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Precis + Critical Response Paper: " The Imaginary" (2006) Chapter 1 part 1 by Claudia Strauss


Reevaluating Scholarships
(October 17, 2019)

In Claudia Strauss’s article “The Imaginary” (2006), she gives a detailed discussion and analysis of the major scholarships in cultural studies regarding the matter of the Imaginaries, such as the works of Castoriadis, Lacan, Anderson, and Taylor, in order to map out the essential arguments that are more popularly being used/cited in cultural studies research, before she examines how Ivy uses these concepts with regard to the national-imaginaries with the Japanese socio-cultural sphere. In summary, Strauss explains that Castoriadis was concerned with "concepts of cultural abstraction, reification and homogenization, while Lacan used the concept of the imaginary to explain fantasies, and Anderson and Taylor used the concept for explaining cultural models as potentially valuable when used with person-centered ethnographic methods to study real rather than abstract cultural subjects” (323). Despite the summation of the theories, Strauss would critique Ivy’s application of the theories in her attempt to study the national-cultural imaginaries of Japan by stating two important points: that Ivy has resorted to posit an abstract cultural subject , following the lines of Castoriadis, and that there was no attention given to the different dynamics involved in individual fantasies and the collective representations of public culture. This was problematic because it then assumes that the pre-conceived imaginaries of an ideal subject could well be taken for the whole; that the individual is dismissed and homogeneity is pursued. Furthermore, in her article, Strauss argues “against the attempts to turn culture into an abstraction, and instead suggests that anthropologists should study concrete material and symbolic conditions, as well as, the understandings, emotions, and desires of the individuals that develop as they experience these conditions” (Ibid.), which she, then, stresses that this “approach recognizes the importance of learned cultural understandings but does not affix culture as a fixed identity assumed to by geographically bound or self-identified group” (Ibid.)

Looking back into her article, while I commend the effort of discussing the theories and applications, even providing an analysis, it seems to me that her tone emphasizes so much of the role of the anthropologist. As seen in her last sentence, “Our goal as anthropologists should be to elucidate that process” (340), it would appear as this article is an effort to criticize this part of the cultural studies scholarship, and to return the authority to the anthropologists. While I do agree that certain fields with require the expertise of additional specialists, thus allowing more research and prestige to enter into the scholarship, but by curving the applicability of varying methods/approaches in cultural studies may also negatively impact the scholarships, such as creating disparities of sub-branches and the creation of overly confusing jargons that would end up deterring anyone who would have had an initial interest into the scholarship. However, I also agree that constant criticizing and reevaluation of methods/approaches in cultural studies are necessary for the very fact that culture is not static, and as various factors and dynamics come into play, updating the methodologies and researches is a must, even if it results in a contention of preceding scholarships.

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