Diane di Prima writes: “The only war that matters is the war against the imagination. All other wars are subsumed in it.” If radical attentionis the reclaiming of those diverse forms of human attention that resist being commodified, then radical imagination is the reclaiming of our embodied human capacity to freely explore and experience possibility.

Like attention, imagination has come to be defined only by its most reductive and profit-generating forms. Rather than myths resonating with our unconscious lifeworld, we have Instagram “stories” activating our limbic system. In place of make-believe, we have photo filters and ready-made virtual realities. We open mindless, repetitive phone games and call that play. This is a crisis of the inner world: we are losing touch with our innate capacity to imagine and, therefore, to make change.

Drawing on the work of CG Jung, Ruha Benjamin, and William Blake among others, this course seeks to understand how we became alienated from this essential facet of our humanity and how we might enrich ourselves by its recovery. Our journey will take us from depth psychology and visionary poetry through theatrical improvisation and role-play, landing at last on workable strategies for a rebellion of the human imagination.

Led by Henry Kramer, Religious Studies professor at Hunter College and Academic Dean of SoRA.

ENROLL HERE!