Unfolding images in socio-environmental research: a methodological proposal inspired by Simondon and Bachelard

El despliegue de las imágenes: una propuestas metodológica socioambiental partiendo de Simdondon y Bachelard

Abstract

The objective of the present article is to propose a theoretical-methodological path for the work with images, and their unfolding, in interdisciplinary socio-environmental research. Thus, a literature review was conducted on Gilbert Simondon’s concept of transduction and the image cycle (Simondon, 2020b, 2023), in cross-reading with Gaston Bachelard (2018) and his concept of material imagination. Images were taken as a metastable dynamic of analogies and metaphors. It was concluded that working with images from these authors can be a fruitful method of tracing cross-cutting relationships within a whole. This is argued since researching the commons implies working a complex whole in its multiplicity, something that can be operated through the unfolding of images, and the proposition of metastable analogies and metaphors.

Keywords:
Simondon; commons; transdisciplinary; imagination; political ecology

Resumo

O objetivo do presente artigo é propor um caminho teórico-metodológico para o trabalho com imagens, e seu desdobramento, em pesquisas socioambientais interdisciplinares. Assim, foi realizada uma revisão de literatura sobre Gilbert Simondon e seus conceitos de transdução e de ciclo da imagem (Simondon, 2020b, 2023), em leitura cruzada com Gaston Bachelard (2018) e seu conceito de imaginação material. As imagens foram tidas enquanto uma dinâmica metaestável de analogias e metáforas. Se concluiu que o trabalho com imagens a partir desses autores pode ser um método frutífero de traçar as relações transversais dentro de um todo. Isso se justifica já que pensar o comum implica em trabalhar o todo complexo em sua multiplicidade, algo que pode ser operado através do desdobramento de imagens, e da proposição de analogias e metáforas metaestáveis.

Palavras-chave:
Simondon; comum; transdisciplinar; imaginação; ecologia; política

Resumen

El objetivo del presente artículo es proponer un camino teórico-metodológico para trabajar con las imágenes, y su despliegue, en la investigación socioambiental interdisciplinaria. Así, se realizó una revisión bibliográfica sobre Gilbert Simondon y sus conceptos de transducción y ciclo de la imagen (Simondon, 2020b, 2023), en lectura cruzada con Gaston Bachelard (2018) y su concepto de imaginación material. Las imágenes fueron tomadas como una dinámica metaestable de analogías y metáforas. Se concluyó que trabajar con imágenes de estos autores puede ser un método fructífero para rastrear las relaciones transversales dentro de un todo. Esto se justifica ya que pensar lo común implica trabajar el todo complejo en su multiplicidad, algo que puede operarse a través del despliegue de imágenes, y la proposición de analogías y metáforas metaestables.

Palabras-clave:
Simondon; común; transdisciplinar; imaginación; ecología política

Introduction

A sort of epistemological unease is common in research areas characterized by a strong interdisciplinary focus, such as socio-environmental studies. How can one simply choose a linear research path when repeatedly confronted with a vast array of overlapping references, positions, stances, critiques, and perspectives? This is evident even when restricting the research object to political ecology or the commons. The latter requires an analysis that accounts for the diverse compositions of beings and phenomena while avoiding superficial readings that fail to grasp important particularities, thereby reinforcing modes of epistemic erasure.

Thus, researching the commons through an interdisciplinary political ecology entails conceiving research subjects and objects as intertwined in a shared, multiple, and complex field of relations [milieu]. One meaningful way to engage with this epistemological claim is through the concept of transversality (Braidotti, 2006; Gilroy, 2012; Guattari, 2012; Neimanis, 2017). This can be defined as a proposal to focus the analysis on the intensive lines that traverse coexisting multiplicities. These are movements, becoming-others, which underpin existing debates on political ecology. An example, provided by Astrida Neimanis (2017), is her imaginative claim to think of and through bodies of water. This is centered on the speculative tracing of transversal relations, in other words, crossings between exploratory practices and water pollution, environmental racism, and gender issues. For this author, this can be shown through the contamination of Inuit peoples with polychlorinated biphenyls, a chemical composite that is highly present in their bodily composition due to continuous contact with water contaminated with industrial waste. Neimanis highlights that this toxin disproportionally affects women’s bodies and care work, being transmitted through breastfeeding (Neimanis, 2017, p. 36). Thus, transversality, in this case, helps underline specific environmental relations in terms of an ecology of practices (Stengers, 2005), accounting for situations that the traditional disciplinary divide struggles to analyze.

Therefore, this article proposes that the unfolding of images could inform and guide interdisciplinary socioenvironmental research. This claim is based on Gilbert Simondon’s (2020b) transductive philosophy, in dialogue with Gaston Bachelard’s (2018) theory on images and science. These will be read as instruments for transversal thinking, which can facilitate a more nuanced understanding of the vivid complexities that are inherent to socioenvironmental research while maintaining a critical and imaginative outlook.

The analysis will explore the relations between analogies and metaphors in the constitution of images. Drawing directly from Simondon’s (2020b) theory of allagmatics, images will be viewed primarily as an assemblage of metaphors and analogies. That is the case since allagmatics, being a philosophical proposal that focuses on the crossings between different operations and between operations and structures, can precisely trace the unfolding of images in their metaphorical and analogical aspects. For Simondon (2020b), operations and structures can be conceived, respectively, as analogical and metaphorical relations. Hence, to think through allagmatics means tracing the exchanges between an entangled field of metaphors and analogies, searching for flexible and open compatibilizations. The latter are images, which condense such entangled complexities by acting as quasi-organisms (Duhem, 2018), located on the borders of phenomena; its dynamicity derives precisely from this characteristic since it must maintain some openness to facilitate exchanges between different fields of research, but not vague enough as to be meaningless.

This sort of dynamic image is crucial for the development of ecology as a science. Historically, the mutual development of fields that appear starkly distinct, such as ecology and cybernetics, has been based on a fruitful and long-lasting exchange of analogies and metaphors. The social sciences have a long history of borrowing concepts from biology, proposing, for instance, that society functions analogously to an organism, as seen in Durkheimian theories of society. A similar movement can be observed in Maturana and Varela’s (2017) biological theories, which incorporate key traits from cybernetics to formulate the concept of autopoiesis. More recently, Malabou (2017) analyzed how current developments in cybernetics and computational theory were derived from the biological concept of epigenetics, particularly in fields such as artificial intelligence and neural networks.

In regards specifically to ecology and socio-environmentalist practices and research, ecological “systems” are taken as “networks”. In this formulation, both analogies and metaphors are superposed. A set of lively relations are interpreted as being systems that strive for their self-preservation. In this abstracting stance, it is the whole that matters. Further still, this points to a system that is described through the metaphor of “network”, derived from computer science, solidifying an image of an informational relation between different linked points in a wide grid. Everything is connected. The image of a “system” has both a metaphorical and analogical underpinning, which imprints the intricate character of this concept in scientific research.

The purpose here is not to denounce the “imprecision” of such terms, as all analogies and metaphors inherently involve some degree of “imprecision”, as language cannot, in its terms, present as a mirror-like representation of the world. Expanding Malaspina’s (2018) argument on metaphors, what is key here is to explore how both figures of speech allow for new and creative ways to conceive phenomena. Here, theory is not taken merely to “explain” reality, but also adds reality to the world, as proposed by authors such as Massumi (2002) and Latour (2020). Hence, theory augments reality, instead of reducing it. Thus, any concepts, metaphors, or analogies, are possible relations with the world. They converge both epistemological and ontological aspects. This approach aligns with the perspective of the “dialogue of knowledges” (Floriani, 2013) and the ecology of practices (Stengers, 2005), meaning it navigates simultaneously through diverse fields of knowledge and their interconnected development.

Hence, in what follows, this article will attempt to outline key requirements for a theory of images, to be an effective tool for navigating between interdisciplinary interactions. The goal is to explore ways to compatibilize such differences, while at the same time reorganizing the general guidelines for research and creating an epistemic path for making sense of the unfolding of socio-environmental images.

Transduction and Allagmatics

This section aims to introduce the concept of allagmatics in Simondon (2020b). It will be read as a powerful ally for thinking on the whole of complex relationships that characterize socio-environmental research. This epistemology, also named “general cybernetics”, can be understood as a mode of thought which handles analogical operations. In other words, it is Simondon’s (2020b) proposal for making sense of the integrated network of different fields of inquiry and technical schemas.

