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ECOLOGIES OF THE IMAGINATION Per Israelson Ecologies of the Imagination Theorizing the participatory aesthetics of the fantastic Per Israelson ©Per Israelson, Stockholm University 2017 ISBN print 978-91-7649-756-2 ISBN PDF 978-91-7649-757-9 Printed in Sweden by Universitetsservice US-AB, Stockholm 2017 Distributor:Department of Culture and Aesthetics Table of Contents Acknowledgments .................................................................................................................................... 5 Introduction: Los Caprichos and the Ecological Fantastic ............................................. 7 At the end of the mind: Print 43, “El sueño de la razón produce monstruos” ..... 8 Purpose of the dissertation ......................................................................................................... 10 Tzvetan Todorov’s definition of the fantastic ..................................................................... 11 Material participation .................................................................................................................... 12 Modern subjectivity ....................................................................................................................... 13 Ambiguous perception ................................................................................................................. 15 Material and cultural environment: assemblage and ontogenesis .......................... 17 Distributed perception: sympoiesis ........................................................................................ 20 Media-ecological definition of the fantastic ....................................................................... 23 Time of the Carnival: play and the fantastic ...................................................................... 24 The ecological fantastic ................................................................................................................. 27 The argument .............................................................................................................................. ....... 30 Chapter 1: The Unwritten, Writing a Media Ecology of the Fantastic .................... 34 1. The Whale: Media as Ecosystems ........................................................................... 36 Participation and embodiment ................................................................................................. 40 Autopoiesis ......................................................................................................................................... 41 Neocybernetics ................................................................................................................................. 44 Feedback and control: the structural coupling of The Unwritten ............................ 47 Affect: perception-event ............................................................................................................... 50 The mingled senses of embodied perception .................................................................... 53 Sympoiesis: the structural coupling of ecosystems ......................................................... 55 Vibrant matter: the (magical) agency of objects .............................................................. 58 Media ecologies: world-creating feedback .......................................................................... 59 Sympoiesis and the aesthetics of media ecologies ........................................................... 63 The Role of the Reader: Iser, Eco, Barthes........................................................................... 64 Ontogenesis: creating ecosystems ........................................................................................... 68 2. Theories of the Fantastic: the Ecosystems of Genre ....................................................... 70 Participatory genres ........................................................................................................................ 70 Tommy Taylor and genre ............................................................................................................. 72 Todorov and structuralism ......................................................................................................... 74 1 Kathryn Hume: departure from consensus reality ......................................................... 76 Brian Attebery: fantasy as mode, genre and formula .................................................... 78 Farah Mendlesohn: rhetorics of fantasy ............................................................................... 79 Nancy Traill: fictional worlds theory ..................................................................................... 79 Rosemary Jackson: art as subversion ..................................................................................... 80 José Monleón: art as false consciousness ............................................................................. 81 The ethico-aesthetic function of the fantastic as a hermeneutical concept ........ 83 Mark Bould: the hailing of the fantastic ............................................................................... 84 The postmodern fantastic: Lucy Armitt and Brian McHale ...................................... 85 3. Participatory texts ........................................................................................................................... 89 Fantastic narrative ........................................................................................................................... 89 Metalepsis ............................................................................................................................................ 91 Configurative textuality ................................................................................................................ 94 Archontic textuality ........................................................................................................................ 99 The secret in the wall: hypericon and metapicture ....................................................... 102 Ekphrasis ............................................................................................................................................ 105 4. The return of the whale .............................................................................................................. 108 Chapter 2: The Media Ecology of Middle-earth................................................................ 113 Note on the text: the materiality of genre .......................................................................... 113 Foreword: paperback Tolkien and popular publishing ............................................... 117 Prologue: monsters against allegory .................................................................................... 119 Secondary belief and faërian drama ..................................................................................... 121 1. On the names of Blue Wizards ............................................................................................... 125 2. The mythic method ...................................................................................................................... 134 3. Children of the Legendarium ................................................................................................... 139 The Children of Húrin ................................................................................................................ 141 Adaptation and Innovation ...................................................................................................... 142 4. Pirate configurations: unauthorized authors ................................................................... 150 Parodies .............................................................................................................................................. 152 Russian Tolkien .............................................................................................................................. 156 Night of the Nazgûl: the legal limits of play ..................................................................... 161 5. Vibrant matter: Books, Rings and Things ......................................................................... 165 Balin’s Tomb: the materiality of the book .......................................................................... 166 The Book of Mazarbul: ontogenesis in the Chamber of Records .......................... 169 The Book of Mazarbul facsimiles .......................................................................................... 172 Fantastic ekphrasis: mingled senses in the Chamber of Records .........................