The Possibilities of Dialogue
January 2007
Banner photo: Herby Sachs/version-foto.de
Emerson and the Imagination
Professor Wider encourages her audience to rethink imagination
[©Seikyo Shimbun]
On September 30, the Boston Research Center for the 21st Century (BRC) hosted its third Ikeda Forum for Intercultural Dialogue, "Emerson and the Power of the Imagination." The life and writings of the 19th-century philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson served as a prism for examining the role of imagination in contemporary society. Emerson wrote: "The imagination is not a talent of some but the health of all," and the event was informed by an urgent sense of the high price paid--in violence, poverty and degradation--by humankind for failures of imagination.
The forum was a conscious effort to move beyond the standard format of academic conferences by incorporating music, poetry and the visual arts. It opened with a spirited performance of a Beethoven string quartet by young musicians from the local community.
Sarah Ann Wider, professor of English at Colgate University and 2006 president of the Emerson Society, delivered her keynote speech, "Traveling with Emerson on a Train of Thought." In it, she expressed her sense of the contemporary crisis of the imagination: "Like Emerson's audiences, we are a harried, hassled group of divided individuals whose imaginations are either starved or bloated." The response, she suggested, was to rethink the nature of imagination, in effect, to take imagination seriously.
"Neither indulgence nor escape, imagination is, in Emerson's words, 'true insight, a very high sort of seeing' that, in fact, transforms the intellect. Without imagination, intellect is static, unable to move and unable to communicate with others."
Afternoon presentations provided diverse perspectives on imagining personal and social transformation. Students from Cambridge Rindge and Latin School (CRLS) shared a community theater project that incorporated role-play, improvisation and self-observation that aimed at activating the moral imagination of the participants.
Author and educator Jeannette Armstrong, member of the Okanagan Nation, delved into deeper meanings of the word imagination, explaining that it is deeply imbedded in the Okanagan people's understanding of life and creates inclusiveness.
William Henry Lewis, professor of English, Colgate University, and Nathanael Fareed Mahluli, musician and director of the IU Soul Revue at Indiana University, blended voice and saxophone to perform a tribute to American jazz and the open horizons of cultural imagination.
Following the presentations, the approximately 150 participants broke into small group discussions to discuss the possibilities of the imagination.
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