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Laurens ten Kate | Strange Freedom
Within the enormous and multi-faceted research on imaginaries I intend
to stress one theme that is relevant for my inquiry into the strangeness
of creating freedom. This theme is summed up as follows: the imaginary
spaces belong to the immanent world, they are results of human creationâŚ
and yet they transcend us in the same dynamic of imagination. They are
familiar and strange at the same time.
Acting and Being Acted
Imaginaries are not objects, they are spaces that envelop people. They are
worlds to live in. People do not simply have imaginaries as if they were the
norms, values and truths we hold, shaping our identities. They are not sim-
ply the tools with which we determine the sense of the world. People do
imaginaries, and in this doing something strange occurs: the object of our
deed transforms itself into a subject⌠by enveloping us, by offering us a
place to live in. A complex dynamic of acting and âbeing actedâ reveals itself
here. Precisely in this twilight zone between active and passive resides the
transcendence of the world; that is to say, not of another world that would
transcend the hic et nunc, but of this world as immanence, in as far as this
world consists of a plurality of imaginaries â of worlds in images, symbols,
narratives, rites, practices, habits, words, metaphors, etcetera â worlds
that we create and that create us in return.
I will give just a short example, hardly surprising and maybe a bit too obvi-
ous⌠We use our smartphones â we design them as our personal digital en-
vironment, downloading our preferred apps on it, embellishing it with our
symbols, pictures, ringtones, screensavers, etcetera. But in this âdoingâ
the smartphone becomes active too â it âdoes us,â shapes us in becoming a
âworldâ we live in. Many people nowadays, as a result of the digital revolu-
tion, more or less permanently live in two worlds: the material world of the
house, the couch, the street, the bus, the other people in the public realm,
and the virtual world of the phone. A quick look around in a busy shopping
mall demonstrates this almost too obvious fact: people are present materi-
ally, physically, and at the same time they are absent, elsewhere present,
moving around in their second âIâ, their I-phone, traveling their imaginary
Galaxy⌠The marketeers of Apple and Samsung are the prime experts of
this new human condition.
People do imaginaries.
Limina
Grazer theologische Perspektiven, Volume 2:2
- Title
- Limina
- Subtitle
- Grazer theologische Perspektiven
- Volume
- 2:2
- Editor
- Karl Franzens University Graz
- Date
- 2019
- Language
- German
- License
- CC BY-NC 4.0
- Size
- 21.4 x 30.1 cm
- Pages
- 267
- Categories
- Zeitschriften LIMINA - Grazer theologische Perspektiven