The imaginary dimension of everyday life: the adventure of the pleasant journey in Mexico City

Abstract

The purpose of this text is to discuss the relationship between studies on social imagery and those dedicated to everyday life, in order to explore the reproduction and production of the city. The simultaneous and articulated treatment of both areas of analysis is a way of overcoming two frequent reductions, when they are approached independently, to understand cities. These biases are the reification of everyday practices, which can be overcome with the inclusion of the net of meaning and motivations, and the treatment of subjectivity and the imaginary as cultural superstructures, sortable when they are interwoven with practices and their constant reconstruction becomes visible. The articulation of the imaginary with everyday practices is a way to advance in the multidimensional specificities for understanding the production and reproduction of urban and city life. The text establishes the approach in an urban imaginary associated with liminal spaces of male sexuality and everyday journeys in the cdmx Metro, here called the imaginary of pleasant journey and adventure. In order to do this, in the first part a review on how the imaginary is conceived is presented. In the second section, another similar theoretical discussion is raised on the quotidian. The third part deals with an unstable and liminal fragment of the city in which the imaginary and the quotidian of male sexuality are intertwined in the public space of transportation.