Conference
The Ambivalent Power of Imagination

In the eighteenth century, the ambivalence of imagination was discussed at length through the anthropological type of the Schwärmer. This figure is characterized by an overabundance of imagination and thus tends to reify ideas and, conversely, to invest simple facts with a “higher meaning”—with all attendant advantages (e.g., creativity, idealism) and disadvantages (paranoia, egocentrism). Early Romanticism takes up this debate by “transcendentalizing” the imagination. As a productive faculty, it creates a world “for us,” yet this creative process is supposed to follow the ideal of unity between subject and object and thus avoid the danger of losing touch with reality, as occurs with the Schwärmer. However, early Romantic literary production has qeustioned this conception from the outset. A case in point is Ludwig Tieck’s double narrative Der getreue Eckart und der Tannenhäuser (1799/1812), both due to the specific brand of madness displayed by its characters, but also by that of its narrative. This presentation aims to contribute to the genesis of the Romantic concept of imagination, and, furthermore, to offer an interpretation of Tieck’s particularly enigmatic narrative.

The current discussion about the impact of generative AI on creative work unwittingly reveals a deep anxiety about the nature of human creativity. The rejection of AI’s ability to create is usually tied to a rejection of the idea of creativity as mere re-combination (as might be found in an extreme version of postmodern intertextuality) in favour of at least modification as a necessary principle, while routinely, if only implicitly, evoking the idea of a missing “human spark” that would bring human creativity closer to a transcendental creatio ex nihilo. This anxiety is not new. The ‘mechanical’ understanding of human creativity had, in an uncanny precursor to today’s LLMs, already been proposed as a game in the 1677 pamphlet “Artificial Versifying” by John Peter, and satirized in the ever-prescient Jonathan Swift’s writings as a “Knowledge Engine”. But the most enlightening comparison is to be drawn to Romantic thinking about the role of the imagination. Romantic ideas about the workings of the imagination are at their core a process of transposing the notion of creation from the divine to the human (via the mediation of nature), thereby establishing the idea of human genius as beyond a mechanical or logical explanation. Tracing some of the contours of both the Romantic and the contemporary discussion, and putting them in relation to each other, can hopefully make us understand both more precisely.

In his art criticism, poet and critic Charles Baudelaire calls imagination the “queen of the human faculties” and attributes to it analytic as well as synthetic capacities. According to Baudelaire, the interpretive and meaning-making systems of the world depend upon it.

Among other thigs, his strong emphasis on the poet and artist’s sensory and imaginative powers challenges rigidly mimetic representations of world nature and leads to innovative engagements with technological achievements such as photography and phantasmagoria.

Based on Romantic neurophysiological concepts of imagination—such as those developed by Samuel Thomas Soemmerring and Johannes Müller in the early 19th century—it can be demonstrated that perception, thinking, and imagination were all conceived as effects of an interference pattern within the “nervous fluid.” Consequently, both reflexive perception and creative generation of mental images appear as results of vibrations, resonances, and interferences organically localized within the body. Thus, my contribution touches upon ambivalence as an interplay between reception and production within the concept of imagination.

In my presentation, I moreover aim to connect these ideas to Karen Barad’s contemporary concept of “agential realism.” Similar to Romanticism, it attempts to describe moments of vivacity and intelligence even in the realm of inorganic vibration mechanics and physics. While the effects of these respective theories on practices of aesthetic positions in the fine arts are not the central subject of my presentation, they are touched upon as well.

Literary experience illuminates the ambiguities of imaginative life, to be explored here against the backdrop of historical accounts of productive imagination and its more recent theorization.  Literary imagining may generate worlds elsewhere and ways of being otherwise than the here and now; yet far from abandoning the real, imagination contributes importantly to our experience of it.  Within this larger context, here I will argue that imagining expresses what I call an 'ecology of imagination,' encompassing both a sense of an inner life and its ambiguous relation to a world without. While literary imagining may be experienced to occur virtually ‘within,’ it generates this very sense of interiority wherein it operates, and itself emerges from embodied life, drawing upon vital interconnections with the world. I aim to illustrate this phenomenologically through examples of reflexive attention to imagination in literature.

In contemporary philosophical aesthetics, more attention is being paid to the importance of pluralism in aesthetic life. According to philosophers like Dominic McIver Lopes, the promise of beauty is the promise of participating in niche and diverse aesthetic practices that reflect our niche and diverse values as individuals. Though this insight captures one aspect of aesthetic life, in this paper I argue that beauty also promises something held in common. It promises the opportunity to exercise a capacity that individuals share in common: the imagination. In defending this view, I make the case that appreciating this connection between beauty and imagination respects the fact of pluralism, while holding out the hope of broader connection. 

