ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses specifically on Greene's conceptions of the imaginary and Dewey's theories of democracy and how philosophies and works of the Black Radical Imagination (BRI) movement can transform them. Further, the author reexamines the philosophies of Greene and Dewey through her own surrealistic lens, seeking the magic of transformation, like that in Ward's novel, of her own thinking, and perhaps that of her reader. Greene's philosophy of democratic ideals through the imagination, built in part upon Dewey's pragmatic framework, would call us to a "dialectic of freedom". From Dewey and Greene to the BRI Surrealists, the radical imagination shatters fixed notions that form is immutable shape and that substance is content. The history of the BRI emanates from spaces where dreams, visions, and frameworks of freedom are articulated, visualized, and specified via artistic media, inspirational dialogues, and theatrical representation.
