Imaginary Domain

The Imaginary Domain refers to the legal and moral ideal that was named to protect the psychic space necessary to rework individual sexual difference, sexuate being, racialized and ethnic identifications, as well as any other complex fantasies of personhood.

Drucilla Cornell coined the phrase the imaginary domain in the book by the same name in 1995.[1] The phrase was originally intended to intervene in feminist debates that had become acrimonious about whether women or any other identity could appeal to established identities as the basis of right. Cornell argued that it was possible to defend a practical ideal of the imaginary domain without having to resolve these particular debates, since as a moral or legal right, it was the person who was given the imagined space to recreate and re-symbolize all of his or her identifications. Thus, the imaginary domain did not fall into notions of right as necessarily inscribing victim identities or states of injury, since at least at the level of fantasy, the person is protected as the site of her own identifying configurations.

References

  1. ↑ Cornell, Drucilla (July 16, 1995). The Imaginary Domain: Abortion, Pornography and Sexual Harassment. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0415911603.
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