Imagination is not generally a central or extensively developed topic in pedagogical concepts. The notion of “childlike imaginative activity” is discussed most prominently in the context of the concept of childhood and Romantic pedagogy, where childlike imaginative activity is also associated with the child’s divinity (Baader 1996; 2014). Furthermore, it is elaborated on in debates on aesthetic education, in the art education movement (Baader 2007; Wittmann 2018, pp. 141ff.), as well as in discussions surrounding childlike play. It is portrayed positively in the early twentieth century, for example in Walter Benjamin’s reflections on children’s literature (Baader/Koch 2025).

Beyond this, however, imagination is predominantly approached with ambivalence in modern-day pedagogical concepts. This presentation discusses and historically contextualizes this ambivalence through the examples of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile, or On Education (1762), the debates of the 1970s surrounding “children’s culture” (1978), and the perspective on imagination presented in the Pädagogisches Wörterbuch of the German Democratic Republic. Through this, I show how ambivalences are articulated within each constellation, and what strategies of containment, taming, and separation can be identified in each respective case.

Panel discussion with Prof. Dr Martin Hielscher, Dr Thomas Klupp and Prof. Kathrin Röggla

Since the 1930s, the theory of the “mirror stage” has been claimed by psychiatrist Jacques Lacan (1901–1981) as a seminal contribution to psychoanalysis by the so-called “French group.” According to Lacan, the child’s act of “self-recognition” in the mirror represents not only the formation of the “I-function” at around 6–12 months of age, but also the establishment of the register of the Imaginary—which is set through with deceptive ideals and subsequently asserts itself within the tension between the Real and the Symbolic.

Since 1945, Lacan’s conception of the Imaginary has resonated across numerous areas of the humanities and social sciences—appearing in Louis Althusser’s concept of “ideology” as well as in Christian Metz’s theory of the cinema, or in Friedrich Kittler’s media theory. Against the backdrop of current debates about the social and political implications of Lacanian theory, this presentation argues for a reconsideration of the mirror stage: on the one hand, with attention to the contributions of the Marxist psychologist Henri Wallon (1879–1962), on whom Lacan extensively draws; on the other hand, through the inclusion the studies by reform psychiatrist Jean Oury (1924–2014), which emphasize the constructive aspect of the mirror stage.

In a time of authoritarian hostility toward facts, a desire to bring imagination to power—as it was stated by Parisian students in 1968—appears of limited attractiveness. At least as important as the demand to creatively expand spaces for political action is the requirement that both rulers and those who are ruled are able—and willing—to analyze existing conditions soberly. Political imagination comprises—not only, but also—the material of propaganda and the medium of delusional beliefs. Beyond these normative problems, one may also ask to what extent imagination, ideation, and related principles are capable of collective orientation at all. For sure, people are able to imagine similar things—but only those symbols, images, and situations that are equally accessible to everyone (given appropriate practices) can be truly identical. At the same time, it cannot be denied that would be able to imagine little of interest as individuals without a collective world of symbols, either. In this talk, I would like to discuss the question of political imagination and the collective imaginary through the Lacanian triad of the Symbolic, the Imaginary, and the Real. In this, the explanations and analyses of Lacanian theorist Slavoj Žižek afford an extensive engagement with the political present.

The topic of imagination has been enjoying great academic popularity over recent years, which should not come as a surprise, given our obvious incapacity to produce any image of a more democratic future in the face of democratic ‘backsliding’ and looming ecological catastrophes. However, while in the literature feeding the ‘turn to imagination’, the impression is sometimes given that we are only one step away from imagining the most amazing novelties that would open a new road into a brighter, more democratic future, political imagination, on closer inspection, may very well turn out to be hard work. In the presentation I propose to tap into the intellectual tradition of political realism in order to develop a down-to-earth account of democratic imagination more adjusted to the political exigencies of democratic emancipation. A more realist notion of political imagination, it will be argued, should incorporate Antonio Gramsci’s notions of hegemony, ‘myth’, ‘concrete phantasy’ and ‘original creation’, as well as his Machiavellian conception of the political party as the ‘myth-prince’. Hence, Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks may prove to be the nucleus of any realist approach to imagination.