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  • The FACT Team

Imaginaries of the Pandemic in Chile: A Conceptual Discussion

Updated: Dec 10, 2020

By Jorge Iván Vergara - Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Concepción & Daniela Leyton - Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Concepción.

All images by Nelson Muñoz Mera, Graphic Journalist, http://www.nelsonmunozmera.cl/

Introduction

The emergence and expansion of the Covid-19 pandemic has meant a radical change of life in the world and in Chile. Our country, already shaken by the intense social protests that began in October of the previous year, has seen transformations in all areas of sociability, naturally beginning with health but extending to the economy, education, and the political sphere, among others. Likewise, the population has had to adapt (not without reluctance) to the many restrictions established by the government ostensibly to prevent contagion and treat people already sick. The measures have been implemented differently according to geographical areas, work sectors and time periods.



Discussion and criticism of these measures has occupied the permanent attention of public opinion. The debate has often been confused by the great diversity of frequently antagonistic positions on the scope and efficacy of the policies. Far less attention has been paid to how society has experienced the pandemic. The concept of social imaginary can be central to a satisfactory interpretation of family reactions to the pandemic and ways of signifying it. This concept is closely associated with the Greek philosopher and psychoanalyst Cornelius Castoriadis.


Social imaginaries

For Castoriadis, imaginaries are “free and unmotivated creations of the anonymous collective concerned; spontaneous creations of the human collective” (Castoriadis, 1997: 2-3 and 5), since the power to create distinguishes human beings from other species (Castoriadis, 2006: 125-126). Each imaginary consists of institutions in particular: values, language, tools, etc., which "forment, et fonctionnent comme un tout coherent” (form and function as a coherent whole) (Castoriadis, 1981: 279).


Social imaginaries are an expression of creativity, of the incessant creative capacity that defines the human being. This creativity finds institutional expression through socio-historical imaginaries, a complex patchwork of meanings, action and representation, which cannot be explained causally. They are also forms in which individuals and society interlock. In turn, Castoriadis distinguishes between primary and secondary imaginaries.

Moreover, the distinction between primary and secondary imaginaries can be reformulated by following Habermas's distinction (1981, Volume II: 113-197) between the lifeworld (Lebenswelt) and social system. The lifeworld is governed by communicative rationality, aiming at understanding or consensus,[1] while social systems are geared to instrumental and strategic rationality. Primary imaginaries are those of the lifeworld, which we all share and in which primary sociability occurs. Social systems, for their part, comprise secondary imaginaries, which correspond mutatis mutandis to each social system.


Lifeworld, disease and pandemic imaginaries

Where disease phenomena are concerned, the lifeworld, understood as the world of our lived, common, and immediate experiences (Husserl cit. by Good 1994: 122), has been approached through anthropological investigations. Good (1994: 124) explains how illness and chronic pain imply a disarticulation of the world, one that is not limited only to the subject’s experience and his phenomenological body, for the social and political bodies are also brought into play, and are in tension, when faced by that transformation. This makes it possible to link levels of analysis that operate on different planes of reality, in this case, fundamentally the primary and secondary imaginaries that we have mentioned. In this sense, when faced with illness (or chronic pain) as a limit-experience, doubt appears, the world is no longer to be trusted, we become aware of our mortality, achieving the disruption of our world.


Taking up Good's suggestion, we would propose that the COVID-19 disease in Chile has been signified not only as one more pathology, but that, on being labelled a pandemic, it has generated a disruption of the lifeworld, which entails observing its repercussions and articulations also at the social system level, particularly in the specialized technical and scientific worlds; as well as it is about addressing how the latter have been transformed, not only due to contracting the disease or the risk of contracting it, but also due to the reconfiguration of the great majority of our daily activities. In Chile’s case, the repercussions have been mediated by the social, political, and institutional upheaval that has taken place since October 2019.



In this way, the most important relationship is not that between the imaginaries that are part of social systems, but between these imaginaries and the imaginary of the lifeworld. Furthermore, in a complex and heterogeneous society, there may be several lifeworld imaginaries, which relate to one another as well as to the systemic imaginaries. This relationship can be understood as an appropriation of the meanings typical of systemic imaginaries, or alternatively as a questioning of them, a rejection, or most importantly demands for change in these systems. In any case, in addition to coincidences, there are always tensions between them.


In tentative fashion, we have constructed a table that contains the most important meanings and policies of the systemic imaginaries and the lifeworld that have emerged in Chile. We try to show the differences between the systemic imaginaries and between these and a (possible) lifeworld imaginary.


Topics and policies of pandemic imaginaries in the lifeworld and social systems in Chile

We have organised the pandemic´s main issues by following our distinction between lifeworld and social systems. We assume that there is no single social imaginary that can encompass all the meanings of the pandemic; instead, we identify four several imaginaries belonging to the lifeworld or to social systems and three main social areas involved: policy/self-government; health; and economy, which are integrated in the lifeworld but separated in three fields at the social systems level. Families have to deal with all issues simultaneously, while social policies are conceived and implemented by the three corresponding social systems. In this sense, families are a social space in which many meanings and decisions take place and where the imaginary´s are integrated and synthesized.



Conclusions

Our aim in this brief sketch was to offer a first conceptual approach to the social imaginaries of the COVID-19 pandemic in Chile. Above all, while not forgetting the political and historical implications of the phenomenon, we have distinguished between two major levels of analysis to understand it from a sociocultural perspective.


Specifically, we have revisited the distinction between primary and secondary imaginaries in relation to the Habermasian distinction between social integration (the lifeworld) and system integration (social systems). We present a table with a preliminary systematisation of the various conceptual aspects that come into play at the level of the lifeworld and the political, economic and health systems. Health issues are relevant but cannot be correctly understood without taking account of the economic and political dimensions with which they are interrelated. At the same time, it can be concluded that there is a gap between social integration in the lifeworld and system integration in social systems. These are preliminary results to be modified and deepened according to the empirical findings of fieldwork.


[1] “It conceives of intersubjective understanding as a telos inscribed in everyday linguistic communication” (Habermas, 1985:311).

Bibliography

Castoriadis, Cornelius (1981) “L´imaginaire: la création dans le domaine social-historique”, in: Domaines de l´homme. Les carrefours du labyrinthe, Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1986, pp. 272-295.

________ (1997) “Imaginario social constituyente”, in: Zona Erógena N°35, pp. 1-9.

________ (2006) “Imaginary and Imagination at the Crossroads”, in: Figures of the thinkable, pp. 123-152 (http://www.notbored.org/FTPK.pdf).

Good, Byron (1994) Medicine, rationality and experience. An anthropological perspective, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom.

Habermas, Jürgen (1981) Theory of communicative action (2 Vols.), Beacon Press, Boston, 1987.

________ (1985) The philosophical discourse of modernity, Polity Press, Cambridge, U.K., 1987.

Luhmann, Niklas (1996) Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft (2 Tomos), Suhrkamp Verlag, Fráncfort del Meno.

Schutz, Alfred (1971) “On Multiple Realities”, in: Collected Papers. Vol. 1: The Problem of Social Reality, Martinus Nijhoff, La Haya, 1971, pp. 207-259.

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