Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part 1. Imagining
1. From Phantasia to Imagination
2. From Imagination to the Imaginary and Beyond?
3. Toward a Theory of the Imaginal
Part 2. Politics
4. A Genealogy of Politics: From Its Invention to the Biopolitical Turn
5. Imaginal Politics
6. Contemporary Transformations Between Spectacle and Virtuality
Part 3. The Global Spectacle
7. The Politics of the Past: The Myth of the Clash of Civilizations
8. The Repositioning of Religion in the Public Sphere: Imaginal Consequences
9. Imagining Human Rights: Gender, Race, and Class
The Freedom of Equals: A Conclusion and a New Beginning
Notes
Bibliography
Index

About the Author

Chiara Bottici is associate professor of philosophy at the New School for Social Research and the author of A Philosophy of Political Myth (2007).

Reviews

This is an excellent book, very original and elegantly written. Chiara Bottici's contribution to the field of politics is an original one, since, even though there exist other theories about the social imaginary, Bottici's is pivotal in allowing us to understand contemporary politics and its paradoxes. It is a great addition to the field of academic discussions about politics, religion, imagination, and conceptual history.
*María Pía Lara, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana*

Chiara Bottici's Imaginal Politics is an original, suggestive, and solid contribution to political philosophy broadly understood. The strength of Bottici's work lies in its scope and potential for unifying several strands of inquiry into one integrated theory of the imaginal and working out the consequences of this notion for a variety of disciplines. The whole field of 'politics and the imagination' is rapidly expanding, and I would not be surprised if this book were to turn into one of the key references in the field.
*Alessandro Ferrara, University of Rome Tor Vergata, and former president of the Italian Association of Political Philosophy*

In her new book, Chiara Bottici continues her pathbreaking work in imaginal cultural analysis. Neither properly imaginary nor precisely imaginative, the imaginal is the image broken free of the restraints of both indexicality and referentiality, becoming in the process free-floating agencies in modernity's advertising, spectacular, sports, military, and political games.
*Hayden White, University Professor, Emeritus, University of California, Santa Cruz*

Insightful, wide-ranging, and exciting.
*Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews*