Imaginación y fantasía en los escritos de Alfred Schütz

JAVIER CRISTIANO

Buenos Aires

Conferencia; II Conference of The International Alfred Schutz Circle for Phenomenology and Interpretative Social Sciences; 2014

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the place that can be assigned, from Schutz?s perspective, to the imagination in the theory of action. Schütz is one of the few authors of the sociological tradition that offers a development in this regard, on two levels. On one hand, he believes that fantasy is a necessary aspect of the action, since every action involves a project that is carried out as a ?theatrical rehearsal? putting at stake the ability to ?think in future perfect tense?. On the other hand, there is a ?world of fantasies? (Phantasiewelt) that, as a ?finite provinces of meaning?, runs parallel to the world of everyday life as a field of pure invention. Our first step is to set limits on how Schutz connects each of these levels with the theory of action. First of all, we can say that the ?fantasy? to which he refers has the meaning of something non-real, or more accurately, to something still-not-made. In this way, ?fantasy? does not refer to something ?invented?, ?created? or ?new?. Regarding the second one, we argue that the ?world of fantasies?, in its character of imagination free of practical imperatives, is a world beyond the action and reduced to a large extent to ?mere thinking?. Our second step is to use some of the concepts and analysis of Schutz in order to overcome these limits. Regarding the ?projective fantasy,? we affirm that is possible, appealing to the notion of ?type? in particular, to develop an idea of ?creative project?, which have implications not only for the action, but for the understanding of the action of others, and not only for the individual action but also for the collective one. With regard to the ?world of fantasies?, we propose the idea of "communicative action of fantasies" as a way to connect the world of the ?free? invention with the world pragmatically conditioned of the action. With these arguments we intend to take Schutz?s reflections towards a field of clear political interest: the capacity of the action to modify the instituted orders. Hence, in the third part we try to develop some implications of our analysis for the reflection on the link structure/action, that Schutz did not discussed himself but can be addressed, we maintain, from his perspective.