Despite working within a conception closer to holistic or universal thought, Simondon has been read alongside other authors of difference, especially Deleuze, who was greatly influenced by Simondon’s philosophy, as exemplified by Sauvagnarges (2016). That is the case since Simondon seeks to identify informational links that traverse a complex field of relations. This implies that, despite writing his main thesis in 1959 this philosopher remains relevant to contemporary thought. Currently, there is a certain resurgence of critical thinking about the whole and complexity, and even universalism, especially when related to issues such as climate change, ecology, and the commons. That is the case of authors such as Sloterdijk (2016), Morton (2013), Negarestani (2018), and Bratton (2015). Furthermore, the concept of the whole and the commons is also explored within the realm of the philosophy of difference. In this context, however, what is proposed is a virtual whole: the potential connection between all beings and bodies on Earth, engaging through a transversal totality (Braidotti, 2006). Also, reflective of the problem of the whole and the commons: the formulation of cosmos in Stengers (2018), which can be conceived as a paradoxical whole, which in itself destroys the possibility of the existence of a “whole”; the different reading of the Gaia Hypothesis (Lovelock, 2000; Stengers, 2015; Latour, 2020); and Judith Butler’s (2018) concept of precariousness. To conclude, Simondon’s unique contemporaneity resides in the fact that his reading can bridge proposals aligned to the philosophy of difference and those closer to holistic ecological perspectives. Simondon’s philosophy presupposes shared means of existence, at the same time that it rejects a totalitarian whole that subsumes multiplicity. Inversely, the object of inquiry is how differentiation - or heterogenesis (Guattari, 2012) - occurs by specific processes of individuation, be it human or non-human.

In this sense, allagmatics can be understood as Simondon’s characteristic mode of thought, striving to account for a radically interdisciplinary knowledge production, as did other cyberneticians such as Wiener (2019) and Bateson (2000), and philosophers close to the author, such as his thesis adviser Canguilhem (1995) and Bergson (1937). Nearly all of Simondon’s concepts acquire consistency in interdisciplinary exchanges.

That is the case of the concept of transduction, a viable logical starting point. As Barthélémy (2012, p. 230) notes, transduction is a term derived from both biology and technology. It functions as an ontoepistemological principle for Simondon, as it allows one to describe in the same act the movements of beings and the terms in which one can know. Transduction is rhythmic, tracing the propagation, or the “sliding” of a being in its constant process of genesis; but transduction is also phasic, with each moment and structure “serving as a principle for the subsequent region, so that a modification extends progressively while this structuring operation is ongoing” (Simondon, 2020b, p. 29, our translation). Perhaps Simondon’s preferred image for figuring out this process is crystallization. When exposed to the supersaturated solution, the crystal tends to propagate transductively, generating new nodes. That is the principle of ontogenesis. The crystal starts its process of transduction and expands itself. In this setting, the supersaturated solution is no mere detail. It brings with itself an underlying stability: the quantity of solute exceeds what the solvent could dissolve under normal conditions. For Simondon, the term instability is imprecise, as the solution remains relatively cohesive despite not being fully stable. Hence, Simondon proposes the term metastability for describing such a state, since this solution is imbued with an “inner problematic and may enter as an element of a problem even more vast than its being” (Simondon, 2020b, our translation). This can sound like an excessively philosophical definition for a scientific explanation, but that is the proposed path for operational thinking, in which it refers not only to physical individuation but also to its biological, social, and psychological counterparts.

Simondon aims precisely at this point when he proposes his reinterpretation of the concept of form. This philosopher accepts the latter, provided it is linked with the concept of information. Borrowing from mathematical information theory (Shannon; Weaver, 1964), and its later cybernetic interpretation by Wiener (2019), Simondon seeks to reinterpret this theory, which he sees as being fundamental for twentieth-century philosophy. That is why, in his perspective, the “individual is the being capable of conserving or augmenting information” (Simondon, 2020b, p. 283, our translation). This implies a subtle difference in the treatment of information. Wiener tends to correlate information with the increase of negative entropy (or negentropy); in other words, information is the ordination of chaos in the form of a cybernetic system self-sustained by continuous feedback. In this sense, all living beings, technical systems, and humans are aligned by the self-preserving pursuit of organization - as internal resonance. For this, any contingencies, problems, unforeseen events, etc., are taken as learning opportunities towards keeping a tight organizational scheme. Simondon somewhat disagrees with this point, not because systems don’t strive for negentropy, but because for information to exist, it is necessary to maintain some internal imbalance in the system.

