panel 3
Imagination Work: Transforming Care through Poetry, Drawing, and Dance
Poetry, Imagination, and Nonmimetic Caring
Petr Urban & Julita Skotarska
Hamington & Rosenow (2019) offer an account of how poetry engages our imagination in a manner that can facilitate caring. In particular, they argue that poetry has the potential to “spur more and better care” (p. 121), for it can foster our emphatic imagination in understanding the one cared for as well as enliven our creative imagination in determining what course of responsive action to take. Hamington & Rosenow frame their account by the idea of “moral progress,” which they conceive as a cultivation of the human capacity to care (p. 121).
This paper aims to propose a different view of the connection between poetry, imagination, and caring by drawing on the recent debates about posthuman/more-than-human care (Haraway, 2008; Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017; Bozalek, 2017, Flower & Hamington, 2022; DeFalco, 2023; Hamington, 2024) that reveal the need to overcome the exclusive attention to the human and reliance on humanist assumptions in care theory. In particular, we will deploy the notion of “nonmimetic caring” (Haraway, 2008) as a conceptual tool for “opening up care and kinship to include the range of more-than-human inter-dependencies and ontologies that produce and sustain life” (DeFalco, 2023, pp. 13-14). We will argue that in the context of more-than-human relationality care can no longer be conceptualized as an empathy-based process between a human care-giver and care-receiver. Instead, nonmimetic caring requires a kind of multilateral heightened sensitivity and responsiveness in perception and action which stretches across “the entire field of relations within which beings of all kinds, more or less person-like or thing-like, continually and reciprocally bring one another into existence” (Ingold, 2006). The paper will conclude by focusing on exemplars of “imagination work” in poetry that contribute to envisioning, encouraging, and fostering nonmimetic caring. We will argue that the art of poetry has a distinct quality with regard to facilitating nonmimetic caring.
Petr Urban is Senior Researcher at the Center for Environmental and Technology Ethics – Prague (CETE-P), Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences. His work concentrates on political theory of care, social philosophy, and applied ethics. He is the author of Social Cohesion Contested (with Dan Swain, 2024) and editor of Care Ethics, Democratic Citizenship and the State (with Lizzie Ward, 2020). His work has been published in journals such as Environmental Philosophy, Ethics and Social Welfare, Frontiers in Psychology, Humana Mente and Philosophies.
Julita Skotarska is PhD Candidate at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University and at the Center for Environmental and Technology – Prague (CETE-P), Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Her research concentrates on environmental philosophy and the ethics of the nonhuman.
Drawing as a Systematic Inquiry: On Organizing the Contents of the Handbag of Caring Research
Julie Kordovsky & Morten Nissen
In this paper, I extend the metaphorical exploration of the “caring research handbag” from my previous work, "Rummaging Around in a Handbag of Caring Research" (Kordovsky, 2024). This metaphor initially conceptualized my research process in care ethics, focusing on how to begin a collection of diverse organizational aspects and impressions through drawing as a caring research practice. Now, I delve deeper into how this metaphor can help me evolve from merely seeking inspiration in various drawing practices to crystallizing a more structured approach to apply within the specific context of examining municipal recruitment programs aimed at integrating young people outside the job market in the elderly care sector, through addressing the following questions: How does the progression from rummaging to methodically organizing the contents of the handbag manifest in the practice of drawing within care research? What strategies can be employed to transition drawing from a method of initial exploration to a tool of systematic inquiry in these settings? How does this approach enhance understanding and implementation of care in the recruitment practices?
The context for this inquiry is framed by my upcoming research stay at Kunstbygningen i Vrå, engaging in dialogues with visual artists interested in intersections of drawing and care and providing a rich backdrop for advancing a methodological approach. In my presentation, I will demonstrate how the metaphor of the handbag evolves from a mere container of initial ideas to a more structured research toolkit in a deeper engagement with the materials and emotional layers of care settings. This progression encourages a “fusion of horizons,” where drawing not only captures but actively shapes care practices. I also aim to discuss how a methodologically refined use of drawing can potentially remedy gaps in care practices.
