Imajinasi: Dunia Dibayangkan
(Part I)
Kata pengantar: ini adalah bagian pertama dua artikel saya itu atas imajinasi. Pendapat saya berdasarkan asumsi yang setiap jangka waktu atas kenyataan dipenuhi oleh tamsilan. Tetapi ini tamsilan aneh dan anonim. Mereka mempunyai tenaga dan menjadi pemenang melawan imajinasi dan tamsilan pribadi kami. Imajinasi dan tamsilan pribadi Manâs dilewatkan. Lalu, sebagai hasil, manusia hidup ini tamsilan aneh. Situasi ini sangat berbahaya karena daya cipta imajinasi pribadi menjadi ketidakmampuan. Di artikel ini saya ingin untuk menekankan situasi ini dan mempersilahkan anda menghidupkan lagi imajinasi pribadi kami. Oleh karena itu, kami mungkin mengerti konteks imajinasi (di bagian pertama ini) dan kekuasaan imajinasi pribadi kami (di artikel kedua)
Waktu orang binasa mal, publik transportations, kantor, dan semacamnya, saya berpikir, sasaran mereka tidak ini hal. Sasaran satu-satunya mereka adalah tamsilan. Mal, publik transportations, kantor mungkin, bagi mereka, adalah tamsilan someoneâs tenaga, ownship, dll. Kekuasaan ini/ownship dan semacamnya adalah hal yang diinginkan oleh mereka untuk menghancurkan. Ketika orang memilih kemeja istimewa dan murah di pasar, mereka pilih self ketajaman, tamsilan. Ketika seseorang melihat dinya/dia darlingâs foto, dan pada waktu itu dia atau katanya bahwanya/kesayangannya cantik/tampan, dia/dia mengalami bermaksud citra. Hidup benar-benar ditimbulkan, diatur, ditujukan, dan dipenuhi oleh tamsilan. Manusia menegaskan dan melihatnya/hersel, orang lain, dan seluruh dunia oleh tamsilan. Oleh ini sama tamsilan juga, manusia bisa menghancurkan dan membunuh orang lain. Karena tamsilan, manusia bisa tertawa, sedih, dan bahagia. Humanâs hidup wasnât kelaziman tetapi kebudayaan: dunia tamsilan, dunia dibayangkan.
Sayangnya, di dunia tamsilan ini, kami dilingkungi oleh tamsilan yang dialami kami tanpa selves filteritation. Kami diketahui oleh anonim atau tamsilan yang terdapat dari jaringan bahwa couldnât dilacak, dan tak ada ciptaan kami. Mereka mampir ke dalam kami ribuan signifiers. Ribuan self tamsilan, misalnya, melinungi kami oleh tamsilan papan reklame, hiburan, film, kertas berita, informasi di internet yang mengambil titik fokus untuk menegaskan persepsi kami atas kenyataan, termasuk self-kenyataan. Di dunia dibayangkan ini, subyek sebagai pusat menjadi âex-centerâ, menjadi ketidakmampuan. Subyek hidup seperti seorang operator berani di ini ribuan tamsilan: subyek sudah mati.
Jika ini tamsilan mempunyai posisi esensial di hidup manusia, thereâs bukan cara lain: kami mungkin hidup imajinasi perseorangan (sebagai humanâs memiliki untuk membuat tamsilan) punggung oleh sebab itu manusia didnât mengasingkan. Tetapi masalah adalah manusia mengerti imajinasi ini sebagai abject fakultas. Imajinasi, kadang-kadang, dilihat sebagai illution, fantasi, atau intuisi. Oleh karena itu, di artikel ini, saya ingin ke clarifye lalu konsep imajinasi.
Terminology
Generally, imagination was understood as an ability/capability to create images or mentally concepts that were gotten from the reality by the sense organs. There were some points in this simple definition. Firstly, imagination was the ability, meant that this imagination was the jargon of man. Plants or animals didnât have this ability. Second, the imagination process resulted images as its substantial things, therefore imagination process was always followed by the creation of images. Third, this process was happened mentally, meant that the images werenât visual (could be seen) or textural (could be touched) things/events. For example, the picture was resulted from imagination process of artist that could be seen and the images on artistâs mind were two different things, although this artist's images on his mind could be traced in his/her picture. Still from the general definition above, the imagination didnât result only images but mentally concepts too. But this mentally concepts always had connection with the images.
Concept of imagination, in daily practice, was always misunderstood and connected to concept of fantasy, illusion, intuition. Fantasy was the ability to think the unreal and impossible things/events. Fantasy was the result of illusion. Illusion was meant as an untruth idea, understanding, impression on something, or the misperception about something. This illusion could be created. For example, David Copperfield was an illusionist that could created the untruth impression for public. If illusion or fantasy was connected to the images of impossible things/events, imagination was connected to the images of logic and real (possible) things/ events.
The concept of intuition, sometimes, was mixtured with this concept of intuition, especially in philosophyâs terminology. Bergson explained intuition as the apprehention of truth, as the ability to make someone sure on something as the causa prima. Intuition, therefore, was same with prediction on something. Imagination, in the other side, was more than prediction. It was logic and posibble things/events.
The History of Concept
The concept of imagination have been evolving on manâs history. I tried to explain this change into three era: pre-modern, modern, and postmodern.