In sum, for the existence of information, there must be some sort of relational aptitude; in other words, it must exist “previous forms” (Simondon, 2020b, p. 333, our translation) that can somewhat translate received signals into information. However, and this is key, it is the operation that compatibilizes two signals that concretizes this relation. Information only exists when anchored by a problematic state: “It is needed the existence of disparity between a form already contained by the receptor and an exterior information signal” (Simondon, 2020b, p. 334, our translation). Thus, Simondon proposes an intensive theory of information, which implies that one cannot conceive of information as being a “Good Form”, imbued with meaning, or from a quantitative calculation (Simondon, 2020b, p.360). Information can propel a state of internal resonance depending on the singular problematic situation.

Therefore, Simondon does not strive to simply abandon the concept of form but reworks it alongside information. The Form is then dethroned from its theoretical reign, and a strong relational theory is conceived. Referring to the initial point of this discussion, the notions of signal, form, and information, paired with the problematic state of metastability, are the building blocks in which allagmatics establishes its key traits.

Yet, there is another important layer to this topic. Since the Simondonian being is not encapsulated by the individual, it is necessary to consider its pre-individual reality, situated somehow “before” this unfolding of operations and structures. It is precisely at this point that Simondon emphatically introduces the question of emotion and affectivity in the context of a human being’s social life. This philosopher sees the singular human person as an individual, formed by a process of individuation, but the subject, the being, is both “individual and other beyond the individual; she is incompatible with herself” (Simondon, 2020b, p. 382, our translation). The field of affectivity expresses a tension between the individual and the pre-individual; hence, in affectivity it contains an “ascension of the indeterminate towards the present, incorporating it to collectivity” (Simondon, 2020b, p. 375, our translation).

To conclude, transduction and information are fertile grounds for exploring images in socio-environmental research. The reason for this is that transduction imprints a reasonable cadence to conceptual exchange, which, as seen, requires previous forms. As it will be developed in the following section, one of the possible conceptions of image is precisely as a previous form. It is on the contours of images (be they individual or collective) that resides the possibility of constituting broader social significations and operational exchange of images. Nevertheless, these images will always retain a pre-individual reality, i.e., some unconcluded potential for new individuations. Identifying and working with these potentials enables inventive research and practice of images, which are continually unfolding in new metastable concretizations.

Images, Science, and Their Unfolding

This section’s objective is to sketch the possible contours of a socio-environmentalist “praxis of images” (Duhem, 2018) based on Simondon’s cycle of images and Bachelard’s material imagination.

The image, in Simondon (2023), is all but a static phenomenon; rather, it is a transductive cycle that follows four moments: the first consists of corporeal impressions condensed through the motor system, they are not yet fully condensed; by the second phase, the image becomes analogous to a previous form, as previously described, serving both as a ground and a vehicle for information; in the third phase, these previous forms amplify and constitute themselves on the symbolic world, through a metastable equilibrium that grants some coherence between its parts - that is a thoroughly social and collective phase; lastly, the fourth phase of the cycle can be understood as the appropriation of these images, and its symbolization, towards the invention of new images through the reworking of their potentials in the pre-individual reality; hence, the latter is an eminently political and creative phase, reconstituting an open universe of collective and individual possibilities.

These phases are not linear in a temporal fashion, but a proper cycle. If this cycle is to be taken seriously, images should be thought of simultaneously between these four realms. Therefore, the importance of images to socio-environmental research is that they refer continuously to a lively reality and the subject’s experiences in the world. Furthermore, the careful examination of images is key, since they can easily crystallize into some sort of “pre-concept”, or even a bias, which are both detrimental to fertile analyses of phenomena that somehow don’t fit in its scope. Also, if analyzed in its collective and symbolic realm, images compose a common shared universe, being a substrate to a wide range of social and political practices, which should be considered by interdisciplinary research.

