As we were finalizing the manuscript for this book, on September 30, 2018, an elderly man died in Odense, Denmark. This man was Kim Larsen, former lead singer of Gasolin’—the unrivaled, biggest rock band in Denmark in the 1970s, with a significant crowd of followers also in Sweden and Norway. After the disbanding of Gasolin’, he continued to produce albums (and also one highly successful movie) in genres ranging from the classic rock that was his point of departure to more sing-along kinds of tunes, from solid existential and touching ballads to what many considered “cheesy” and banal songs of dubious quality. His catalogue also contained albums reviving “forgotten” Danish classics from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A trained schoolteacher and an avid reader of literary classics, he definitely had a gift for words, although a far cry from the intellectualism of a Tom Waits or a Bob Dylan. If comparison is at all meaningful, the tone of his songwriting had more similarities with the simplicity and the reverence for cultural legacy of a Johnny Cash.
Larsen’s death from cancer caused a major media stir as well as thousands of—possibly a million—private mourning and contemplation rituals in many homes, ranging from playing his music all night, or sharing favorite memories of songs (a not uncommon remark was “Larsen’s music is the soundtrack to my life”), to showing up with flowers, beers, candles, and little drawings or greetings on spontaneously created sites of commemoration. These sacralized spots—the beers remained largely undrunk by the homeless and the bums of the neighborhoods, although Larsen would presumably have wanted them to serve themselves—were either in the Christianshavn/Christiania neighborhood in Copenhagen (the home turf of Gasolin’), in front of an impromptu graffiti painting of his well-known, sixpence-capped face, or in front of his apartment for the last 25 years of his life in central Odense, conveniently located just next to his favorite beer bar. On the following Friday, an estimated 30,000 people marched in his memory in Copenhagen and 10,000 in Odense.
Even if we as modern consumers are used to the usual over-hyped, mediatized, and more or less commercial exploitation of celebrity and identification that haunts the modern music scene, the depth and scope of the reactions to this passing of a public icon in Danish (and Nordic) musical history surprised many, both avid fans and people simply observing from the sidelines—but nevertheless often touched by the moment themselves. While obviously a large number of people don’t like Larsen’s work, these voices remained respectfully silent even on social media, where tactfulness is usually not the most widespread feature.
The question is: What is going on? As one journalist reported, he found out about the passing of Mr. Larsen on an airplane on his way to Brussels. And he realized that he could not hold back a tear or two. Considering himself distinctly unsentimental, he began to reflect on the reason for this emotional response. He was not a big fan, had never met the man, had not even been to a concert. And he never found himself looking forward to a new album. He could easily think of better rock poets on the Danish scene. And yet, he knew that he would also never find himself shedding a tear for these other artists.
The media obviously both picked up and nurtured the popular sentiment of loss and grief. The commentaries evoked all kinds of explanatory frameworks. They ranged from the expression of a different (more original) sense of Danishness than the isolationist version promoted by contemporary political populism; the proof of community and sense of belonging in a world of transitory relations, as expressed in a song catalogue that can be used for almost any occasion; the authenticity of a rebel “working-class” hero, complete with deep flaws, conservatism and oddity, and an insistence on supporting the weak and marginalized. This was not just a matter of siding with leftist forces in the political spectrum, since it also included resistance against perceived excess welfare state tyrannies intruding into the personal sphere, such as Larsen’s central role in an anti-anti-smoking campaign. To these more concrete examples can be added the power of shared emotions as a carrier of an ephemeral sense of community that in and of itself represents an ideal in the Nordic context.
In short, the legacy of this particular artist may be said to summarize many of the complex and multifaceted elements that constitute the multifaceted and paradoxical formation of Danish and Nordic societies. Social indignation and a tendency to side with the weak co-exist with an expectation that everyone will do their utmost to fulfill the social contract. Celebration of the “popular” co-exists with an appreciation for the value of rebelliousness. Petit-bourgeois, provincial romantic nostalgia for localness co-exists with a sense of responsible inclusion. Fundamental respect for the public institutional set-up that guarantees “good life conditions” and an ensuing trust in government as a positive force simultaneously co-exist with a tacit belief in the positive sides of the Law of Jante, including disrespect for nominal authorities and non-tolerance of bragging bullshit. Emphasis on quality of life and enjoyment pairs with a deep respect for honorable work efforts. A love of the social safety net pairs with a disdain for patronizing coddling. As one journalist pointed out, we all can name both an absolute favorite Larsen anthem (or several) and at least one but oftentimes several absolutely loathed tunes. Although the generalization is obviously over-stated, it may be fair to say that the taste for Larsen as a cultural phenomenon (more than for his personality) is orthodox, whereas the taste for his work is distinctly heterodox (Wilk 1997).
Why this fuss about a popular culture figure in a serious book concerning Nordicness and the relations between state and market? Isn’t this just nonsensical epiphenomena on top of the historical and institutional forces shaping the “real” character of “the Nordic”? French sociologist Edgar Morin provides us with a response to this criticism when, in his two classics on the cinematographic world (Morin 1956, 2005 [1957]), he underlines the relationship between the products of mass cultural consumption and the fundamental constitution of the human being as living in a world that is simultaneously real and imaginary. The commercial nonsense of mass culture offers pop and plastic, pleasure and repugnance, sense and nonsense. It is not only an object for the study of capitalist exploitation, but also a window to that which is most constitutive of humanity. As Morin writes about the study of mass culture: “Nonsense, no doubt! [but…] Nonsense is also what is most profound in man. Behind the star system is not only the ‘stupidity’ of fanatics, the lack of invention of screen-writers, the commercial chicanery of producers. There is the world’s heart and there is love, another kind of nonsense, another profound humanity” (Morin 2005 [1957], p. 87).
