To Imagine the Unimaginable: The Sublime and Sublimation 

This article explores the concept of imagination’s failure, proposing that it be understood not as a sensuous limitation or as an incapacity, but as an affirmative act. Here, the failure of imagination is defined as an act of delaying the imagination in assigning symbolic value to an object—that is, of suspending the assignment of meaning. This suspension allows for the emergence not of just any meaning, but of the object’s absolute dimension—its connection to the supersensible.

The discussion begins by examining the psychoanalytic concept of inhibition, using it to unpack imagination’s failure. It then turns to the philosophical tradition surrounding the sublime—particularly in the works of Kant, Schopenhauer, and Lyotard—where the failure of imagination is essential to the experience of the sublime. The final section considers the psychoanalytic sublimation of the drive. In both sublimation and the sublime, the observer in inhibited, or obstructed, in the perception of the object. It is precisely through this inhibition–and the difficulty it creates in attributing symbolic meaning to the object—that the role of imagination is revealed.