At this point, it is decisive to note that the image (taken in a wide sense) is anterior to its individuation by language, or in the form of a metaphor or analogy. This “moment” of the image can be comprehended in the scope that Simondon (2020c) names as “reticulation” - on the affective elaboration of the image, there is a moment in which the image takes part in the formation of key-points, affective nodes that constitute a wide network of references. This dense web is continuously redefined and reopened through the establishment of novel forms. Thus, in this framework, it can be visualized the transductive movements of informational exchange between key-points in a metastable equilibrium. Returning to the theme of the previous forms, which are the condition of possibility for informational exchange (Simondon, 2020b), images can be thought of as pre-linguistic entities (Duhem, 2015). They are constituted alongside a reticulated net, which for Simondon (2020c) characterizes the “magical phase”, subsequently individuating themselves in other linguistic and symbolically driven images, cyclically.

Moreover, it is key to note that the formative process of images goes through an “amplification” phase, which expands its fields of application and range of potential significations. In its unfolding - its individuation -, the image becomes information and transductively propagates as wildfire, to borrow an image used by Simondon (2020a) himself. The fast propagation of catastrophic images, which evokes collective fear, can be evoked as an example of such amplification. However, afterward, the latter movement is met with modulating supports - both restrictive and limiting -, aimed to stabilize and consolidate the amplified into a key-point. In this sense, amplification can occur in a structured manner, facilitating the image to become a part of a wider affective and conceptual network. This process is properly transversal, in the sense that it cannot be reduced by a “discipline” or “field of study”, surpassing the frontiers that separate (perhaps with excessive rigidity) scientific activities from other practices, such as ethics and aesthetics. Yet, this is not restricted to the “social” or “intersubjective” field but inhabits a “transindividual” reality: a shared field that integrates the affective, the technical, and the social, having open and polysemic meaning in Simondon (Heredia; Rodríguez, 2019; Simondon, 2020b).

In these terms, images can ground invention, which relates directly to the issue of transversality, explored earlier. To trace the unfolding of images might be a useful starting point for imaginative researching, operating alongside the notion of ecology of practices, gliding and suggesting compatibilities between heterogeneous fields of investigation, without, on the other hand, dismantling or discrediting them. The rest of this section will be dedicated to better delineating the terms of this unfolding of images and imagination, and how it can be mobilized for facilitating inventive research and practice.

Images, as “quasi-organisms” (Duhem, 2018, p. 131, our translation), are a mix of being and the world, being carriers of an autonomous subtract of reality - a sort of relative, unreal, or surreal reality. These notions are key for understanding how the reticular and cosmic nets structure the world as a constellation of images and symbols. These symbol-images are key-points that guide action, epistemological inquiries, etc.

Bachelard conceives imagination as being a particular fidelity to matter, such as water, fire, earth, and wind. Thus, he names his proposal of imagination as being “material”, in other words, matter acts as a significant reserve of potential and guide for human reveries. Such is a deeply environmental perspective on humanism: dreams are constituted through an intimate connection with the world. Therefore, how can matter be apprehended by humans, and in what forms can it present itself to the subject? A possible answer for Bachelard can be momentarily thought, on one hand, through the imagination of perceptions and myths, which constitutes a vision of an enchanted world (Bachelard, 1943; 2018); on the other hand, it is presented scientific reasoning, a mode of thinking that operates through the systematic negation of these “first impressions”, or “epistemological obstacles” (Bachelard, 2005), towards a dialectic unraveling of such “initial knowledge” by way of repeated interruptions and ruptures.

In this sense, if the first form of knowledge can be roughly approximated to a poetic reverie, what follows is an “ironic” stance (Felicio, 1994, p. 117), which “disenchants” and tends to enforce abstract and counterintuitive claims. However, both coexist. If science negates reverie, the latter is always in a constitutive relation with the former. The inverse is also true, since in the act of saying “no” to the imagination and engaging in abstraction, science conceives new unforeseeable layers of reality, new natures, which ends grounding renewed reveries. What can be taken from such movements is the conclusion that Bachelard philosophizes through “surrationalism”, as Vera Lucia Felício (1994, p. 115) argues. This means that imagination is complementary to science; but also, that reality retains some sort of “unreality” within (Duhem, 2018). Science, as far as it can negate “first impressions” and reveries, never frees itself from the constraints of images.

