Notes on the concept of the imaginal: Surauardi & Xarazuri

Abstract

This is a commentary on the concept of the imaginal, used recently in academic and non-academic works in several domains, initially thought by the medieval Persian philosopher Suhrawardī. I begin with the ontological status of the image as being-in-suspension and the context of its elaboration, moving on to a commentary on the imaginal possibilities beyond representation, particularly in religious experience, and then address the unusual spatiality of this intermediate “world” called ālam al-mithāl, “the imaginal world”. In this sense, there is a double movement in the text: i) the citation and elaboration of less “religious” possibilities of reading, moving away from the literary orbit of Henry Corbin’s work on the Illuminationists, without disregarding the nature of the problems that Suhrawardī tried to conceptually solve; ii) the writing of a general commentary on the thought of Suhrawardī and Shahrazūrī that justifies the contemporary uses of both and encourages new ones.