The Animalizing Imagination

Download or read book The Animalizing Imagination written by A. Bleakley and published by Springer. This book was released on 1999-11-26 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Animals appear not just as biological creatures, but as vehicles of meaning for human imagination, mind and culture. Animal life may form the basis for an animalizing imagination that can enhance our cultural, religious and aesthetic sensibilities. This imagination is rooted in the pre-modern affective relationship between shamans and their familiars, but can be tracked to our post-modern ecological crisis, where we can reclaim a totemic identification with animals as signifiers of a new ecological understanding.