Still, it is important to consider that such “surrationalism” is not some sort of loose poetic concept, which takes place in a vacuum, without substantial connection to matter. For Bachelard, poetics are fundamentally and intimately tied to nature, specifically to the four elements: earth, air, water, and fire. Such is the problem raised by his “material imagination”. An example of this is the insistence of this author on the “material” aspect of the imagination of water (Bachelard, 2018, p. 44). This can be seen in Bachelard’s poetic reflections when he analyses Edgar Allan Poe’s watery poetics. These are centered on “deep” waters, such as the dark lake that engulfs the shadows of neighboring trees, and the play of reflexes in a pond, which forms, during the nighttime, singular images, such as “star-islands” (Bachelard, 2018, p. 50). Water, as information, is simultaneously a catalyst for unraveling material imagination (Bachelard, 2018, p. 70).

It is worth noting that this is valid for all elements. Each serves as an archetype for distinct reveries, for distinct material imaginations. At this point, it is worth stressing that imagination does not simply derive from fixed images or perceptions. Rather, Bachelard conceives poetic imagination as the continuous deformation of images (Bachelard, 1943, p. 7), creating unfixed images. Therefore, is not only scientific knowledge that says “no” to the first images, but deforming imagination also plays a role in unfolding imagination. This explains why Felicio (1994) argues that, for Bachelard, imagination is autonomous; images constitute themselves as “quasi-organisms” (Duhem, 2018, p. 131), having their self-movement of revision and of overcoming limitations. But if imagination is deforming, how can the four elements maintain themselves as archetypes? The relation with “nature” not necessarily goes through the reference to matter or “things in themselves”, not either with the images of such matter, but with “pre-images” (Felicio, 1994, p. 115). This is valid ‘to the extent that they do not have the objectivity, clarity, and univocity of the thing perceived and known in itself’ (Felício, 1994, p. 115).

The cycle of the image is imbued with the movement of the surreal, with at least a parcel of its efficacy located in such relation. Reveries then follow certain bodily cadences, which also somewhat negate first images. Thus, the “praxis of images” can be grasped as the characteristic movement of images in relation to beings and the milieu, pervasively striving for a “critical revision” of first images. Although essential, the “ironic” and analogy-based science is not the sole means for conceptual and political invention of new structures and operations, since images themselves act as revisional tools. Because of their metastability, images are a site of constant imaginative work, as to keep functioning. Hence, scientific practice could also imply the revision of images, since it could never get entirely rid of them. Reveries, in their “savage” (Felicio, 1994) aspect, also inform the development of science, even if more commonly, the latter reflexively resists and counteracts images.

In sum, dynamic images can be thought of as the “praxis of images” (Duhem, 2018), implying a dialogue between the cycle of the image in Simondon and the material imagination in Bachelard. In this perspective, images are a complex and moving composition of analogies and metaphors. These images imbue the research object with a compelling mix of reality and “unreality”, an imaginative share of knowledge that science tries its best to keep at bay through persistent critique, peer review, etc. Thus, in scientific activity, this imaginative share does not simply unfold and calmly coexists with the collective imaginative and symbolic cultural world, but also, as invention, forces this whole composition to unravel.

It is suggested that socio-environmental research can be thought of in terms of a critical unfolding of images. Even the term “socio-environmental”, as a specific grouping of both “social” and “environmental”, can be seen as an intricate image: that of a metaphorical and analogical assemblage that tenaciously seeks to consolidate an object of research, and thus produces inventive and political effects, as it directs analysis to the interrelationships of fields of inquiry that were traditionally conceived as being hopelessly separated.

Socio-Environmental Research and the Images

In terms of socio-environmental research, working along images and imagination might be useful for envisioning a political ecology. This final section will be centered around characterizing and exemplifying how one can research alongside images. For this, the main example taken will be the imagination on water, since it implies an inventive aspect, while it points towards ethical concerns regarding the coexistence of beings with water, being a place of intense political disputes.

A first example is the imagination of “modern water” (Linton, 2014), which is defined as odorless, tasteless, and colorless. It presents itself as an isolated element, i.e., a reserve, a passive resource that despite its treacherous nature due to its resistance to contention waits to be traced and managed. What is key here is that, in this image, water is abstracted from all relations, including those with humans. In this mainstream ecological imagination, preserving water is then to keep anyone as far as possible from places such as springs and headwaters, which are taken as locations of “purity” and “innocence” in nature. This is tied to Ivan Illich’s (1986) claims on purity since it retains a double aspect: while this can be a powerful tool for denouncing pollution and decreasing water quality, it might also point to reactionary and “ecofascist” claims on “social purity”.

