Jack & Jill and Social Imaginary

 

After reading Carl Trueman's The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self (Crossway, 2020) and listening to a few of his lectures and interviews, this is how I understand Charles Taylor's concept of "social imaginary" at the moment.

Social imaginary is the way ordinary people "imagine" the world. This is often not expressed in theoretical terms. It is acquired less likely by deep thinking over ideas but mostly by sharing in the collective intuitions of the crowd. It is carried largely in visual arts, stories, movies, music, etc.

Theories are often in the possession of a small minority (a few intellectual elites). In contrast, social imaginary is shared by the society's majority if not the whole of it. It dictates what practices in the society are acceptable and which ones are unacceptable. It is the way we as a society look at the world, make sense of the world, and make sense of our behavior within it.

Let's take this statement as an example: "I am a woman trapped in a man's body." I first heard the statement as a small kid in the late 1980s from the character of Jill in the movie Jack & Jill (portrayed by Sharon Cuneta and Herbert Bautista respectively). It was a comedy film. It was intended to make moviegoers laugh. The fact that the statement is now considered serious and sensible indicates that in a short period of time, radical shifts are taking place not just in the Western world but in the Filipino social imaginary as well.