Publicado 2007-05-21
Resumo
The Imaginary Research Center (CBJ), currently run by you, is recognized as the first center in the world oriented in this direction. It is, in this sense, an avant-garde Center in the field of reflection in human sciences. What is the background of this Center, how did it emerge and how is its research currently developing?
The Imaginary Research Center was created in 1966 by Gilbert Durand. At that time it was unprecedented of any kind and unique in its kind. He was trying to shake up the academic routine of French universities and bring new energy to them. Two years before the events of 1968, university students proclaimed the need for new working methods in the human sciences as well as new objectives. It was necessary to combat a narrow and positivist vision of science and open the windows to innovation. The imagination or, better yet, the imaginaryhe had to take power and attempt a new synthesis of knowledge. This is what was called the "new anthropological spirit." The CRI is thus instituted around a multidisciplinary nucleus, mainly represented by sociology (s) and the disciplines of analysis of cultural content (oral and written literatures, iconography, filmology, normal or pathological imagery), proposing the study of the structures and functioning of the imaginary. From the perspective of the works of S. Freud, CG Jung, E. Cassirer, G. Bachelard, M. Eliade, G. Dumézil, C. Lévi-Strauss, Max Weber, as well as the considerable progress in reproduction and Conical transmission, the imaginary can be considered today as a specific general indicator of anthropology. It therefore constitutes
Could you briefly outline the intellectual profile of Gilbert Durand?