Chapter 1 Embodied Imagination We do not “have” a body; rather, we “are” bodily. —Martin Heidegger1 Embodied imagination is a call to the senses. —Robert Bosnak2 Every image embodies a way of seeing. —John Berger3 Imagination is an act born of the body. —Nathan Schwartz-Salant4
What is imagination? How do we imagine more fully? Why would we want to imagine? These are the core questions that weave together all the points made in this book. To begin to find some answers we start with a simple description of what actually happens when we imagine. The experiential ground of imagining will be the basis upon which we build a practical understanding. This might appear an obvious strategy, and yet, common theories of imagination in both the academic and mainstream literature are not at all based on an experiential approach. This leads to a problematic set of quite abstract and alienating ideas that restrict imaginative life, a topsy-turvy situation that we now set about reversing in the search for a theory of imagination that accurately reflects the experiential ground it purports to address. The simple description of imagining we shall be exploring is what happens when looking at a painting. For no special reason, I have chosen a painting by Vincent Van Gogh titled The Bedroom, as seen on my 11-inch laptop screen. Admittedly this makes for a 17
