TrendsGymnasium: Framework (Collective Imaginary)

Iconologies by Michel Maffesoli

Interest for the collective imaginary has distant roots that refer to the psychology of the deep and the archetypes of Jung (which regains the platonic intuition of the myth of the cavern) and then is embodied in the reflection on the media by McLuhan (a memorable book/concept The Medium is the Message) in the 1960’s and the birth of new psychological and sociological disciplines that analyze advertising communication as with the case of Vance Packard in the famous The Hidden Persuaders, or the semiotics of consumption as with the equally famous Mythologies by Roland Barthes.
The theme finds its original and radical synthesis in the theory of simulation and of mock-up elaborated in the 1970’s by Baudrillard in his texts For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign and Symbolic Exchange and Death that overthrow the Marxist and structuralist concepts, preparing the terrain for the theoretical hypothesis of Lyotard within his The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. From that moment in France the theme is recovered in the field of sociology of fashion by Gilles Lipovetsky (L'ère du vide and L'Empire de l'éphémère) and above all from the theoreticians of communication applied to marketing: by Jacques Seguela (Le futur de l’avenir) to Kevin Roberts (Lovemarks).
The most lucid analysis on society and the market guided by the imaginary and by the desire that is proposed by Rolf Jensen in The Dream Society, and by the more recent book Iconologies by Michel Maffesoli, which we warmly recommend. We also recommend that one reads even if only partially, The Hidden Persuaders, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Mythologies, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge.
The FCL books quoted in this module are:
Controtendenze / Contratendencias
Metatendenze
Previsioni e Presentimenti

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