A breach in the social imaginary – Le Bug and the prospective science fiction of Enki Bilal

Mats Rosengren

Abstract


This essay aims to contribute to the study of social imaginaries by looking at how the imaginal, the imaginary, the discursive and the political co-operate in creating social meaning. Through a reading of the work of the French graphic artist and political thinker Enki Bilal, and more specifically in his latest, yet unfinished, work Le Bug [The Bug], I will explore how the social imaginary dimension currently works, how it politically affects our ways of thinking and of acting.  My assumption is that Bilal can, perhaps, help us see and concretise both possibilities and risks saturating the present-day social universes. I will substantiate my arguments by looking at the processes of creating meaning activated by both writers and readers of comics. 

Keywords


Social Imaginary; Enki Bilal; Comics; Imaginal; Magma of social imaginary significations

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References


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DOI: https://doi.org/10.7413/228181381948

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Im@go. A Journal of the Social Imaginary - Biannual - Edizioni Mimesis