(iPoster) Imaginative Resistance as Principled Disobedience

• In Event: Poster Sessions: Ideas, Knowledge, and Politics; European Politics and Society; & International History and Politics
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Ideas, Knowledge, and Politics

Abstract

The transmission of political ideas in theory and culture depends fundamentally on imaginative engagement—a cognitively demanding task requiring individuals to envision implausible scenarios, render judgments about those imaginings, and reason from those judgments. Political theorists frequently employ thought experiments as persuasive devices: Rawls’s original position behind the veil of ignorance exemplifies this technique. However, such imaginative exercises introduce significant challenges when readers dispute the content or validity of prescribed imaginings. Critics like Susan Moller Okin (1989) and Charles Mills (1997; 2007) have challenged Rawls’s original position for uncritically assuming gendered family structures and adopting ahistorical premises that ignore racial and structural injustice. Still, beyond scholarly critique, many readers lack the conceptual sophistication to articulate their concerns and instead refuse engagement when prescriptions deviate sharply from their experience or normative commitments. First observed by Hume in Of the Standard of Taste (1757), this psychological reluctance—is termed “imaginative resistance” (Gendler, 2000). This framing, however, overlooks a crucial political dimension: ethically grounded imaginative resistance can constitute principled disobedience. Conducted privately, such resistance functions as conscientious refusal, motivated by personal conviction and moral integrity preservation (Smith and Brownlee, 2017). When communicated publicly, it transforms into protest and political participation, comparable to demonstrations against hate speech (Ceva, 2015). Imaginative resistance thereby expresses a normative stance, particularly when guided by the principle of charity that maximizes the truth or rationality of authorial intent. Drawing on Mathias Thaler's "Unhinged Frames: Assessing Thought Experiments in Normative Political Theory" (2018), this paper introduces a novel analytical framework for imaginative engagement based on Kendall Walton's Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts (1990) and Letitia Meynell's extension in "Imagination and Insight: A New Account of the Content of Thought Experiments" (2014). Walton conceptualizes texts representing fictional narratives as props in games of make-believe that prescribe specific imaginings to readers (1990, pp. 21-24). This psychological framework applies equally to theoretical texts prescribing imaginative exercises. Walton's methodology provides epistemic parsimony and rigor without requiring modal analysis in clarifying the psychological mechanisms underlying imaginative resistance.

Author

• Armin Mirsanaye, University of Toronto