Johnson, M. L. 108 John-Steiner, V. 19

Author index  163 Jones, D. 73 Jones, E. E. 11, 93, 108, 117 Josephs, I. E. 20, 35, 39, 71 Jovchelovitch, S. 48 Kalampalikis, N. 61 Kant, I. 3 Kaplan, B. 6, 50, 95–6 Kaufman, J. C. 22, 127 Kilborn, R. 13 Killingsworth, M. A. 26, 43, 130 Kind, A. 18, 23, 69 Kirchner, W. 47 Kirkpatrick Johnson, M. 10 Klausen, E. 91, 110 Köhler, W. 53 Koldinskà, K. 106 Krakauer, J. 46, 67 Kubrick, S. 117 Kucera, M. 106, 110 Kumpulainen, K. 76 Lacan, J. 24, 37 Lafleur, C. 118 La Fougère, C. 35 Lakoff, G. 35 Lasky, M. J. 121 Lawrence, J. A. 97 Leising, D. 131 Leontiev, A. N. 53 Leudar, I. 67 Levi, P. 39, 63, 66 Lévinas, E. 4, 68 Lévi-Strauss, C. 63 Levitas, R. 122 Lévy-Bruhl, L. 71 Levy, R. 6, 108 Lewin, K. 54 Li, L. 91 Lillard, A. 31 Linell, P. 2, 72 Lindenberger, U. 6, 10 Lowell, P. 120 Lucarelli, B. 129 Ludwig, K. 84, 108 Lyotard, J.-F. 121 MacKeith, S. A. 18 Maddux, W. W. 127

Magai, C. 108 Magistretti, P. 6, 26, 37 Mar, R. A. 26 Marin, L. 53 Marková, I. 2, 4, 54, 61, 68 Markus, H. 109 Martin, J. 31, 92–3, 134 Marx, K. 119 Mayer, K. U. 6 McAllister, J. W. 65, 84 McCrae, R. R. 127 McCurdy, H. E. 115, 117–18 McKellar, P. 18 McLuhan, M. 59 McNeill, D. 35 Mead, G. H. 3, 31, 66, 68, 92, 134 Melchior, I. 73 Méliès, G. 115–16 Mercer, N. 76 Meredith, J. C. 117 Meric, R. 12 Merton, R. K. 118, 122 Miller, P. J. 63, 70, 91–2 Milliken, W. 46 Mittman, A. S. 112 Molenaar, P. C. M. 4, 13 Moran, S. 19 More, T. 119, 122, 124 Morris, J. M. 34 Moscovici, S. 4, 61 Moylan, T. 121 Muller Mirza, N. 76 Nathan, T. 37 Nelson, K. 69–70, 75, 90–1, 93–4 Nesselroade, J. R 6 Nisbett, R. E. 11 Nolan, C. 73 Norton, J. D. 34, 84–5 Nurius, P. 109 Oatley, K. 21 Oettingen, G. 26 Oppenheim, L. 47, 53, 89, 132 Oris, M. 108 Osborn, A. 127 Overton, W. E. 32, 108

164  Author index Paletz, S. B. F. 22 Paulus, P. B. 127 Peirce, C. S. 3, 5, 40, 54, 84 Peisach, E. 19 Pelaprat, E. 15, 19 Pereira, S. 26, 43, 44, 47, 65, 69 Perelberg, R. J. 70 Perret-Clermont, A.-N. 4, 76, 129 Persson, P. 63 Phillips, A. 5, 70, 109 Piaget, J. 18–19, 92 Pillsbury, W. B. 41 Pisarik, C. T. 26 Ploszay, A. J. 36 Poddyakov, N. N. 22 Rabinovich, E. P. 12 Rajala, A. 76–77 Rayward, W. B. 97 Rebetez, M. 86–7 Reddy, V. 75, 90 Reese, E. 6, 70 Reijnders, S. 71 Remarque, E. M. 65 Ribot, T. 18–19 Ricoeur, P. 63 Roberts, K. 105 Rodriguez, C. 93 Roemer, K. M. 120 Root-Bernstein, M. 92, 96 Rorty, R. 54, 125 Roth, I. 15, 16 Roudinesco, E. 6 Rousseau, F. 131 Rubin, L. 91 Runco, M. A. 127 Russ, S. W. 91–2 Ryan, P. 105 Salazar Orvig, A. 4, 72 Salgado, J. vii, 67 Säljö, R. 4 Salvatore, S. 26, 37 Sapin, M. 6, 108 Sartre, J.-P. 17 Sato, T. 7, 105, 106 Schacter, D. L. 31, 50, 51 Schuetz, A. 7–8, 71 Schwebel, D. C. 67

