Ecological Imagination

This paper aims to recover the emergence of the notion of embodied imagination (Steeves, 2004) within Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s thought, in order to argue how it could provide meaningful insights to the understanding of the fruition mechanisms of virtual reality (VR) environments. As a matter of fact, imagination has often been conceived as ancillary to perception within the phenomenological tradition. This is particularly evident in Jean-Paul Sartre’s reflection (1940), which claimed both the radical opposition and the mutual exclusion of perceptual and imaginative consciousness. On the contrary, in the 1954-55 course at the Collège de France Institution and Passivity, Merleau-Ponty’s holds that imaginative and perceptual consciousness do not only coexist, but also intertwine, since all perception to be such constitutively involves a germ of imagination. It is then possible to trace, within Merleau-Ponty’s oeuvres, the idea of an embodied imagination, grounded in the body and going hand in hand with the progressive rejection of the consciousness’ presupposition. On this basis, the contribution will argue that this peculiar conception of imagination is at stake in the fruition of immersive virtual environments with a high interactive level, such as those designed by the pioneer bio-feedback VR artist Char Davies. To this end, the notion of embodied imagination emerging from Merleau-Pontian work will be initially discussed, arguing its intimate connection with the critique of sartrian positions and the recovery of the schilderian concept of body-schema, which will lead to the notion of flesh. Secondly, the main features of Davies’ immersive environments will be briefly outlined, in order to illustrate how new technologies take up and bring to expression the dynamics of embodied imagination, offering a glimpse into a broader understanding of this notion. This will ultimately allow some considerations to be made on immersive environments as a place for analysis of human experience and, more specifically, of imaginative dynamics, enabling us to gain awareness of our relationship with the world.

COVID-19 has ushered in dark times. It has also fostered a multivalent discourse that frames the ecological crisis within the mythopoetic imagery of darkness. In the following chapter, I place this emergent discourse in conversation with a subtradition of apophatic mysticism by exploring two sites where darkness is linked to ecology: Theodore Roethke's poetry and Jacob Böhme's visionary anthropology. I argue that Böhme and Roethke combine apophaticism with a form of erotic ecopoetics that resonates with the enmeshed reality that the virus unveils. In closing, I suggest that this ecopoetics offers resources for developing new modes of countercultural perception and an ethics of affect.

Three variations of experience identified in the educational literature entail different ways of thinking about and developing learners' imaginations. The relationship between these different imaginative modes resembles shifts between different kinds of understanding in Kieran Egan's theory of imaginative development. From this theoretical collision, a new framework emerges that gives greater weight to the connections between experience and imagination, and that may help to guide new forms of democratic educational practice.

In this article I explore how immersive nonfiction media works may offer a scaffold for an ecological imagination that entangles us, humans, within the environment, rather than othering nature and conceiving of it as something "out there". Taking as a frame the intersection of documentary studies and emerging creative media technologies, and connecting this frame with Barad's (2007) concept of entanglement and Zunino Harper's (2016) construction of naturecultures, I examine discourses of nature in digital media representation. Immersive and experiential media forms offer a number of particular affordances which are reviewed here – including generating a sense of presence, use of embodiment and layering and scaling of environments. A number of non-fiction immersive media works are presented as case studies, in which I explore their use of these affordances and their engagement with ecological narratives. Using immersion to engender awe at nature is considered, and whi...

This paper presents an analysis of the participatory mapping project OurMelbourne2050. It explores how differing conceptions of imagination operate in the project’s conceptual basis and its actual operation. These aspects of imagination – the ecological imagination, utopian futures, the cartographic imagination, and collective visioning - present different lenses through which to examine the project’s effectiveness and to understand the multiple imaginative processes embedded in the project’s operation.

This is a final draft of the article published in Environmental Ethics 11 (Fall 1989): 243-258. This assessment of  the Promethean dimension of Marx's thought is accurate, but though it mentions Marx's more dialectical side and its potential implications, this aspect is seriously neglected in the article . A more balanced assessment is presented in "Marx's Natures," a draft version of which can be found on this site. This article should be read in connection with the latter one.