Immaginario o immaginari? Europa e America a confronto. Due casi: il ritorno dell'eroe e la figura del Supereroe = Imagination or imaginations? Europe and America in comparison. Two cases: the return of the hero and the Superhero figure

Over the recent years, the exploration of the notion of 'social imagination' has been carried out by searching for the essence, for that archetypal collective deposits that are positioned along a line that goes from Jung to Bachelard to Durand. As a result, research has usually relied on the idea of a universal "imagination", which derives from disciplines such as – among others – psychology, anthropology, and neuroscience. And yet, due to the development of these studies, scholars have discussed the sociologists' task, questioning whether they have to search for the essential core of the symbolic system or to identify the particular historical and cultural meaning that this absolute system takes on from time to time. This paper intends to inspect the appropriateness of talking about the study of the "imaginations" rather than that of the "imagination". At first, we illustrate the causes of the historical-geographical differentiation of imaginaries. Then, we enquire into the role of the ideological structure and of the social, spatial, religious and economic contexts as preconditions for the construction of different and therefore specific archetypes. The investigation is performed by considering the American imagination system in contrast to the Catholic-European one. In particular, two main factors are taken into account: the re-functionalisation of Lotman's archetypal structure, i.e., the relationship between the space of consciousness and the outer space, which is expressed in the myth of the hero's return home; and the re-functionalisation of the archetype of the hero in the conception of the American superhero

近年来，学界围绕"社会想象（social imagination）"概念展开探索，其研究路径为探寻其本质——即沿荣格（Jung）、巴什拉（Bachelard）至迪朗（Durand）这一学术脉络所延伸的原型性集体积淀。既往研究通常依托源自心理学、人类学、神经科学等学科的"普遍想象"理念。然而，随着此类研究的推进，学者们就社会学家的研究任务展开讨论，质疑其究竟应当探寻符号体系的本质核心，还是辨识这一绝对体系在不同时空下所承载的特定历史文化意涵。本文旨在探讨以"诸种想象"而非"单一想象"为研究对象的合理性。首先，本文阐释想象体系的历史地理分化成因。随后，本文探究意识形态结构，以及社会、空间、宗教与经济语境作为构建差异化且具特定性原型之先决条件的作用。本研究以美国想象体系与天主教欧洲想象体系的对比为路径展开探究，具体而言，本研究考量两大核心要素：一是对洛特曼（Lotman）原型结构的再功能化，即意识空间与外部空间的关系，这一关系在英雄返乡的神话中得以体现；二是英雄原型在美国超级英雄（superhero）观念中的再功能化。