Publication: Ecologies of imagination

Revista ARTNODES nº29 (2022)

At a time of great social changes, affected by multiple crises (health, environmental, economic, etc.), the imagination also goes into crisis. If imagining is making the absent present, we can affirm that this cancellation of the imagination has to do with the difficulty that our societies have to relate confidently with otherness, with the new and with the future. More specifically, what can imagination be, as a practice of social transformation, in conditions of growing crisis and isolation

Any form of indeterminacy is experienced today as the threat of the uncertain or the unknown. This has the consequence that social and institutional practices tend to function defensively and not very proactively. The pandemic situation has only accentuated this trend: how to reverse it and make possible the activation of an imagination capable of establishing creative and trusting relationships with the unknown?

The purpose of this Node is to collect research proposals, both theoretical and practical, on the relationship between philosophy and contemporary forms of imagination in the field of cultural action and social innovation. To do this, we put the concept of ecologies of the imagination at the center, which we want to provide with conceptual consistency and empirical richness. We understand, thus, that imagination is not an individual faculty, but a social practice, creating relationships of meaning. This issue is an invitation to think of imagination as an ethical, political and social faculty.