Dynamics and Performativity of Imagination

In this interdisciplinary anthology, essays study the relationship between the imagination and images both material and mental. Through case studies on a diverse array of topics including photography, film, sports, theater, and anthropology, contributors focus on the role of the creative imagination in seeing and producing images and the imaginary.

Bernd Huppauf is Professor Emeritus of New York University and former Director of Deutsches Haus. Christoph Wulf is co-founder of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Historical Anthropology at the Free University Berlin.

List of Figures Acknowledgments 1 Introduction: The Indispensability of the Imagination Bernd Huppauf and Christoph Wulf Part I: Imagination, Fantasy and Creativity Introduction to Part I 2 Imagination Gert Mattenklott 3 Aesthetic Immanence Georges Didi-Huberman 4 Imagination, Figurality and Creativity: Conditions of Cultural Innovation Dieter Mersch 5 Intuition and Imagination: How to See Something that is Not There Ludger Schwarte Part II: A Look at Pictures - Pictures Look Back Introduction to Part II 6 What is: Seeing an Image? Marie José Mondzain 7 The Gaze in the Image: A Contribution to an Iconology of the Gaze Hans Belting 8 Imagination or Response?: Some Remarks on the Understanding of Images and Pictures in Pre-modern China Mathias Obert 9 The Nature of Face Recognition: A Perspective from the Cognitive Neurosciences David Poeppel and Clare Stroud Part III: Body Images and Body Imaginations Introduction to Part III 10 The Neapolitan Gesture Gunter Gebauer 11 Images of Social Life Christoph Wulf 12 Performative Spaces and Imagined Spaces: How Bodily Movement Sets the Imagination in Motion Erika Fischer-Lichte 13 Media Images, Sports Rituals and the Imaginary K. Ludwig Pfeiffer 14 Ferocious Images Peter Sloterdijk Part IV: Indeterminacy and Fuzziness of Images Introduction to Part IV 15 Indeterminacy: On the Logic of the Image Gottfried Boehm 16 Between Imitation and Simulation: Towards an Aesthetics of Fuzzy Images Bernd Huppauf 17 A Small History (of) Still Passing Rebecca Schneider 18 Scribbling, Scraping off, Painting over: Effacing Pictures in Literary Texts Gabriele Brandstetter 19 Kierkegaard's Shadow Figures Martin Puchner Part V: Constructions of the Visual Introduction to Part V 20 The Unspeakable and the Unimaginable: Word and Image in a Time of Terror W.J.T. Mitchell 21 Face and Mass: Towards an Aesthetic of the Cross-Cut in Film Gertrud Koch 22 Synaesthesia: Physiological Diagnosis, Practice of Perception, Art Program: A Semiotic Re-analysis Roland Posner and Dagmar Schmauks 23 Recognisability and Visual Evidence in Medical Imaging versus Scientific Objectivity Britta Schinzel Notes on Contributors Index