Resisting Tiny Heroes: Kant on the Mechanism and Scope of Imaginative Resistance

Abstract

AbstractTraditionally, theorists suggested that imaginative resistance (e.g., when a reader does not imagine what a literary work entreats her to imagine) is limited to morally repugnant claims. More recently, theorists have argued that the phenomenon of imaginative resistance is wider in scope, extending to descriptive claims (e.g., those that are conceptually contradictory). On both sides, though, theorists have focused on cases where imaginative resistance goes right, tracking something that is wrong with the story—that it is morally repugnant, or conceptually contradictory. I use a rarely cited discussion from Kant to argue that imaginative resistance can also occur when something goes wrong with the reader—namely, when a reader imports their own biases into the story, and resists a descriptive claim as a result. In identifying this new class of claims that can meet imaginative resistance, Kant presses the question: when should we cultivate imaginative resistance and when should we fight it?