[PHILOS-L] Deadline Extension_Symbolic Realities and Social Imaginaries_Rivista di Estetica (1/2028)
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Luigi Filieri
Apr 28, 2026, 2:26:47 PM (2 days ago) Apr 28
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Rivista di Estetica (1/2028) – Symbolic Realities and Social Imaginaries
Advisory Editors: Agnese Di Riccio (New School for Social Research, New York) and Luigi Filieri (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa)
Extended Deadline for Submission: 30 September 2026
Description:
The notions of ‘symbol’ and ‘imaginary’ address two interconnected issues. From a theoretical perspective, they illuminate how thought and language acquire figurative existence; from a practical perspective, they shed light on how social practices take shape, endure through change, or end up becoming inadequate. While both notions relate to different philosophical traditions and schools, they nonetheless provide a shared framework for thinking about how cultural and social realities emerge and organize the texture of our collective life.
On the one hand, the interest in what one might call the constitutive import of the symbolic dates back to Peirce’s pragmatism, and gathers key authors like Cassirer, Warburg, Panofsky, Langer (Goodman e Dewey might well be seen as a specific prosecution of the same path). On the other hand, this interest informs broader views such as those of Bourdieu and Castoriadis, for whom symbols shape social dimensions of power and domination. This expansion, in turn, also represents a bridge between the symbolic – in the narrow sense sketched so far – and the rise and development of the notion of social imaginaries.
To investigate the notion of ‘social imaginary’ is to acknowledge the constitutive role of a pre-reflective horizon that endows social life with meaning and articulates itself in institutions and social practices (a dimension theorized, in different forms, by Anderson, Benjamin, Dilthey, Durand, Simmel, and Blumenberg). Specifically, authors like Castoriadis, Bourdieu, Debord, Ricœur, Baczko, and Taylor – however incompatible their views – see in the notion of ‘symbol’ the necessary step for the expression and actualization of social imaginaries. This figurative unfolding – the incarnation of the imaginary into symbolic realities – can fall prey to distortions (ideologies) or generate a creative ‘surplus’ that discloses alternatives to the status quo (utopias). In this sense, the imaginary is a crucial tool to understand collective dynamics of social change and critique.
As Alfredo Ferrarin has it: “As long as we stop, in a positivistic way or according to a certain Marxism, at an opposition of facts and ideas or values, of structure and superstructure, the risk is that we take reality as a fetish stripped of the symbolic mediation and stratification that shaped its historical becoming, and imagination as a lower form of being and a fantasy opposed to reality, if not as ideology”. Following this framework, this special issue intends to address the virtual rendering of reality and the surplus generated by symbols and imaginaries in their constitution of shared social meanings.
The aim of this special issue is fourfold:
- To clarify the specific function of ‘symbols’ and/or ‘imaginaries’ against views based on a contrast between reality and what would allegedly be, in a defective sense, merely symbolic or imaginary;
- To consider ‘symbol’ and ‘imaginary’ in the works of the above-mentioned authors, and explore connections and differences between the two concepts (against a tendency to conflate them);
- To bring different authors into dialogue and let similarities, analogies, differences, and even radical incompatibilities emerge;
- To broaden the debate by engaging authors who might be said to offer critical re-assessments of both notions through alternative interpretive frameworks: Marx, Foucault, Adorno, Althusser, Bachelard, Gramsci.
Advisory Editors: Agnese Di Riccio (New School for Social Research, New York) and Luigi Filieri (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa)
Extended Deadline for Submission: 30 September 2026
Description:
The notions of ‘symbol’ and ‘imaginary’ address two interconnected issues. From a theoretical perspective, they illuminate how thought and language acquire figurative existence; from a practical perspective, they shed light on how social practices take shape, endure through change, or end up becoming inadequate. While both notions relate to different philosophical traditions and schools, they nonetheless provide a shared framework for thinking about how cultural and social realities emerge and organize the texture of our collective life.
On the one hand, the interest in what one might call the constitutive import of the symbolic dates back to Peirce’s pragmatism, and gathers key authors like Cassirer, Warburg, Panofsky, Langer (Goodman e Dewey might well be seen as a specific prosecution of the same path). On the other hand, this interest informs broader views such as those of Bourdieu and Castoriadis, for whom symbols shape social dimensions of power and domination. This expansion, in turn, also represents a bridge between the symbolic – in the narrow sense sketched so far – and the rise and development of the notion of social imaginaries.
To investigate the notion of ‘social imaginary’ is to acknowledge the constitutive role of a pre-reflective horizon that endows social life with meaning and articulates itself in institutions and social practices (a dimension theorized, in different forms, by Anderson, Benjamin, Dilthey, Durand, Simmel, and Blumenberg). Specifically, authors like Castoriadis, Bourdieu, Debord, Ricœur, Baczko, and Taylor – however incompatible their views – see in the notion of ‘symbol’ the necessary step for the expression and actualization of social imaginaries. This figurative unfolding – the incarnation of the imaginary into symbolic realities – can fall prey to distortions (ideologies) or generate a creative ‘surplus’ that discloses alternatives to the status quo (utopias). In this sense, the imaginary is a crucial tool to understand collective dynamics of social change and critique.
As Alfredo Ferrarin has it: “As long as we stop, in a positivistic way or according to a certain Marxism, at an opposition of facts and ideas or values, of structure and superstructure, the risk is that we take reality as a fetish stripped of the symbolic mediation and stratification that shaped its historical becoming, and imagination as a lower form of being and a fantasy opposed to reality, if not as ideology”. Following this framework, this special issue intends to address the virtual rendering of reality and the surplus generated by symbols and imaginaries in their constitution of shared social meanings.
The aim of this special issue is fourfold:
- To clarify the specific function of ‘symbols’ and/or ‘imaginaries’ against views based on a contrast between reality and what would allegedly be, in a defective sense, merely symbolic or imaginary;
- To consider ‘symbol’ and ‘imaginary’ in the works of the above-mentioned authors, and explore connections and differences between the two concepts (against a tendency to conflate them);
- To bring different authors into dialogue and let similarities, analogies, differences, and even radical incompatibilities emerge;
- To broaden the debate by engaging authors who might be said to offer critical re-assessments of both notions through alternative interpretive frameworks: Marx, Foucault, Adorno, Althusser, Bachelard, Gramsci.
Invited Authors:
- Suzi Adams (Flinders University, Adelaide)
- Ingmar Meland (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Gjøvik)
- Suzi Adams (Flinders University, Adelaide)
- Ingmar Meland (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Gjøvik)
Submission:
Submissions (in English or in Italian) will undergo a double-blind peer-review process, and must conform to the editorial guidelines of the journal (Eng | Ita.).
Submissions must not exceed 40,000 characters, including notes, bibliography, and blank spaces. In order to submit your paper, please register and login to:
http://labont.it/estetica/index.php/rivistadiestetica/login
Please note: when asked “What kind of file is this”, select the relevant CFP.
Submissions (in English or in Italian) will undergo a double-blind peer-review process, and must conform to the editorial guidelines of the journal (Eng | Ita.).
Submissions must not exceed 40,000 characters, including notes, bibliography, and blank spaces. In order to submit your paper, please register and login to:
http://labont.it/estetica/index.php/rivistadiestetica/login
Please note: when asked “What kind of file is this”, select the relevant CFP.
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