Estudos sobre poder, imaginação e historicidade dos anos 1970 e 1980: apontamentos para o debate atual

Abstract

This article analyzes studies about different forms of historicity published in the 1970s and 1980s, indicating that the question has been approached, in important cases, as linked to power and the imagination. Problems such as ideologies, utopias, the creative power of imagination, and the forms of social imagination have been discussed in works by authors such as Claude Lefort, Paul Ricoeur, and Cornelius Castoriadis through a close connection with the forms of the experimentation of time. Marshall Sahlins’ treatment of the distinct forms of historicity assumes a holistic and historical conception of culture strikingly characterized by attention to power as a fundamental element of life in a collectivity. Based on the examination of the assumptions of these approaches, it is intended to make some preliminary notes which can help in the reflection on the different ways of treating the forms of historicity from a historical perspective. Above all, the ontological assumptions and the conceptions of society or culture which characterize these studies are analyzed, contrasting them with formulations which have an important repercussion in historiography at present, such as the category ‘regime of historicity’.