Shanahan, M. J. 10 Shanley, M. L. 46 Sheridan, D. 99 Shulman, G. M. 120 Shyamalan, M. N. 65 Simon, J. 94, 96 Singer, J. L. 12, 15, 18, 21, 23, 26, 67, 69, 91–2, 98 Smith, P. K. 91–2 Smolucha, F. 19 Solomon, Z. 43 Spencer, H. 66 Spielberg, S. 65 Spini, D. 6, 108 Staudinger, U. M. 6, 10 Sternberg, R. J. 22 Stites, R. 120–1 Taleb, N. N. 128 Tamburrini, J. 18 Tanggaard, L. 127 Tateo, L. 83 Taylor, L. 39, 89, 132 Taylor, M. 67, 110 Tisseron, S. 5, 29, 46, 64, 70 Tomasello, M. 53, 90 Třeštíkova, H. 1, 60, 67, 101, 105–7, 111, 128 Trevarthen, C. 74–5, 90, 93 Turner, V. 62 Unger, R. M. 122 Vaihinger, H. 20, 39, 79, 124 Valkenburg, P. M. 21, 64 Valsiner, J. 2, 11, 13, 19–20, 26, 35, 39, 50, 54, 69, 87, 91, 97, 99, 105, 113, 124, 127, 135 Venet, M. 19 Verne, J. 115, 118, 122–3 Vico, G. 17 Vygotski, L. S. 19, 20, 78, 79 Vygotsky, L. S. 5, 19–22, 31, 35, 43, 46–7, 63, 66, 91, 105 Wachowski, A. 65 Wagoner, B. 51, 65, 134 Wegerif, R. 76 Wells, H. G. 115

Author index  165 Welzer, H. 65, 70 Werner, H. 6, 50, 95–6 Weschler, L. 69 Wilde, O. 135 Wilson, T. D. 52 Winnicott, D. W. 4, 27–30, 35, 46, 91–2 Winstanley, G. 119–120 Wong, A. T. 51 Wright, E. O. 122 Wüthrich, M. 62 Wyndhamn, J. 4

Yeomans, M. R. 81 Yurevich, A. 126 Zajde, N. 70 Zemeckis, R. 73 Zimmerman, B. J. 135 Zittoun, T. 18, 20–1, 25–7, 29, 37, 40, 44–8, 50, 54, 56, 62–6, 70, 72, 79, 91, 93, 95–6, 98–101, 105, 108–11, 126–7, 129–30, 132, 134, 136 Zlatev, J. 69

Subject index

agency 14, 17, 44, 52–3, 89, 112–13, 122, 124–5, 129, 131–4, 136 American 63, 65, 86, 112, 118–20, 123 anthropology vii, 37, 57–9, 126 Aristotle 16, 134 art 21, 26, 47, 59, 80, 96, 109 artifacts 22, 123, 131 association 16–18, 20, 23, 29, 36, 45, 80 bifurcation 10–11, 48, 73, 101, 105–7, 109 Bolshevik 119–20 childhood 9, 11–12, 15–19, 21–7, 29–30, 32–3, 39, 43–8, 50, 62–6, 70–6, 78, 88–93, 95–8, 102–3, 106–10, 127, 130, 136 counterfactual reasoning 32–33 creativity 2–3, 9, 12, 22–3, 28, 32–3, 43–4, 47–8, 71–3, 80–1, 88–9, 98, 106–7, 109–11, 127–9, 133–5 culture 1–2, 4–8, 12–13, 15, 18, 20–3, 27–8, 30–1, 33–5, 40, 42, 45–9, 52, 54, 56–66, 70, 72–4, 79–80, 82–3, 85–6, 88, 90–2, 95–7, 99, 108, 111–12, 116, 119, 125–31, 133–6 Czech 60, 101, 106, 108 Czechoslovakia 1, 106, 110, 112 daydreaming 2, 8, 10–11, 15–16, 23–9, 26–30, 36, 40, 43, 51, 56, 58, 63–5, 69, 91, 98–9, 109, 122, 130 decision making 33–4

