Communicology has a great development of message analysis research in all its aspects and levels. This way of dealing with the communicative phenomenon has led to reading the theory of the imaginary as if it were only an instrument of content analysis, forgetting its constitutive anthropology and ontology.An essay is proposed in which, first, a presentation of two traditions of the imaginary is made: that of Gilbert Durand and that of Cornelius Castoriadis. From this situation, a field of investigation of the imaginary is proposed which, without resolving the epistemological tensions that constitute it, contributes to a creative and critical investigation of communication. Secondly, it is presented as a path of heuristic metaphors to seek an alternative to the use of the imaginary as a mere tool for the analysis of messages. An elucidation of communication is presented from the imaginary of the contagion that emerged unexpectedly during the confinement of the Covid-19 pandemic. The experience of collective confinement "saved" by general shielding allows us to (re)think communication from the imaginary of airing and air, breathing and conspiracy, infection, and immunization from which to postulate a biopolitical atmospheric imaginary. In this sense, rehearsing the explanation of communication as contagion shows the possibilities of metaphor and the imaginary in a mutant world.
