Session Information
Session 9A, Imagination, Visual Representation and Spatial Conditions of Learning
Papers
Time:
2005-09-09
13:00-14:30
Room:
ENG
Chair:
Elaine Ricard-Fersing
Contribution
The key issue in this paper is the role that imagination plays in both literature and education. To see the relevance of imagination for literary and pedagogical dimensions of human life we need to gain some philosophical insights into pivotal aspects of imagination as human experience. The philosophical analyses are based on essays and books written by Paul Ricoeur, Martha C. Nussbaum, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Michael Oakeshott. We will begin with reflection on personal involvement that occurs in every serious act of paying heed to the world. When literature and pedagogy truly relate to the things being considered in their endeavours, they need persons whose interests and walks of lives pertain to something really important. This is why literature and everyday life differ so often: taking care of our ordinary lives, we forget about things that are of actual importance. In other words, without being deeply involved in the subject-matter of our deeds we cannot see the world in a serious manner. Furthermore, the personal attitude towards the world entails the responsibility for the interpretations that we make and for the way we experience temporality. It is quite easy in everyday life to bypass the actual impact of time on our outlooks. However, the experience of literature may help us to realise what presupposes the way we understand the world and the extent of temporal contexts of our dwelling in the world. This is possible if reading is full of serendipitous surprises and oriented towards the enigmatic character of human life. Besides, when speaking of relationship between literature, imagination and pedagogy, it would be necessary to ask about these features of human life that make education open to (literary) creativity. One of these features is narrativity, the concept whose interpretation should reveal the narrative fabric of human self-understanding. One can perceive his personal 'history' only as a 'story' that has not been completed yet. Hence, man's life is inevitably embedded in history: to act and think in an innovative manner one needs to be aware of his historicity. Only one who remembers about his past may be able to live towards the future. This reminds us about another feature of human life, that is, its social character: only by participating in commonality of ideas, one can 'productively' find his own 'bearings' in the world. Significance of literary imagination for pedagogy is unquestionable. However, the real ramifications of our thinking about the relationship between literature and education depend on how seriously and philosophically we are engaged in a debate concerning the educative character of imagination.
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