What we can learn from this whole story is the importance of the imaginary! Maybe the unspeakable linkage that Larsen seemingly forged with a large part of Danish society was his ability to express the social imaginary which glues together Danish institutional and practical reality. Without really understanding exactly why and how, this artist may have touched on and in a sense “spoken to” central elements of the “Danish imaginary,” if we assume and accept that there is such a phenomenon. Consequently, and moving from the Danish to the somewhat larger but not altogether very different Nordic reality, we can ask: What is the Nordic? In order to answer this question, we should of course look at institutional settings, practices, and discourses, but possibly also understand how all these manifestations of a particular social organization might rest on a foundation of the imaginary.
The concept of the imaginary, while marginalized in most social research, is a central concept in much psychoanalytic thinking. Most notably, it represents one of Lacan’s three ontological orders, the imaginary order which according to Lacan originates in the mirror stage of infancy. This is a stage in which the infant, through its confrontation with its own image in a mirror or in the mother’s (or other significant other’s) care, sees itself as an autonomous and complete subject existing in a sort of perfection (for an introduction that also addresses popular culture, see Žižek 1992). Imaginary, something which it is important to retain, does not mean illusory or fictitious in this context, but rather refers to the ability to project and reflect oneself (as well as other phenomena), to create mirrored mental imagery.
We will however use a different approach to the imaginary, which is the one proposed by French-Greek social philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis. His approach to the imaginary is inspired from but also goes beyond the Lacanian concept. Castoriadis transposes the fundamental idea of the imaginary to a social level and in his magnum opus, The Imaginary Institution of Society (1975 [1987]), proposes the imaginary as the source for institutionalizing social significations. The imaginary is thereby fundamental both for understanding the individual psyche and for society as a whole (Bouchet 2018).
For Castoriadis, two fundamental questions that are also relevant in terms of thinking “the Nordic” are: What makes societies coherent? And what makes them change historically? In order to answer these questions, he establishes a set of philosophical a priori. First, being is a chaos containing non-regular, disjointed stratifications and partial, temporary organizations. There is no great chain or master system. Second, being is not in time but by the means of time; being is time, “being” is always “becoming.” And third, time is ontological creation (Castoriadis 1986a, pp. 219 & 222). If these a priori are valid, Castoriadis convincingly argues, the established knowledge and schemes of thinking do not provide satisfactory answers to the instituting power of societies. The instituting process cannot be exhausted by what we usually understand as institutional, rational, functional, material, and symbolic relationships and processes. The instituting power is both implicit and explicit, and, if we do not take the imaginary institution of society into account, the former of the two dimensions fundamentally eludes us.
Castoriadis’ radical thesis is therefore to insert an “invisible” factor—the imaginary—into the heart of the institution of the social in order to account for time as ontological creation. He argues for the limits of the functionalist approach to social institutions, but also that the symbolic realm is insufficient for understanding a social institution. “Institutions cannot be reduced to the symbolic but they can exist only in the symbolic” (1987, p. 117), he asserts. Institutions are thus reducible neither to functionalist nor to symbolic entities. There is something at stake behind these levels of reality, he argues. For Castoriadis, this is not to fall into complete idealism or solipsism. Paraphrasing Marx, he says, “Society does constitute its symbolism but not in total freedom” (1987, p. 125). There is obviously what he calls a “natural stratum,” the givens of the material and physical world, but there is also history and rationality that co-condition the social institution. He uses the metaphor of a “magma of social significations” to illustrate how the social flows on “something,” but this “something” is for Castoriadis of a double nature: it is both of the primary natural stratum, but also of the imaginary.
Essentially, the notion of the imaginary is necessary in order to account for society’s instituting process without institutional—functional and/or symbolic—determinism, leaving free space for emergence, the singular event, the ontologically different, Castoriadis’ particular ontology of creation ex nihilo (Adams 2011). This ability to create ex nihilo Castoriadis terms the radical imaginary, and his point is that while it only shows itself in symbolic forms, social history is unthinkable without it. It is, metaphorically speaking, the dark matter of social theory, which we cannot observe, but which must be there in order to make the observations fit. The imaginary, therefore, is a kind of a priori forming of what we can think, say, and do, a frame for possible social valorization, but also something that can change in order to alter the conditions for what we can say, think, and do—without this alteration being reducible to a historical trajectory, the change being already inherent in or given from what was before. Perhaps it is the visual, plastic, and musical arts that most directly channel and reproduce the imaginary (even the art of a Kim Larsen), as the arts are reducible to neither discourse nor symbol. For example, Castoriadis opens his discussion of ontology and the imaginary with the simple question: Why do philosophers never begin their interrogation of a paradigm of being with a reflection on Mozart’s Requiem, what it can reveal to us about Being (1986a, p. 222)?
This is Castoriadis...