Nature's Excess: Imagination in an Age of Planetary Emergency

Abstract

The environmental crisis is not only a set of identifiable problems requiring solutions, but also the ongoing manifestation of an event that reconfigures the world by continually transforming its horizon of possibilities. This dissertation responds to this sense of environmental emergency as a moment of both danger and emergent possibility. It begins by articulating the imagination as a mode of perception capable of participating in the emergence of nature prior to its identification with anthropocentric categories. The work then turns a critical lens towards conceptualizations of “the” environmental crisis as a set of problems requiring amelioration to maintain human progress. This leads to an interpretation of human’s continuity with planetary process, wherein the concept of Gaia is “deepened” to include its expressive, imaginal, oneiric, and poetic dimensions. The value of resonating with the relative ambiguity of these categories (rather than seeking to diminish or dismiss them) is emphasized as a means to think and feel beyond narrowly anthropocentric concerns. Finally, by developing a praxis of attention, disclosure and correspondence, the imagination is situated as that which can respond affirmatively to planetary emergency by participating more deeply in our uniquely situated involvements.