Somewhere or other Henry Louis Gates says something like “racism is a failure of the imagination”. I’m not sure why I find myself meditating on this aphorism this evening, except for the fact that such failures of the imagination seem to be at the heart of much human cruelty and evil. Not only is there the common inability to imagine the psychic life of other persons and creatures, but there is also the inability to imagine their circumstances. The Gestalt theorists teach us about the relationship between foreground and background that is characteristic of every phenomena. Background withdraws. I see another person, reduce them to foreground, and then think them in analogical terms to my own life and circumstances. For example, during the heat wave in France a couple years ago Elizabeth Hasslebeck wondered why people didn’t just turn on their air conditions. During Hurricane Katrina others wondered why people just didn’t get a cab out of the city (seriously, I heard many people say things along these lines here in Texas). Yet others described the behavior of people as looting, rather than as desperate attempts to fight starvation and dying of thirst. These are instances of analogical thinking and are failures of imagination.
In many respects, one of the highest vocations of the social theorist and scientist is to fight failures of imagination by rendering imagination possible for others through their research. Among other things, social theorists and scientists bring worlds into relief. They help that which is otherwise withdrawn to be brought out of withdrawal so that others might see. This is one of the things that great art can accomplish as well. Great art can function as a sort of window allowing us to enter the worlds and subjectivities of other people, allowing us to walk with them as they walk and have lived. As such, it creates imagination. Part of the study of ethics consists not simply in the study of ethical philosophies, but in the study of art, literature, poetry, and well-written history so as to encounter that which is withdrawn through allusion. As Alex Reid argues today, the field of ethics is relational, yet nonetheless is a relationality with that which is withdrawn. Social theorists, scientists, and artists are great cartographers of fields of relation or circumstance, creators of allusion to that which can never be directly experienced, and constantly remind us of the withdrawal of other humans and creatures. That is, they endlessly combat analogical thought which leads to thoughtless cruelty and evil.
I am not adopting the stance of the beautiful soul here, suggesting that if only we understood the world would suddenly be filled with peace and love. Of course, imagination certainly doesn’t hurt in promoting peace and love. There are real antagonisms in the world and these can’t be erased simply through imagination. Nonetheless, failures of imagination intensify these antagonisms even more.
January 30, 2011 at 4:55 am
That’s why we slurp our Fish Head Soup, even if we don’t eat fish (or heads for that matter).
January 30, 2011 at 5:19 am
Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” When dealing with people empathy is also very important, but that relies somewhat on imagination. You cannot empathize if you can’t imagine how someone else feels.
January 30, 2011 at 7:16 am
so that which is withdrawn can be brought out of its withdrawal…I am trying to embrace absolute withdrawal but now….
January 30, 2011 at 10:48 pm
While I am sympathetic to your point, I can’t help but play devil’s advocate. Perhaps “racism is a failure of the imagination” fails to capture racism. To the contrary, I am inclined to think racism is imagination of the highest order. Racists do in fact have empathy for their targets and do recognize their humanity, all the more the need to control, exploit, or destroy them because of the power that their ‘humanity’ could unleash. A racist would not will the destruction of wolves, for instance, because their ways are far simpler than humans and are thus easier to fend from. An army of ‘enemy’ races is far more of a threat in the racist mind. If one knows the treachery, cunning, and theft carried out by members of their own race it is too easy to simply magnify these qualities in an enemy-other, who remains other but is still human enough to pose a threat. Racists must use imagination- secrecies of ‘other’ races conspiring to destroy them, fears of being outbred, the decline of civilization, and so on. I also fear that simply being sympathetic to the victims of disasters (Katrina example) while downplaying the possibility that they were indeed looting is simply playing one side over the other. I think it takes a greater imagination and perhaps a sacrifice of self-pride to suspend one’s ethical and political assumptions about the world to get a clearer picture.
January 31, 2011 at 3:55 am
Yes. Beautiful soul syndrome might actually be a failure of imagination, since there is a wish to exclude one’s subject position from the world, as if one were seeing through it perfectly.
January 31, 2011 at 3:56 am
Drew, there might be a confusion of two senses of “imagination” here. You are referring to the ability to fantasize, while I believe Levi means the ability to speculate (about stuff outside of your head).
January 31, 2011 at 3:08 pm
Enjoyed this post. “Analogical thinking” sounds similar to ideology. I’m reminded of Andrew O’Hagan’s “There is no nation but the imagination” – sounds cheesy written down but when he says it aloud it has a certain resonance.
January 31, 2011 at 6:35 pm
At Tim Morton:
“Drew, there might be a confusion of two senses of “imagination” here. You are referring to the ability to fantasize, while I believe Levi means the ability to speculate (about stuff outside of your head).”
Having looked over my post again, I agree that I was confusing the issue. I just tend to be cautious with statements about the psychology of racists. Seeing as the greater part of humanity has been racist for several millenia now (including some of our favorite philosophers), I am skeptical of common statements that all racists are ignorant morons or baby-eating misanthropists created by the devil- it doesn’t fit the picture very well.
But yes, I understand the direction of Levi’s post now.
January 31, 2011 at 10:26 pm
Racism proper, as opposed to mere prejudice and ignorance, is actually a modern phenomenon. That aside, I don’t see how the length of time people have been thinking or doing things make them more or less moronic.
Conspiracy theories, meanwhile, are actually extremely dull and unimaginative – they’re not the highest order of imagination, they’re sub-pulp-thriller. That’s why the Protocols of the Elders of Zion – originally satire – was taken seriously: because the quality bar is set so low. Like that guy in the X-Files, they want to believe – difference is that it’s not harmless crackpottery
February 1, 2011 at 2:52 am
I think Drew makes an interesting point about imagination and cruelty and hatred. Drew’s point, as I understand it, is a point about how we imagine the jouissance of others. Ourbhatred in racism, classism, homophobia, sexism, etc, is about the jouissance we believe that the other enjoys. We suffer from a surplus of imagination, an excess. I think he’s right. My point about imagination, however, was rather different. I was referring to our inability to imagine the material conditions and circumstances in which others exist. Because that background disappears we judge them in terms of our own unconscious horizon of conditions, completely blind to both their psychic life and material conditions or circumstances. We thus find them culpable of not doing what we would do (projecting our material conditions and circumstances on to them). The jouissance attributed to the Other as other would be among these constraints revealed in good work in social theory, art, and literature.
February 2, 2011 at 3:00 pm
there is a vital relationship between imagination, ethics, and seeing aspects , so might be worth checking out the new collection Seeing Wittgenstein Anew, esp. Victor Krebs, here is some related Cavell: