Critical Imagination and Revision

3/23

Agenda

KC:

• Critical imagination
• Revision

Workshop

Revision

What is the difference between revision and editing?

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Critical Imagination

Def.: The ability to see what is there and not there; to stand back reflectively and reflexively; to be able to imagine what could be there instead, while taking deliberately into account: the impacts and consequences of social hierarchies; the need for information drawn from multiple perspectives and experiences; the need to understand human and non-human beings in context; the imperative of caring for the earth as a fragile ecosystem that supports the future of life (137).

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That’s a lot. Let’s break it down.

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Critical Imagination

The ability…

to see what is there and not there;

to stand back reflectively and reflexively;

to be able to imagine what could be there instead,

while taking deliberately into account: the impacts and consequences of social hierarchies; the need for information drawn from multiple perspectives and experiences; the need to understand human and non-human beings in context; the imperative of caring for the earth as a fragile ecosystem that supports the future of life (137).

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Crit Imagination

From the reading:

“imagination as a term for a commitment to making connections and seeing possibility.”

“imagination functions as a critical skill in questioning a viewpoint, an experience, an event, and so on, and in remaking interpretive frameworks based on that questioning”

• Making connections and seeing possibilities
• Skills in questioning a viewpoint, experience, event, etc.
• Remaking interpretive framework: means forming the lens through which you analyze.

Crit imagination

“Beyond this, the necessity is to acknowledge the limits of knowledge and to be particularly careful about “claims” to truth, by clarifying the contexts and conditions of our interpretations and by making sure that we do not overreach the bounds of either reason or possibility.”

• Knowledge the limits of knowledge: recognize what we can know and what we cannot know.
• “Claims” to truth: people claim to be telling the truth a lot.
• How do we know it is true?
• What is true?
• Who has the authority to claim truth?
• “Contexts and conditions” context matters.

A real world example

Aristotle/Plato

• Ultimate Truth exists
• Always seek Truth in everything you do.
• (Athenians know Truth best)
• Find artifact
• Understand artifact through athenian norms and rules.

Sophists

• Even if Truth exists, man cannot access it.
• Truth changes across contexts.
• Tattoos are markers of slavery or barbarism in athens; Tattoos are cool everywhere else.
• For some, the most noble burial is within one’s own children; for other’s that is cannibalism and a big no no.

Another example: reconstructing women’s history

• women (especially women of color) have been erased and ignored throughout most of history.
• Artifacts concerning women are rare, especially women’s writing.
• We have some diaries, epistolary texts, and other vague primary materials.
• Historians have to reconstruct women’s experiences, rhetorics, etc. from scant materials left.
• We have to use critical imagination to see what is there, what is not there, what has been covered up, and imagine the rest based on our evidence.

Group discussion

What does critical imagination have to do with revision?

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Workshop

In groups (3-4)

• See what is there: Take a moment to outline your paper (you can use the outline from the form)
• See what is not there: For each appeal, help each other locate strategies that you did not use.
• See what could be there instead: help each other see if other strategies would work better than the initial strategy.