A imaginação e maio de 68 na perspetiva crítica de Mikel Dufrenne

May 68 is indelibly associated with the ethical-aesthetic-political imperative that the young contestants synthesized in the slogan “imagination to power”. The accelerated search for unprecedented solutions in political, social, economic, cultural life surrendered to the power of imagination with its eyes closed, as the sole transmutation resource of established powers, and openness – who knows? – to the other of the power, or the power according to the imagination or the power of the non-power ... Fifty years later, the delusions, failures, unfulfilled ideals, other adulterated ones are questioned, invoking a thousand reasons and causes of the most diverse orders. However, the same imagination is not questioned with the same accuracy… that same faculty, hybrid in nature, to which all the credit was granted, and from which everything was expected. But was it able to assume and respond to such a complex undertaking? From what idea of imagination have students and intellectuals mobilized themselves to make it the development force of their future? As is well known, J. P. Sartre had developed an influential theory of imagination, imaginary, and image that pontificated in the minds of the contestants. Mikel Dufrenne’s reply to Sartre’s vision is not so well known, daring to even criticize it, showing that imagination would fail if it ran out in a relation to the unreal. On the contrary, its success depends on an intrinsic link to perception focused on the real. In this context, the present essay seeks to show this Dufrennian perspective of the imagination, and to leave between the lines a hypothesis for a critical reevaluation of that movement: if the students and the intellectuals had listened to this last philosopher’s lesson, perhaps May might have blossomed otherwise…