Introduction: Fantasy and Social Movements in Context

Abstract

What part does fantasy play in social movements? This may appear to be an odd question to ask. It stirs up some of the most fundamental dichotomies in the history, not only of social movement theory but of the social sciences in general: collective/individual; real/imagined; action/escape; rational/irrational. Social movements have commonly been defined as collective enterprises responding to real social conditions and acting to change them in some positive way, and in most recent theory they have also been understood as expressions of (albeit perhaps ‘bounded’) rationality on the part of their participants. Fantasy, on the other hand, is often thought of as private and therefore highly individual, and as representing a turn away from reality and social action. As Knafo & Feiner (2006, p. 1) define them, ‘fantasies are our own private form of psychodrama, where we are both author and protagonist’. And insofar as this book engages with psychoanalytic notions of fantasy specifically, and psychoanalysis generally acknowledges the existence of both unconscious fantasies and conscious fantasies or daydreams, it might be seen as threatening to associate activism with the unconscious, the irrational and even the pathological. It is certainly generally accepted that fantasies are not ‘chosen’ by the fantasizer. The most fundamental argument of this book is that fantasy does nonetheless play an important role in activism.KeywordsSocial MovementCollective BehaviourSocial MoveSocial Movement TheoryDepressive PositionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.