Earth Intoxicated on Imagination

The aim of this Element is to forge new conceptual tools to give more ecological power to the human imagination. Imagination, both an innovative force and one that distances and blinds, is central to the ecological crisis as well as its potential resolution. Human imagination creates a bubble of denial, fostering the illusion of a smooth, reassuring, controlled, and neatly compartmentalized world. This Element critically contrasts the harmful modern concepts of reality and imagination with a more grounded "earthly" and "animal" imagination. It proposes to overcome the tension between two currents in environmental thought: those advocating imagination for utopian transformation, and proponents of realism, urging confrontation with the material world beyond anthropocentrism. Through analysis of key contemporary environmental work alongside insights from ethology and biosemiotics, the Element underpins the concept of "animal imagination," offering an alternative approach to environmental imagination and activism that fosters deeper engagement with the living world.

List of contents

1. Introduction; 2. Calling for more imagination; 3. Calling for more realism; 4. A destructive debate; 5. What went wrong with human imagination: Lessons from Shakespeare's Tempest; 6. Ecological imagination: Animal imagination; 7. Animal imagination and activism: Magic now; 8. Conclusion; References.

Product details

• Authors: Annabelle (Radboud University and Wageni Dufourcq, Dufourcq Annabelle
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 31.08.2025
• EAN: 9781009644426
• ISBN: 978-1-0-0964442-6
• No. of pages: 75
• Series: Elements in Environmental Humanities
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; Political Ideologies, LITERARY CRITICISM / Semiotics & Theory, Popular psychology, Psychology: emotions, Indigenous Peoples, Environmentalist thought & ideology, Realism, Ecological science, the Biosphere, Literary theory, Environmentalist thought and ideology, Green politics / ecopolitics / environmentalism, Emotions and emotional intelligence