Table Of ContentImagining for Real
What does imagination do for our perception of the world? Why should
reality be broken off from our imagining of it? It was not always thus,
and in these essays, Tim Ingold sets out to heal the break between reality
and imagination at the heart of modern thought and science. Imagining
for Real joins with a lifeworld ever in creation, attending to its forma-
tive processes, corresponding with the lives of its human and nonhuman
inhabitants. Building on his two previous essay collections, The Perception
of the Environment and Being Alive, this book rounds off the extraordinary
intellectual project of one of the world’s most renowned anthropologists.
Offering hope in troubled times, these essays speak to coming generations
in a language that surpasses disciplinary divisions. They will be essential
reading not only for anthropologists but also for students in fields ranging
from art, aesthetics, architecture and archaeology to philosophy, psych-
ology, human geography, comparative literature and theology.
Tim Ingold is Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology at the University
of Aberdeen, UK. He is the author of many books, including Lines, Making,
The Life of Lines, Anthropology and/ as Education and Correspondences.
‘Imagining for Real demonstrates beyond doubt why Tim Ingold is one of
the most original thinkers of our time.’
Arturo Escobar, University of Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA
‘With the publication of Imagining for Real, Tim Ingold completes the
landmark trilogy that secures his standing among a very select group of
writers that have the power to transform our thinking about life’s most
basic questions. To read these lucid, insightful, and compelling essays is to
discover oneself stitched into a dynamic world overflowing with possibilities.
It is to know and feel oneself more fully alive. I can’t recommend this work
highly enough.’
Norman Wirzba, Duke Divinity School, USA
‘An inspiring, profound, theoretically scintillating, yet refreshingly down-
to- earth account of human imagination, Imagining for Real is the book we
need to navigate reality in the 21st century.’
Jill Bennett, University of New South Wales, Australia
‘Tim Ingold offers a compelling and original treatise on humans and their
relations with the world. Addressing a variety of classic and emerging issues
in plain language, this book is a tour de force, acutely relevant for our times.’
Gísli Pálsson, University of Iceland
‘Ingold’s distinctive sense of direction and wayfinding allows him to travel
into unmapped territories. Imagining for Real takes us on such a journey
along previously unknown paths that connect imagination and reality.
Along the way we get to know “creation from the inside” and to “imagine
for real” using anthropology’s transformational capacity. Never before has
a book made this journey possible.’
Lambros Malafouris, University of Oxford, UK
‘Imagining for Real is genuine Ingold, featuring the author’s unique ability
for concrete- abstract thinking.’
Ton Otto, Aarhus University, Denmark
Imagining for Real
Essays on Creation, Attention
and Correspondence
Tim Ingold
First published 2022
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 Tim Ingold
The right of Tim Ingold to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing- in- Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Ingold, Tim, 1948– author.
Title: Imagining for real: essays on creation, attention
and correspondence / Tim Ingold.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2022. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021019999 |
Subjects: LCSH: Anthropology–Philosophy. | Human ecology–Philosophy. |
Imagination (Philosophy) | Reality. |
Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.) | Perception (Philosophy)
Classification: LCC GN33 .I47 2022 | DDC 301.01–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021019999
ISBN: 978- 0- 367- 77510- 0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978- 0- 367- 77511- 7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978- 1- 003- 17171- 3 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/ 9781003171713
Typeset in Sabon
by Newgen Publishing UK
For Anna
Contents
List of figures ix
Preface and acknowledgements xi
General introduction 1
PART I
Creating the world 11
1 Creation beyond creativity 15
2 Landscapes of perception, landscapes of imagination 29
3 Life in a whirl 41
4 Evolution in the minor key; or, the soul of wisdom 52
5 Dreaming of dragons 61
PART II
Light, sound and experience 81
6 What in the world is light? 85
7 Between noise and silence: on the meaning of sound 102
8 The cello and the lasso: five propositions on beauty 114
9 Episode zero: the reduction and revival of aesthetic
experience 130
viii Contents
PART III
Surface tensions 149
10 The conical lodge at the centre of the earth- sky world 153
11 What if the city were an ocean, and its buildings ships? 166
12 Palimpsest: ground and page 180
13 On opening the book of surfaces 199
14 Strikethrough and wipe- out: tactics for editing the past 212
PART IV
Material thinking 223
15 Of work and words: craft as a way of telling 227
16 Thinking through the cello 243
17 In the gathering shadows of material things 256
18 The world in a basket 273
PART V
Life as a whole 285
19 Animals are us: on living with other beings 289
20 Posthuman prehistory 310
21 The sustainability of everything 325
22 Confessions of a semiophobe 337
23 One world anthropology 347
Notes 364
References 383
Index 404
Figures
2.1 René Magritte, La Condition humaine (1933) 30
2.2 Richard Long, Walking a Line in Peru (1972) 39
3.1 William Blake, Newton (1795) 45
6.1 The sun and the moon. Detail from a painting from
the wooden ceiling of the stave- church of Ål, in central
Norway, dating from the thirteenth century 91
6.2 Pachacuti, the ninth ruler of the Inca state, worshipping the
sun- god Inti, at the temple of Coricancha 93
6.3 Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night (De sterrennacht),
June 1889 94
7.1 Conventional depiction of a candle, with flame and rays 109
8.1 My cello 117
8.2 My lasso 119
9.1 Thermal, 1960, by Peter Lanyon (1918– 64) 132
9.2 The aesthetic episode 138
10.1 Looking up through the apex of the conical lodge 154
11.1 Landmarks, 2015, by David Lemm 167
12.1 Bird writing, a track in the snow 182
12.2 Example of a palimpsest 185
13.1 Two between- faces and a face- between, in cross section 209
15.1 Words and habits in the column of consciousness 230
15.2 The explicit as the tip of an iceberg, with the tacit beneath
the waves 231
15.3 Mind, body and world, as overlapping fields, and as
spiralling movements 237
16.1 The first lines from my copy of the score of Bach’s third
suite for unaccompanied cello 244
17.1 Network and nexus 257
17.2 Section of a dry- stone wall, Hazelhead, Aberdeen 260
17.3 The assemblage and the gathering: a working sketch from
my notes 265
