POIESIS Catalogue

ECOPOIESIS: Imagining the Earth

This issue of the POIESIS journal brings together writers from the fields of philosophy, media studies and the expressive arts in an effort to grasp our relationship to the environment in a more imaginative way.

Paul Virilio, writing about Grey Ecology, (“…the pollution of the self-created world”) looks at our situation through the lens of speed and the acceleration of reality, while Jason Adams applies Virilio’s concept of popular defense to an aesthetics of resistance. Thomas Zummer’s eco/sophia calls for a remediation of technics and a re-membering of the world; and for Wolfgang Schirmacher, Eco-Sophia becomes an ethics for the human being as technician, the art of living humanely.

David Abram reminds us that underlying our technologized experience is a direct sensuous relationship to the world, one which we can return to through the re-awakening of our primary oral culture in story-telling. For Wes Chester, our fundmental relationship to the world is through an aesthetic encounter which can be cultivated in a disciplined way. And Thomas Trenchard and Sally Atkins make this encounter come alive by telling us of their experiences in the woods - either at night or in the mountains.

The journal is filled with art-work and poetry that embodies the call for a new aesthetics of the natural world, featuring a lengthy excerpt from the important new work by Rishma Dunlop, The New Republic: Reading Towards Ecotopia. As Dunlop says,

Everyone reaches
for nomenclature. Hoop the names of things
to your belt. When you are empty,
eat the words, drink them.

We invite our readers to join us at the feast.

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The image has always been suspect to thought. Either it is seen as a false representation which seduces us from truth (Plato) or, at best, a superceded stage on the way to the Absolute Idea (Hegel). For the artist, however, the image is home, the land of possibility where new perspectives can be found. Where are we with the image today?

In Baudrillard’s view, the dominance of media and the emergence of hyperreality means that the classical opposition between image and real can no longer be maintained. Not only does the real vanish in a profusion of simulacra, but the “original power of the image,” its capacity to become an event of transcendence, is also obviated.

Can we find that original power again? The coming issue of POIESIS invites readers to submit papers that explore the image today - and perhaps imagine it tomorrow. Where are we with the image, and how can we find its original power again? We hope that readers will be inspired to think about this question and its implications for philosophy, art, therapy and social change.

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ISBN 2147483647

Amor fati: that shall henceforth be my love! I do not want to wage war against the ugly. I do not want to accuse — I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Let looking away be my only denial! And all in all and on the whole: I want someday to be purely and simply a Yes-sayer! -Nietzsche

After several issues dedicated to trauma, suffering and terror, POIESIS takes up Nietzsche’s call for a “Yea-saying” philosophy of life. How can we find joy and enjoyment in everyday life and in the arts? Can we get beyond the media-driven conception of happiness as endless consumption and reclaim a non-ideological attitude of affirmation towards existence? What would this mean for the critique of ideology? What implications would it have for therapeutic and social change? What would be an aesthetics of praise?

We hope that readers will be willing to risk the foolishness of affirmative thinking in the face of all catastrophe and join us in saying, “Yea!”

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ISBN 14924986

For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure, and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us. -Rilke

So begins the Editor’s Introduction of the latest edition of POIESIS: the annual, cutting-edge source for new research from the fields of Expressive Arts Therapy and Media & Communication. As Rilke’s quote suggests, this beautiful new issue of the journal contains an extensive feature section on beauty and terror. This section also honours Shaun McNiff, one of the founders of the field of expressive arts therapy, on the event of his 60th birthday. In addition to this special and thought-provoking section, we are also proud to publish new works from Media & Communications — Pierre Aubenque, Christopher Fynsk and John Sallis — as well as poetry by Robert Bly and others. More than any other issue to date, POIESIS VIII spans geographic distance as well as time periods, exploring the art and nature of expression in places as far-reaching as Sierra Leone, Iraq, Jerusalem, Texas, and rural Canada, and from the Deep South of the 1800s to the Woodstock era to present times. Artwork appears in full colour.

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This issue has a new interior and exterior design and includes two sections. We begin with a special tribute to the late and legendary philosopher Jacques Derrida, with many evocative articles written by his close students, colleagues and friends. The second half of POIESIS VII is devoted to an exploration of the arts, community, and social change: mural-making with underprivileged Bronx youth, a fascinating account of Black Mountain College (an experimental liberal arts college in North Carolina), views on the entanglement of politics, ethics and aesthetics, and an interview with six members of the Toronto Playback Theatre Project. The articles are interspersed with the work of 19 exceptional poets and 13 visual artists whose work appears in full colour. A monumental and breathtakingly beautiful annual tribute to the expressive arts and communication.

Poets, writers, artists: Interested in contributing to POIESIS VIII, 2006: Beauty and Terror? Have a look at our Submissions Guidelines.

Training Institutes, Retreat Centres, Publishers: Advertising space is currently available in POIESIS VIII, 2006. We reach approximately 1,000 students and professionals working and studying in the fields of expressive arts, psychology, media and communications. Contact us for advertising specs.

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ISBN 2147483647