Introduction to Parallel Dimensions Studies
35
take for granted that there is such a thing as an objective reality and
consequently contradict thirty odd years of post-structuralist thought, which in
the end should not be all that difficult, yet another undeniable advantage of
properly defining the limits of our corpus of study: we are imaginologists rather
than epistemologists, hence we do not have to abide by the axioms of cultural
constructionism, which, incidentally, have been abundantly denounced as being
unfounded, if not a bit silly.25
Imaginary parallel dimensions can only be conceived in function of
reality, according to the basic binary Opposition Reality/Imagination; to deny the
existence of an objective reality, as cultural constructionism does, would imply
that all is imagination and that there are therefore no differences between
imaginary parallel dimensions and our own. But just as we can perfectly
distinguish a scholarly article ffom a short story, we can as well teil the
difference between fiction and non-fiction, and between a serious
epistemological inquiry and an imaginary parallel dimension; it would be greatly
advisable, in this time of fictional, lyrical, over-conceptualized rhetoric, that
critics do the same.
The endemic un-definition of our corpus of study, both in form and
content, has naturally inhibited the development of a sound conceptual apparatus
beyond the tools put forward by the formalists and structuralists, which, as we
have seen, cannot be used as systematically as their creators believed, and
explains in great part the current theoretical disorientation of our field. The
concept of imaginary parallel dimensions is a methodological principle which
allows us to defme the limits of our corpus as well as to acknowledge the variety
of its materializations; rather than considering literature as an undefmed set of
“texts” that elicit some sp V6