Reinventing psychological matters: the importance of the suggestive realm of Tarde's ontology

This article will contribute to a growing body of writing which is considering the importance of suggestion as a neglected aspect of contemporary technologies of the self. Gabriel Tarde's writings foreground this importance, which was largely repudiated by the anti-mimetic turn that characterized the social sciences at the turn of the last century. The article will discuss the context of this refusal of suggestion, through exploring how early mass and social psychology translated and re-distributed Tarde's concepts of invention and imitation. The significance of this re-distribution is discussed in relation to the question of what suggestion could and might become if it is not inserted into a contrast between will and compliance.