Immagini, immaginazione e immaginario. Richard Kearney e la veglia poco funebre del postmodernismo

Abstract

Images, imagination and imaginary. Richard Kearney and the not so mournful wake of postmodernism. This essay aims to locate  The Wake of Immagination within Richard Kearney’s scholarly research and relate it to current theorizations of postmodernism, with a focus on the function served by images, imagination and imagery in the postmodern context. In so doing, it questions the philosophical grounds of Kearney’s investigation, his genealogy of the concept of imagination throughout the centuries and across cultures, and his subsequent analysis of the contemporary age and its idiosyncrasies: from image addiction, through the crisis of creative imagination, to the persistence of an ethic imagery still able to articulate possible narratives that are responsive to the demands of the Other .