Imaginário, subjetividade e hegemonia no pensamento pós-marxista: contribuição para uma renovação teórica da análise política

Abstract

The thesis presents a reflection on the field of general social theory, having as its central object the relationship between imaginary, subjectivity, and hegemony in post-Marxist thought. We consider post-Marxism as the tradition or current composed of authors who, strongly influenced by psychoanalysis and the “linguistic turn” in philosophy during the second half of the 20th century, departed from Marxism towards the elaboration of theoretical models aimed at elucidating the role of subjectivity and symbolic universes in the creation of forms of social life and the construction of political dynamics. From this tradition, three authors stand out as especially relevant: Cornelius Castoriadis, Ernesto Laclau, and Slavoj Žižek. The reflection undertook consists of starting from Castoriadis' concept of the imaginary as the central axis that organizes the present discussion, highlighting its importance to produce advances and innovations in the fields of social theory and political analysis and, at the same time, pointing out its impasses and limitations. The main argument is that the concept of the imaginary must be thought of in dialogue with the notion of hegemony, which would make it possible to remedy its inconsistencies, contributing to its effective mobilization within the scope of social and political analysis. For this, we will discuss the relationship between the imaginary and the processual nature of the social world, taking as a reference the concept of collective subjectivities formulated by the Brazilian sociologist José Domingues. Then, we enter the theme of the relationship between the imaginary and politics, in which the focus is the notion of hegemony originally elaborated by Gramsci and later developed within the post-Marxist tradition by authors such as Laclau and Žižek. From this debate, I advance a reflection based on Žižek's concept of ideology, proposing a synthetic model on how to think the imaginary from the hegemony, also indicating a potential path of innovation for political analysis based on the little-explored theme of the duplicity of the imaginary, that is, the structuring role of its non-symbolized / non-publicized component.