(ii) Do we (should we) value Imaginative Thinking? (IT from hereon)
Do we need to be able to define something in order to judge its value? If IT varies from person to person, must we, therefore, say it cannot be valued (have a value placed upon it) because there is no identifiable “common denominator”? In other words, do we need some kind of metric in order to assess IT?
That isn’t a rhetorical question (nor a kind of “Aquinas trick” – ask the question then answer it brilliantly). If we insist on a metric/metrics, then this would contradict IT. However, one kind of ‘measurement’ does occur to me: how does this IT contribute to human empathy? Does it encourage or exploit? I’m deliberately avoiding phrase like “human happiness” or “make the world a better place here” because each of those invites judgement and definition – we simply end up with a long discussion regarding what ‘happiness’ or ‘better’ mean. What I would argue though is that IT necessarily includes thinking of the human person as a subject rather than an object – there is no inherent idea of the human person as someone to be used in IT.
Obviously, what I’m arguing here is that IT is a crucial ‘component’ of artistic creation (in any Art). This may indicate that for X to be defined as Art, then it must contribute to/expand/explain what it means to be a human subject – it must increase the understanding of the spectator, expand their empathy fpr others, identify injustice, ‘move’ them closer to engaging their own IT (which is not to suggest that the spectator merely deploys a copy of someone else’s IT – my IT is my own, it cannot be someone else’s. My IT may possess similarities to that of others, but it cannot be one and the same).
The human person’s IT reaches out to the world, identifying injustice and exploitation from their unique perspective as someone born into that world. It identifies the ideological, seeing unity in uniqueness. A crucial aspect of IT here is the way in which we think of ‘uniquesness’: not as something which separates me from others, makes them “fair game” for exploitation, but as human persons simultaneously like and unlike me and, therefore, ‘worthy'(?) of my care and respect. My IT is guided by this in engaging with the world around me, of which I am part. I am also able to engage with myself as a “foreign subject” in this world, to see myself as (an)other.
Just to try to rephrase this: ‘difference’ in this figuration becomes a reason for unity, for connectedness to others, NOT as we’re encouraged to see it through capitalist ideology, which is as a reason for competition and fear, therefore, as the motivation for aggression. This takes us ‘back’ to one of the unifying ‘properties’ of Art, whereby when we encounter a work we think “I too have felt like this/have this perception”, reactions we then share with others in the act of criticism.
Thus, the value of IT is that it creates bonds with others, enabling us to see our humanity reflected (and refracted) in Art. These reactions can be both similar and different at one and the same time, thus, we are illustrating to both ourselves and others that we are simultaneously similar and unique, without this realisation becoming the basis for competition and aggression.
How does this occur? Art exposes capitalist ideology, identifying the fractures and deliberate tensions that capitalism creates insisting on profit as the motivation for human action, and trying to pass this off as ‘natural’. Art engages our ability for IT in a positive, communal way, while encouraging us to develop this ability.
Nor does IT, I think, produce the fractures that Art as a function of capitalism does. Regarding Art as a product, capitalism introduces “levels of division”, in that the consumption of Art becomes a symbol of status – an indicator of one’s level of wealth, one’s superiority to others. Hence, the (artificial) division between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, the tying of this division to class which, in turn, gives rise to the notion that “this work isn’t for me”. In this system, Art becomes a means of exclusion, of promoting elitism and competition.
Murmurs from the Forest 