David, I'm currently in a kind of postdoctoral teenage crisis in relation
to Academia. So one thing that has occupied MY thoughts a lot is the
potential conflict between my way of being a researcher and what I perceive
as the standard way. For example I see research practice much more in terms
of creation (I keep wanting to say "Gestaltung" in German) than in terms of
interrogation. The book (chapter etc.) I'm writing functions as the
instrument for transforming my relation to the phenomenon I'm treating,
and if I'm doing it well my product may contribute to others' paths of
learning, too. So of course it is important that imagination does not equal
fantasizing without anchoring in reality or without awareness of the
researcher's part in the bigger picture. Just like the education of
attention that Patricia Zukow writes about, the researcher needs to educate
imagination. Learning the difference between good imagination and bad
imagination. Learning the different applicable modes of imagination: when
to "listen imaginatively to your phenomenon" and when to confront
imagination with the hard edges that burst soap bubbles but cuts diamonds
into wonderful facets... I think what I'm trying to say is that imagination
can be usefully deployed in research when we strike a balance between the
gullible face of imagination and the critical "finger" of imagination
(inventively probing for the faults in what we are producing as research.)
Eva