development 1, 4, 11, 15, 18, 21–2, 35, 46, 73–5, 84, 90–5, 98, 101, 108–9, 111, 122–3, 126, 128, 134 dialogical 2, 67–8, 71–3, 75, 81–2, 87, 93–4, 108 dialogue 2, 3, 13, 29, 30, 45, 67–8, 72, 74, 81–2, 89, 94, 116 distal experiences 8–11, 20, 28, 30, 33, 35, 38, 40, 43, 46, 48, 72–3, 75, 98–9, 107–9, 123–4, 130, 132–4 dreams 4, 9–11, 12, 15, 23–5, 27–8, 30, 36–7, 44, 48, 50, 56, 67, 73, 91–2, 107, 119–23, 127–39, 134, 136 Eisenhower, D.D. 117 England 1, 41, 98–9, 105, 119–20 experience 2–13, 15–21, 23–4, 26–33, 35–50, 43, 45–50, 53, 55–8, 62–3, 68–76, 78–105, 107–13, 122–4, 126–34, 136 externalization 5, 12, 25, 30–5, 64, 73–5, 80–1, 96, 129 fantasy 21–2, 28, 69, 71, 91, 98, 113, 120, 130 fiction 9, 12–13, 24, 27, 31, 42, 57, 61, 65, 70–3, 92, 104, 113, 116, 118, 120 film 9, 10, 21, 25, 44–7, 51–2, 57, 59, 63–5, 67–8, 71, 73, 81–2, 91, 101, 103, 106–7, 115–16, 128, 131–2 freedom 14, 17, 20, 36, 45, 53, 81, 91, 110, 125–36 future 1–2, 8–10, 13, 16, 19, 21–2, 29, 31–4, 39, 45, 49–53, 56–8, 60, 65–7, 70–1, 75–6, 79–80, 82, 84, 87–90,

Subject index  167 94–5, 99–101, 103, 106, 111, 113, 120–2, 127–8, 130–2, 134–6 Galileo 34, 85 games 11, 31–3, 40, 44, 63–5, 91, 98, 102–4, 111, 131 German 65, 85, 108–9, 128 Gestalt 69 history 2, 15–16, 28, 34–6, 47, 55, 111–24, 125–6, 129–30 Hollywood 65, 112 internalization 5, 36, 91–2, 94–5 introspection 33, 42 Japan 81, 85, 113 lifecourse 6–7, 10–11, 13, 14, 26, 73, 89–110, 122–3, 125, 128, 136 literature 18, 21, 31, 36, 46, 56, 61, 64, 90–2, 101, 126–7, 130, 135 loop of imagination 1–2, 10, 13, 22, 38–55, 69, 72–6, 78, 81, 84–5, 87–90, 94, 99–100, 103–5, 116, 122, 125, 130, 132–6 Martians 113, 120, 124 material 1–4, 7–9, 12, 20, 24, 26, 30, 35–6, 39, 43, 48, 57, 70–2, 75, 79, 81, 85, 89, 93–4, 124, 127, 129, 133 meaning 3–4, 8, 10, 12, 17, 23–4, 28, 30–1, 34, 46–7, 53, 58, 61, 70, 72, 82, 99–101, 113, 119, 122–3, 128, 130 mediation 6, 11, 20, 36, 46, 49, 62, 90, 97 memories 21, 24–5, 29, 45, 56, 63, 65, 68–70, 88, 93, 98 memory 5, 13, 16, 25, 49, 57, 59, 65, 69–70, 72, 75, 82, 84, 87 microgenesis 14, 54, 69, 73, 74–88, 90, 122–3, 126, 132–4 moon 12, 50–3, 66, 104, 112–24, 126–7, 132, 134 movement 9–10, 12–13, 25, 35, 39–40, 53, 68–9, 72, 75, 81–3, 85, 89, 93, 96, 103–4, 118, 120–1, 123, 129, 133–5 music 8, 25, 43, 63, 74, 80, 83–4, 88–9, 91, 128–30