1). Pre-modern
Pre-modern's concept on imagination was represented by Jewish, Helenic, and Middle Ageâs thought. In the Jewishâs culture, imagination was understood as an ethical awareness on either the truth and the evil or the past and the future. This thought was based on the history of Adam and Evaâs fall (Genesis (2:8). There were two trees in Eden that their fruits were forbidden to be eaten, the tree of knowing the truth and the evil and the tree of knowing the life. But Eve, then Adam, falled into sin and ate this fruits. After they ate that fruits, they got something that they didnât have before: the awareness (that theyâre naked). Jewishâs culture believed that fruits as imagination that was Godâs own, but was stolen by man. Therefore, althought this imagination enabled man to aware the opposition between the truth and the evil or the past and the future, it was still understood as sin. So, in Jewishâs tradition, it was a sin to imagine God on the picture or everything because it was a part of imagination process. Imagination was understood pejoratively in this tradition
Helenicâs thought on imagination based on the Greecâs myth of Prometeus who stolen the godsâ âfireâ and brought it to man. This âfire" was translated as the imagination that enabled man to abandon or escape from inhuman condition and blindness. This fire (imagination),too, gave man the power to create and transform nature into culture. So, the concept of imagination got new understanding: epistemologic dimention in this culture. But in the other side, this imagination that gave man the power to create the culture, caused the relation between gods and man was broken. Once again, the imagination got the pejorative meaning: as the opposition to the higher power.
Plato, then, continued this thought with saw imagination as an imitation from the higher world (spiritual world). He gave new understanding on imagination: metaphysics dimension. As an imitation, imagination couldnât touched the really truth. So, the imagination, by Plato, placed in the lowest place of science, ratio at the highest. Ratio, and nothing else, was the only manâs faculty that be able to contemplate the truth (spiritual state), as imaginatin just resulted an illusion in science. Aristotle tried to change this thought from metaphysics to psychologic dimention. He concentrated his thought on imagination as a mental representation. As a mental representation (
phantasma
), imagination had a duty to mediate sense organs and ratio. Therefore, all of images and mental concepts were accepted from reality, that were brought to ratio by imagination. For Aristotle, imagination and sensation had same existence.
In the Middle Age, Agustinus proclaimed imagination as a disturber to enter into spiritual contemplation. Spiritual state was understood by contemplation (
noesis
), not by imagination (
phantasia
). Imagination, then, just arranged and was connected to the unexperienced (for example, the images of the past) and the unreal (the images of myth, numbers, etc).
2). Modern
In the modernism, concept of imagination was changed substantially. âThe fireâ was not stolen from higher state but something that existed in man, in subject. This fire, the imagination, therefore, got central place in epistemology, aesthetic, and ontology. Immanuel Kant proclaimed the transcendental imagination. The trancendental imagination was understood as the hidden cause of every science, knowing, meaning, or discursive reasoning. This transcendental imagination was inherent entity of man, that inhered in pre-conditioned humanâs experience on reality. As the result, imagination wasnât the mediator between the senses organ senses and ratio but the radix or âmanagerâ of this two faculties. In the other words, imagination (
Einbildungskraft
) was the synthesis between the thesis, ratio, and the antithesis, sense. The transcendental imagination had three aspects: productive, reproductive, and aesthetic aspect. Productive because imagination presented all images that caught by sense organs without filteritation. Reproductive because the imagination filtered all the images with the specific rule (
schemata
). Aesthetic because there was harmony between imagination and understanding that couldnât be conceptualized, just be sensed.
Then, Sartre in âThe Imaginationâ (1936) and Psychology of Imagination (1940) deepened imagination to the very humanly aspect. This thought can be resumed on this four points:
a. image was more an events than a thing of knowing. Image was a productive activity that focused on an object with specific way.
b. Image was a quasi-observation. The imaginative awareness projected the imagined object. This process didnât need real observation, but unreal one or quasi observation.
c. Image was a spontanity. Image was always active to create its self and meaning spontaneously.
d. Image was a nothingness. Image was differed from an understanding or perception because it assumed its object as nothing.
3). Postmodern
Ego-centrism in the modernismâs thought was changed by postmodernism. As the result, image wasnât understood just representationally, but this image really real fulfilled all the space in reality, image surrounded man and created the imagined world. This new understanding based on the reality that nowadays, our space full with images. Unfortunately, this images couldnât be traced its origin and moved in the significance between each other without end. This anonim/strange images lived in and created a simulacrum space in the reality. As the result, our reality could be said as the imagined world: the world that was controlled by the anonim/strange images. In this world that was controlled by anonim images, the subjectâs imagination was killed.
Lacan named this condition as the death of imaginary self that killed by simbolic self. Images didnât create by subject again. Foucault proclaimed the death of man that followed by the death of subjectâs faculties, including imagination. The creative imagination of subject has died and prisoned in the structuralism of the strange images. Roland Barthez had same thought with proclaiming the death of otoritative imagination of subject. The subjectâs otoritative imagination was killed by collective imagination. Subject, in this loosing situation, escaped from his/her imagination and chose to live the superior imagination (the collective imagination)
The end of this history of imagination was very tragic. Our personal imagination was killed and man chose the winner: the anonim/strange imagination. But, was it true that our personal imagination really died? I didnât think so. Our personal imagination wasnât really killed and died. Our imagination still a creative and never ending faculty. Therefore, man might to revive his/her creative imagination. For this purpose, man might knowing the wonderfull power of his/her imagination. I tried to explain the power of manâs imagination on the second part of my two articles.
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