.png){kind=icon}
.png){kind=icon}
Return
Elemental Imagination
.png){kind=icon}
PRE
AI
DOI：10.1163/15691640-12341592.png)
.png){kind=icon}
Original request for help.png){kind=icon}
Share.png){kind=icon}
Save
Abstract
En 中文
The notion of the elemental is central to the works of John Sallis on imagination. In this article, I examine and deepen the bond he sees between the anteriority of the elemental and the force of bringing forth that is characteristic of the imagination. I set up the hypothesis of a structural dependence of the imagination on the elemental, and I start with a radical reduction of any use of the faculty of imagining, in order to solely focus on the bare condition of the elemental. In this regard, the works of Gaston Bachelard on imagination - based on the classification of the four elements are a necessary first step in my argument. While I follow his materialist approach to imagination, instead of thematizing the elemental on the basis of the material content of images, I intend to thematize it as the material condition from which imagination arises. This reflection leads me to introduce the notion of the skin and to analyze the materiality of the skin in relation to the elemental. I argue that the skin is not only surrounded by the elemental, but is also part of it and in this sense it transposes the elemental into the sensible. In what follows, I examine in what way the materiality of the skin is formative for imagination and how it transforms our understanding of imagination. I show how the sense of being touched is primordial to understanding some characteristics of imagination, and in this way I break with the dominant understanding of imagination as the visual appearance of an image.
Keywords:
materialist approach
the materiality of the skin
sense of touch
passivity
Sallis
Bachelard