narrative 24, 45–6, 56, 59–61, 63, 65–8, 70, 91, 96, 118–19, 121–3, 131 norms 2, 7–8, 20, 22, 27, 34, 47, 58, 61–2, 79, 81, 108, 129, 134 ontogenesis 14, 54, 73, 90, 109, 122–3, 126, 132, 134 outcomes of imagination 13, 15, 22–3, 32, 34, 38, 41, 44, 47–8, 53–4, 68, 73–5, 78–82, 86–8, 90, 94–5, 99, 101, 104–5, 107–10, 118, 121, 124–7, 130, 132–3, 136 photography 67, 70, 106, 107, 118 physics 86, 88–9 play 8, 11–15, 21–3, 26–32, 35, 41, 45, 60, 62–3, 67–8, 71, 74–6, 83–4, 90–6, 98–9, 101, 104, 107–9, 110, 123, 125, 128–9 poetry 17, 24, 57, 96 politics 22, 40, 47–8, 53, 73, 93, 120–1, 127–9, 132–3, 136 pragmatism 3, 7, 37, 54, 125 Prague 60, 101–2, 106 prehistory 19, 65 proximal experience 8–10, 22, 28–30, 33, 35, 39–40, 46, 48, 72, 75, 78, 108–9, 112, 130–1, 133–4 psychoanalysis 6, 23, 26, 30, 34, 96, 121, 126, 136 psychology 2, 4–6, 13, 15–18, 22–3, 35–6, 41, 54, 71, 108, 125–6, 129, 135 reflection 33, 64, 67–8, 72, 115, 126 remembering 9, 18, 39–40, 43, 51, 56, 63, 65, 127, 130 representation 8, 13, 18, 25–6, 31, 35, 45–6, 49, 52, 54, 56, 61–6, 71–2, 88, 93, 96, 103–4, 112, 115, 118, 123–4, 126, 136 resources 8, 13, 18, 21, 23, 35, 38, 43–6, 48, 51–2, 54, 56–7, 59–63, 65–6, 69, 71–4, 78–9, 81–2, 84, 86–8, 90–1, 93–9, 107–9, 111–12, 116–17, 119, 122–3, 125–30, 132–3 reverie 8, 12, 15–16, 41, 65, 122, 124, 131 revolution 32, 36, 60, 106, 108, 112, 119–21, 123–4, 129, 132, 134

168  Subject index rules 7, 25, 30–1, 35, 81–2, 89, 94, 106, 130 rupture 3, 10, 40, 42, 61–2, 82, 86, 106–7, 109, 128 Russia 119–20 semiotics 5–6, 8, 12–13, 20, 24–6, 30, 35–7, 39, 41–2, 44–6, 49–50, 56, 58, 61–3, 70–1, 73, 75, 80–2, 87–8, 90, 92–6, 100, 111–13, 122–3, 130, 133–4 sensual 46, 87 society 3, 11, 14–15, 20, 31–2, 44–5, 47–8, 56–61, 65, 67, 89, 109, 111–25, 128–30, 133–4, 136 sociocultural 1–14, 16, 23, 26, 45, 55–6, 71, 79, 89–90, 93, 108–9, 127 sociogenesis 14, 55, 73, 111, 122–6, 132 sphere of experience 7–11, 13, 20, 32–3, 40, 42–3 46, 48–9, 53, 63, 73, 76, 78–80, 85, 95–105, 107–10, 122–4, 130, 133–4 stories 1, 21, 24, 40, 45–6, 57–8, 62–7, 70, 76, 80, 82, 90–2, 96, 98, 111, 115 symbolization 24–5, 30, 130 technologies 59, 60–1, 64, 66, 97, 107, 112, 115, 117, 120, 123, 131 telescope 71, 102, 104–5, 114

television 64, 97, 109, 132 temporality 4–6, 19, 33, 38, 40–1, 44, 48–52, 76, 78, 80, 83–4, 86, 88, 99, 103, 126 thought experiments 15, 34, 65, 84–6, 89, 127, 130 tourism 52, 62, 65, 68, 90 trajectories 6–7, 10–12, 44, 46, 48, 72–4, 88, 90, 95–6, 99, 101, 105–8, 112, 123, 127, 130, 132, 134 travel 38, 46, 57, 65, 69, 71, 73, 89, 111–17, 123 triggers of imagination 18, 24–5, 38, 42–4, 69–70, 74, 81, 84, 116–17, 125–8, 130, 132–3 UFO 57, 117 uncertainty 11, 106–7, 128 unconscious 25–6, 37 uncoupling from experience 9, 10, 13, 38–41, 43–4, 48–9, 55–6, 65, 72, 74, 79–80, 82–4, 87–8, 125, 127, 130–2 USA 116–18 USSR 117–18, 121 Utopia 11–15, 39, 48, 53, 71, 112–13, 118–24, 132, 136 Wikipedia 122