Julie Kordovsky, BA of Arts, MSc Psych in organizational studies and family therapist, is a PhD fellow at Aalborg University. She is part of project DELTAG hosted by Absalon University College and Aalborg University. Her graphic ethnographic research on organizational development and practices of sustainable recruitment for the elderly care sector seeks to take up new materialist ideas about “making-kin” (Haraway, 1988; 2016) through drawing. Furthermore, her work is informed by process theory (Helin et al., 2014) and care ethics (Tronto, 1993). She has lately contributed with scientific illustrations and methodological reflections on drawing as a caring research method in the books Fællesskabende praksisser (Mørck et al., 2023) and Rearticulating Motives (Nissen, 2024), and in her article “Rummaging Around in a Handbag of Caring Research: On Searching for a Pencil and a Moral Compass” (Kordovsky, 2024). Julie Kordovsky draws and engages in graphic ethnographic dialogues as part of her empirical research activities and seeks visual inspiration in scientific illustration, graphic ethnography, and social fiction, while working to communicate research to all types of audiences.
Morten Nissen, Dr.Psych, PhD, is Professor at the School of Education, Aarhus University, in Copenhagen, Denmark. He studies theories and practices involving subjectivity, collectivity, knowledges, standards, aesthetics, and motives, mostly as relevant to youth work, counselling, education, and social work. Coming from critical psychology and science studies, he calls his approach a “post-psychology of care,” a contributory research aiming for sustainable ways to understand re-/present ourselves. Among many other texts in English and Scandinavian, he published Rearticulating Motives at Springer in 2023. https://pure.au.dk/portal/en/mn@edu.au.dk
Space is the Place: An Exploration of Care and Spatiality through Integrated Dance
Monique Lanoix
Space is the Place, a musical masterpiece by the Sun Ra Intergalactic Infinity Arkestra, invites the viewer/listener to imagine emancipatory possibilities through movement and space. It is the motivation for this paper where I explore the spatiality of care through dance performance.
Care and the provision of care have been discussed in terms of space/location primarily in the context of public and private spaces/locations. However, the space of care, the in-between of the those involved in caring holds the promise of an emancipatory the concept of self, a broadening of the self, élargissement du moi (Kerbiriou). This is central to the possibility of “caring with” (Tronto). To support my assertion, I examine a choreography from the perspective of the spectator. Cycle is a dance co-created by the dancers and the founder of Propeller Dance, an integrated dance company. In the case of dance, empathy and affectivity take place through the performance which does not rely on language but on bodily perception. If the space of dance encourages embodied attention between the dancers, it does the same for the spectator. However, it also confronts the spectator with moving bodies unlike their own. Using the concept of kinaesthetic empathy (Stein; Parviainen), I discuss how the spectator is challenged through an embodied affective reaction. Significantly, the movements of the dancers in the choreographic work create a space where expectations can be suspended and where the spectator immerses themself in the totality of the movements. I explain how the dancers interacting with each other with creativity engage in an activity of caring with that is reflected through and by their movements. The spectator is drawn into this creative process. The spectator’s affective engagement allows for their larger self to emerge, contributing to the creation of a space of caring with involving dancers and spectator.
Monique Lanoix is Associate Professor of Philosophy at St. Paul University, Ottawa, in the Center for Research in Public Ethics and Governance, where she teaches courses in feminist ethics, bioethics and environmental ethics. Her research examines ancillary care and the manner in which it is structured and funded. One aspect of her study focuses on care as a right of social citizenship. The other is on paid caregiving labor. Conceptually dissecting paid caregiving allows for a fuller understanding of the manner in which care and care work are embedded within neoliberal societies. Implicit within this research is a concern for our embodied reality and the manner in which it is has been made invisible which explains part of her others interests, which include dance as both an activity and a subject of study. She has published in Hypatia, Brain Injury, Atlantis, the International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics, Chronic Illness, the Journal of Medical Ethics and the Canadian Journal of Bioetihics. She is principal investigator on two Canadian federally funded grants to examine hone care and institutional work.
Location
23-25 January 2025
Kontakt der Kontinenten, Amersfoortsestraat 20
3769 AS Soesterberg
Online
23-25 January 2025
Kontakt der Kontinenten, Amersfoortsestraat 20
3769 AS Soesterberg
Online
30-31 January 2025 (Zoom links to be published later)
Contact info Louis van den Hengel
Images homepage: Merel Visse, Christine Leroy
design website: Johanne de Heus and Marielle Schuurman