Why is it that democracies every so often—France in the old days, America now—invade other countries and compel them to accept the blessings of freedom? Why do those countries indignantly reject the offering? Why the sudden urgency to legitimize homosexual marriage? And why is one certain, in spite of widespread anguish, that gay marriage will be legitimized, along with final equality for all minorities, not only here but in every North Atlantic democracy?
According to Montreal political philosopher Charles Taylor, the answers to these and many other questions lie in what he calls the “social imaginary.” This is the subliminal shared narrative that permits each member of society, even the least articulate, to know the beliefs and taboos that allow it to function and carry it forward in time. “I adopt the term ‘imaginary’ because my focus is on the way ordinary people ‘imagine’ their social surroundings, and this is often not expressed in theoretical terms, but … in...
Ray Conlogue is a former arts writer for The Globe and Mail and author of The Longing for Homeland in Canada and Quebec (Mercury Press, 1996), an analysis of the cultural and historical dimensions of Quebec’s independence movement, as well as being a translator, teacher and author of a young adult novel.
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