A socio-imaginary narrative
Although the concept of the “imaginary” has long been associated with archetypal perspectives whose goal is to illuminate our understanding of the universal matrices of the symbolic fact, historians traditionally approached it with scepticism. Since the 1980s, however, when the study of cultural history began to gain widespread acceptance, the concept of the imaginary, with its various “social” declensions, has inspired a growing interest in the theoretical framework of historical research. Despite a widespread acceptance of the imaginary as a field of study, socio-imaginary narratives have never been truly conceptualized and the foundations of their theoretical expression have yet to be clearly defined. Beginning with an overview of the ways in which existing socio-imaginary narratives are used in the human and social sciences, and with reference to a literary review of the fundamental contributions of philosophy and sociocriticism to the study of cultural history, this article is intended to elucidate a more thorough comprehension of the concept of the imaginary. It offers a theoretical synthesize of socio-imaginary narratives and, in so doing, proposes a theoretical framework that serves to define and unify this field of research – what French historians often refer to as the histoire des imaginaires sociaux.