Giambattista Vico and the psychological imagination

This special issue originates from an international workshop on “Vico and imagination,” that took place at Aalborg University in 2014, within a research project on Giambattista Vico and the epistemology of psychology. Imagination has inexplicably been relegated to the background in contemporary psychology, despite the fact that imaginative processes are involved in even the most mundane activities. In this editorial, I first present the rationale and the content of the articles and commentaries. Then I outline a brief history of the concept of imagination before Vico, drawing some consequences for contemporary psychology. Finally, I provide the proposal for a new research program on imagination as a higher psychological function that enables us to manipulate complex meanings of both linguistic and iconic forms in the process of experiencing.

To become one with the instrument: The unfolding of a musical topography

The present article advances the notion of musical topography to describe the engagement between a practitioner and the musical instrument, emphasizing its developmental character. From the point of view of semiotic anthropology, it is suggested that the development of such a practical engagement is guided by expressivity, and that the instrument appears not only as an extension of the body, but participates in the generation of a unitary field, where bodily motion, the instrument and the tonal space are intertwined. The development of lived musical practice draws its force from a situated tradition that consists of normative, structural and stylistic elements, and of a constellation of genres and values shaped and reshaped by generations of practitioners. Finally, it is emphasized that the notion of musical topography brings back to musical praxis its long neglected imaginative dimension.