Difference, Metaphor, and the Collective Imagination

In a response to a previous blog, the responder, Jessica, critiqued my argument regarding apparent homogenous nature of what I referred to as “the collective imagination.” She argues that my formulation of the collective imagination denies or relegates difference, in particular sexual and gender difference. I believe this is the most important quote: “The problem with a unifying 'imagination' is the effacing and denial of difference that does not allow the possibility of other subjectivities.” Her criticism stems from a French Feminist position, most notably an “Irigarayan” perspective. I do not have the background to respond directly to this criticism; my response below will, at best, be tangential. I believe, however, that the differences between myself and the responder are conceptual, and not fundamental. What follows is (hopefully) a clarification of my argument regarding the importance of the collective imagination, and the importance of difference to that metaphoric space.

The collective imagination is not a homogenous space. The term is, perhaps, misleading. The emphasis should be on “imagination”; its “collective” nature is grounded in the common embodiment and environment from which the material of our experience, and by extension our imaginations, is drawn. Our neurophysiology is the same regardless of gender differences, but gender differences are the basis for quite different experiences. The same metaphoric processes of meaning-making underpin our experience, but the physiognomic differences do affect the kinds of material experience, or stimuli, an individual is presented with. However, while physiognomic differences have persisted throughout human history, the material basis of experience, as well as the metaphoric value-systems through which such experience is filtered, have changed. This is a complex point that needs unpacking, but ultimately it can be understood through the evolution of the collective imagination as a heterogeneous space.

Whatever the differences between men and women, the senses of perception are the same. This is not to diminish gender differences or the historical and political disadvantage that has accompanied them, and in many ways still does. Humans are meant to be together, socially, sexually, mimetically. Gender differences combined with our social impulsion makes sexuality a political space. Where there is difference there is a contest for control, because difference implies multiple dimensions; that is, multiple dimensions of a metaphoric space in which human thought and behaviour must operate. Multiple dimensions means complex non-linear movement, which further entails non-predictability or non-uniformity.

While we have a common embodiment in terms of the senses of perception, the kinds of material experience presented to those senses, filtered through physiognomic difference, are not uniform. Being a man is different to being a woman; differences are further exacerbated by culture and religion. Childbirth and the menstrual cycle are material experiences that a male simply cannot understand as an experience. In some cultures, a woman is considered “unclean” during her menstrual cycle. The culturally pervasive obsession with a woman’s virginity – and its corollary of insouciance toward male virginity – is another example of politically filtered gendered experience.

Our metaphoric processes of meaning-making are the basis of our behaviour; the conceptual systems of our morality (and our politics whereby our morality is contested) are the basis of our choices, but they are formulated through our metaphoric processes. Our metaphoric processes, however, are informed by our embodied experience, which is itself predicated on our physiological makeup. The physiological similarities and differences between the genders (among other conventional biological and cultural distinctions) constitute a background of meaning, the contextual field of historical, cultural, and political information that shapes our perception of interactions and events. A homogenous collective imagination would be constituted by wholly the predominant perspective, in almost every case a male perspective.

The metaphoric space of the imagination where our values are ultimately formulated is a diverse space, but it is a contested space. It is the site where difference can be communicated, appreciated, valued. While language is an important extension of the imagination, and the imagination is an important space wherein our material experience can be represented and altered abstractly, which in turn affects our material experience, language is complicit in the homogenisation of the imagination because it cannot satisfactorily capture the nuance in the imaginative reshaping of material experience. Language is linear and struggles to capture the multi-dimensional nature of human experience; language, furthermore, because it is linear, only moves in one direction, whereas meaning comes to us from multiple directions and in multiple forms (through the different senses).

Language, however, remains an extension of us, our most important communicative and expressive tool. Language, so long as it remains spoken and replete with human emotion, remains essential to our experience. Language, while does not capture certain dimensions of experience at all well, is nonetheless an evocative approximation of experience. We are a species of story-tellers and poets, and I will discuss the importance of poetry in the diffusion of language in a later blog. It’s the stories we tell about our experiences that shape our experiences; these same stories serve to reinforce rules of behaviour as well. Because language only moves in one direction, the telling of a story is a forceful event. Language controls emotional response because it moves in one direction; that which is left unsaid, the material experience that is not expressed in words, is suppressed. And that which is not presented in language is not presented to the imagination, or more specifically, is obscured from the imagination by what is presented in language.

It is, therefore, the homogenisation of language that leads to the homogenisation of the collective imagination. To foreshadow a future blog post, language filters all other forms of expression, including pictorial representations of the human form, because language limits the way in which such images can be talked about. Representations of sex, for instance, have historically been limited because the language associated with sex has been considered taboo. “Swear words,” which are almost always derived from sexual acts and bodily functions, are still largely taboo. Conversely, it could be argued that the words are taboo because the acts are taboo; language, however, is the vanguard of the act. Boundaries and limitations – and taboos – are challenged first through language; manifestos are circulated, plans formulated, protests organised, songs, chants, poems, news stories; coherent information must emerge in order for a collective consciousness revolving around a common cause to emerge subsequently.

Language prefigures material change because it operates in the metaphoric space of the imagination where values and beliefs, our shared abstract models of the world and our experience of it, are formed. Our beliefs are actionable metaphors, and language, however imperfect it is, gives us access to that metaphoric space. Language, therefore, is the critical site of conflict in the contest over meaning. Language matters; it may seem a long way to go to get to an obvious point such as this, but this fact needs to be understood in its proper context. Human relations, including race, gender, and sexuality, are filtered by language. Language shapes the “metaphors we live by,” and it is in that metaphorical realm, in the realm of the imagination, that nuance and difference must be expressed and defended. The collective imagination is where the perceptions and values of the material world are changed, and language is the most important point of entry.