To Look at Things as if They Could Be Otherwise: Educating the Imagination

INTRODUCTIONThis article defends the significance for health care of Paul Ricoeur's conception of the productive power of the imagination and its transformative role in reading texts. In particular, Ricoeur employs the mimetic capacity of the imagination both to configure and to reconfigure texts (Time and Narrative I 46). This dual figurative power of the imagination is able to open up new worlds to readers. Ricoeur himself describes the power of the productive imagination as a capacity enabling readers of texts to look at things as though they might be otherwise. He explains that theimagination is indeed what we all mean by the word: the free play of possibilities in a state of noninvolvement with respect to the world of perception or action. It is in this state of noninvolvement that we try out new ideas, new values, new ways of being in the world. (From Text to Action 174)Readers of texts can imagine new possibilities for their world and ways to bring about change. Ricoeur expounds, "Because it is a world, the world of the text necessarily collides with the real world in order to 'remake it,' either by confirming it or denying it" (From Text to Action 6).The present application of Ricoeur's theory of the productive imagination and its role in narrative configuration and reconfiguration will be supported by the work of Richard Kearney and Maxine Greene. Kearney and Greene each apply Ricoeur's theory to texts and specific contexts in philosophy and in education, respectively. Greene calls for releasing the imagination, while Kearney calls for re-awakening the imagination. He argues that students need to be freed, in order to release their capacity to imagine a new world. This is made possible in the reading of texts; responses to those texts in multiple contexts provide the impetus to expand student's perception of what is and what could be. She explains, "To call for imaginative capacity is to work for the ability to look at things as if they could be otherwise" (Releasing the Imagination 19).Kearney is equally concerned with the productivity of the imagination, he introduces the Greek word poiesis to describe the new possibilities which we can produce. But he insists that the step to another kind of poiesis is one that we can take into postmodern parodies or stories. Kearney argues that "imagination . . . explores the possibilities of another kind of poiesis-alternative modes of inventing alternative modes of existence. To disclose how things might be, we must follow in the wake of imagination" (Wake of Imagination 33).I continue in their Ricoeurian spirit to explore the ways in which the imagination can be freed and creative. In particular I aim to educate the imagination of those students interested in health and healing, in both science and spirit, by releasing and re-awakening the productive power of the imagination in the creative art of health "care."1 With Ricoeur, I seek to demonstrate that the imagination exhibits a capacity that can be developed in configuring and reconfiguring texts: configuration and reconfiguration are the second and third moments, respectively, of what Ricoeur calls "triple mimesis," while the first moment is prefiguration.In this article, I argue that Health Care in the United States in particular has become unbalanced due to a tendency to be fixated on technology and non-human scientific practices, and not on the art of caring. Health care touches people's lives in profound ways, influencing their sense of self, their physical functioning and emotional well-being. There is a real and urgent need to redress the balance between the scientific and the spiritual and attention to the whole person. So, in order to address this need I urge readers to consider, with me, texts which can educate the imagination, to integrate the science and the art of medicine holistically. And my focus is on reading the texts of, in this context, Rachel Naomi Remen2 with the insight of Ricoeur's theory of productive imagination. …