ABSTRACT
Carlson puts divergent strands of contemporary humanistic discourse on imagination into dialogue to suggest why leaderless social movements such as Occupy Now, Black Lives Matter, and Dream Defenders are grounded in imaginative practices that are reinventing politics. Three investigations of imagination are drawn from British Romanticism, the Black radical tradition, and contemporary neuroscience. Writers in these traditions describe imagination as a revolutionary faculty and as an engine of social reform. Some emphasize neuronal or aesthetic mechanisms by which absent things are present in the mind or brain or are made present to consciousness. Thus, imagination perceives its surrounding environment, circumventing the common-sensical and relying on unconscious processes central to creativity. Carlson finds that the Black radical tradition offers some basic correctives to the hegemonic workings of Romantic-era imaginations. For example, the freedom dreams that Black radicals conjure re-evoke massive resistances to the subject-object binary that founds Western conceptions of selfhood and democracy, which is grounded in slavery, treats others as things, and profits from their subordination. In conclusion, the re-figuring of thought through imagination is crucial to destabilizing racial regimes. A re-orientation toward process over object is vital to the humanitarianism of political activity.
