[Xmca-l] Re: A question on Vygotsky and Imagination

[Antti Rajala]

Dear Shannon,

I would warmly recommend Tania Zittoun's work. A good reference point is
her and her colleagues' recent book: Human Development in the Life
Course: Melodies of living (Cambridge university press, 2013), but she has
published also articles and is currently working on the topic across a
range of settings. For example, you can find relevant conceptual
elaboration in Zittoun, T., & Cerchia, F. (2013). Imagination as expansion
of experience. *Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science*, *47*(3),
305-324.

Warm wishes, Antti


On Fri, May 23, 2014 at 7:02 AM, Shannon Brincat <
shannonbrincat@yahoo.com.au> wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> I am new to this list ­ so thanks for your time.
>
> Presently, I am trying to write up an article on Vygotsky and imagination.
> Essentially, my interest is to draw attention to a different way of looking
> at, and deploying imagination in politics, and one that emphases its
> creative potential. In my field, International Relations (IR) imagination
> is
> just ignored as something fanciful rather than intrinsic to human
> cognition.
>
> I have pasted the abstract below. Any advice on secondary literature, or
> even key aspects of Vygotsky’s work that you deem relevant, would be great.
>
> Once again, thanks!
>
> Shannon
>
>
> This article seeks to demonstrate the political significance of
> imagination and to reclaim this cognitive faculty as something intrinsic
> to political life ins world politics. We focus on the psychological work of
> Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky (1896-1934) who, we argue, offers a
> reconceptualisation of the faculty of imagination as a key part of human
> cognitive development and as something central to creative activity. After
> engaging with the limitations in Kant’s productive imagination, Husserl’s
> phenomenological imagination, and Freud’s irrational understanding of
> imagination, we emphasise three elements of Vygotsky’s analysis that
> demonstrate the significance of imagination to politics that are routinely
> denied in mainstream approaches to International Relations (IR). These
> include how the faculty of imagination is developmental, interpenetrated
> with reality, and dependent on social-history and culture. While we contend
> that Vygotsky offers significant advances in how we can conceive and
> approach the faculty of imagination in political thought, in the closing
> section we identify three weaknesses. Firstly, while Vygotsky offers a link
> between imagination and practice, and was concerned with progressive social
> development, it offers only a weakly developed account of imagination¹s
> link
> to political praxis. Secondly, Vygotsky¹s account tells Us only of the
> positively productive elements of imagination but he did not turn his
> attention to the 똡arkside of imagination regarding the politics of fear,
> 똮thering, and hate. Thirdly, Vygotsky provides only a thin account of the
> intersubjective processes of imagination and offers only the beginnings of
> a
> theory that could embed imagination within social-relations. We close by
> advancing a heuristic of imagination that can help us better understand
> this
> complex faculty of imagination and its relation to politics.
>
> Dr. Shannon K. Brincat
> Griffith University Research Fellow
> Room -1.09 | Building N72 | Centre for Governance and Public Policy |
> School
> of Government and International Relations
> Nathan Campus | Griffith University | 170 Kessels Road | Nathan | Brisbane
> |
> Queensland | 4111 | Australia
>
> Global Discourse, Co-Editor
> http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rgld20#.Ua53eCsd7pM
>
> New edited series available through Praeger
> Communism in the 21st Century (3 Vols.)
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>
>
>
>