Lecture-Performance
On the Imaginary Domain, Or Who Gets to Be a Person?

Fictive Witness #3

11/27/18
7:30pm
Goethe-Institut New York

Professor Drucilla Cornell looks at our current society in which people seem to live in different universes. In “On the Imaginary Domain, Or Who Gets to Be a Person?” she suggests that is the case because of the increasingly divided way in which we imagine our world and ourselves. For her, imagination is not individual but instead thrives on the social symbols and allegories that give meaning to what it means to be a citizen of the United States—the “National Imaginary.”

Cornell’s lecture focuses on what she calls the “Imaginary Domain,” which gives all human beings the moral, legal, and ethical right to determine their primary identifications, such as sexuality and ethnic belonging. Currently in the United States, the right of some people to claim that they are persons and have equal dignity is under attack.

This lecture is part of Fictive Witness, a series where artists Alex Strada and Tali Keren have invited scholars to interpret and provide a layer of narration to their silent film, Save the Presidents. Cornell’s lecture will be the last in the series.

Fictive Witness is organized by The Agency for Legal Imagination operating throughout 2018 at MINI/Goethe-Institut Curatorial Residencies Ludlow 38.

With the kind support of the Artis Grant Program


Drucilla Cornell is an Emeritus Professor of Political Science, Women’s Studies, and Comparative Literature at Rutgers University. She is a playwright and also launched The uBuntu Project in South Africa in 2003 and has been working with the project ever since. Her theoretical and political writings span a tremendous range of both topics and disciplines. From her early work in Critical Legal Studies and Feminist Theory to her more recent work on South Africa, transitional justice, and the jurisprudence of Ronald Dworkin, Professor Cornell continues to think through new and evolving issues in philosophy and politics of global significance. Her latest title, coauthored with Stephen Seely, is called The Spirit of Revolution: Beyond the Dead Ends of Man.

Alex Strada is an interdisciplinary artist based in New York City. Strada’s work has been shown at the Socrates Sculpture Park, Anthology Film Archives, Museum of Moving Image, Goethe-Institut, Jewish Museum, National Museum of Iceland in Reykjavik, MuseumsQuartier in Vienna, Kaunas Biennial in Lithuania, and on the screens of Times Square with Time Square Arts’ Midnight Moment. Strada was a fellow in the Art & Law Program, the Institute for Investigative Living at A-Z West, and the Socrates Sculpture Park Emerging Artist Fellowship. Her work has been written about in Artsy, Vice, and The New Yorker. Strada received a B.A. from Bates College in 2010 and an M.F.A. in Visual Art from Columbia University in 2016. She is currently a 2018-19 fellow in the Whitney Independent Study Program.

Tali Keren is a multidisciplinary artist (b. 1982, Jerusalem living and working in Brooklyn, NY). Keren received her B.F.A from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem (2009) and earned an M.F.A from Columbia University, New York (2016). Her work has been recently shown at the Socrates Sculpture Park, New York; Anthology Film Archives, New York; Museum of Moving Image, New York; Jewish Museum, New York; Museums Quartier, Vienna; Kaunas Biennial, Lithuania; The Center of Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv and on the screens of Times Square with Time Square Arts’ Midnight Moment.