ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author explores the relationship between art-making, imagination, and politics in the practice of Arts-Based Educational Research (ABER). He describes the political as a subject because it is his perception that much of the ABER community believes in a political agenda motivated by social justice concerns. The author offers an alternative view of the political that is lodged in a process. He examines as wild imagination, suggesting that a partisan approach to ABER weakens its central core: the making of art. The author provides a scholar of radical imagination, who provides a bridge to the idea of wild imagination. Susan Finley, an increasingly notable ABER spokesperson, focused on two leaders in the qualitative inquiry field, Yvonna Lincoln and Norman Denzin, to support her assertion that ABER should be involved in social justice issues. The whole of Hogan Dreams seems, in retrospect, to be profoundly political without being partisan or oriented toward social justice.
