“One, No One and One Hundred Thousand” contacts. The exponential growth of relations in the construction (or destruction) of the collective identity

• Main Author: Laura Appignanesi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Mimesis Edizioni, Milano 2016-09-01
• Series: Im@go. A Journal of the Social Imaginary
• Subjects: Imaginary; System theory; Communication; Form and Medium; Revolution 2.0
• Online Access: http://cab.unime.it/journals/index.php/IMAGO/article/view/1306

According to Niklas Luhmann, Art is a special kind of communication that uses perceptions instead of language, and it operates at the boundary between the social system and consciousness. The paper supports the thesis that the product of imagination is a tool for storage, transmission, reproduction of cultural identity in the social system. This happens through contents (“form”) and through the medial support (“medium”) of the imaginary. But in the present age of the so-called Revolution 2.0, the increasing and unstoppable dimension of the “sharing” seems to arise some different considerations. In fact, in the “world society”, imaginary could be potentially able to build a global cultural identity or rather to interpret the loss of it.