This abstract and isolationist image of water deconstructs its communal nature. Thus, it can be counteracted by other cosmologies on this element, such as the Mapuche people’s perspective, in which water is always accompanied by many beings that humans must treat with respect (Álvarez Ávila, 2014, p. 19). Another way to operate images of water, while avoiding stripping out its communal nature, is proposed by discussions regarding water governance and public policy, especially when water is conceived through the water-food-energy nexus (Ribeiro; Johnsson, 2018; Schmidt; Matthews, 2018; Liu, 2018). This inserts socio-environmental imagination in a universe of specific diplomacies, relationships, and compromises.

Also, imagination on water can be a powerful tool for the theoretical dismantling of social lines and limits which grounds the model of Nation-State sovereignty. Water’s omnipresence and its movements of cycles and fluxes point towards a “trans-local” world, in which territorial differences are conceived in other terms. Authors such as Édouard Glissant (2021) and Paul Gilroy (2012) work alongside the imagination of water, specifically of the ocean, as a strong image for thinking of the African diaspora and the concept of Relation. Likewise, claiming a critical stance on the mingling of water and communities, Denisse Roca-Servat, Juan Arias-Henao, and María Botero-Mesa (2021) propose to decolonize hegemonic images through a communal-popular conception that makes visible the dense web of day-to-day relations that communities weave with water. This understanding, as well as Astrida’s Neimanis (2017) concept of bodies of water, follows a feminist gender perspective, imbuing the imagination of water with the possibility of envisioning a collectivity in which hegemonic patriarchal and masculine individualism is challenged.

Through these examples, it is hoped that the potentiality of working along images was demonstrated. The process of tracing and experiencing the metaphorical and analogical entanglement of the images used in a specific field of research can be a fertile starting point for organizing interdisciplinary themes and texts. This helps avoid the inevitable clash between different truth criteria when comparing distinct fields of inquiry while privileging the combination of the productive and imaginative aspects of each research area. Hence, the focus is on the unfolding of images, the process of their continual reworking, alongside the disclosure of their analytical capabilities.

It is worth noting that this is a proposal that falls under the umbrella of the wider proposal towards a “dialogue of knowledges”. That is the case since the proposed methodology aims to enhance the understanding of the existing porosity in the separation of the realms of official/modern scientific knowledge and counter-expert (Merlinsky, 2017) and traditional knowledge, as well as non-occidental cosmologies. Thus, the search for opportunities for compatibilization can be considered a sort of cosmopolitical claim, in close dialogue with the “multiverse” present of the “multinaturalist” theories of authors such as Marisol de La Cadeña (2018), Phillipe Descola (2005), and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (2017). What is at stake here is the constitution of a common cosmological pluriverse and reassembled worlds.

As other socio-environmental objects of research do, the notion of common can be taken as a key point in the history of ontological and cosmopolitical conflicts. This is because, as an image that was affixed by a wide range of diverse counter-hegemonic practices, it grounds imagination for the proposal of critical models of social organization. To unfold the common, to live it, to rework it, to put it to the test, to multiply it, and to transpose it to many occasions: this seems to be a productive approach for working with socio-environmental images.

Conclusions

Underlined by bibliographical research, this theoretical exposition aimed to define the concept of transduction and allagmatics with the necessary rigor to explore its potential relations with contemporary political ecology, as well as to situate the importance of imagination for present-day socio-environmental research. Allagmatics, despite being derived from the interplay between metaphors and analogies, does not constrict itself to a linguistic reduction of reality. This is because it is underlined by a metastable equilibrium. In the process of analysis of an object or composition, it is productive to attune oneself to its pre-individual reality, still not affected. This reality can only be perceived as a “pre-image”, not bounded by language, which exists in affective fluxes that are, for example, activated through music (Gilroy, 2012). Yet still, some analytical prudence is suggested, since the term “image” can suggest an analysis that abstracts and reduces complex social relations, mainly those that operate through affects and pre-images. Hence, the importance of carefully assessing the non-linguistic specificities that coexist with images, as nodes of sense-making.

Nevertheless, the praxis of images, as a transductive epistemology, supports the organizing and sense-making of complex research materials by offering a methodology, while also pointing to the dimensions that this methodology itself gets dissolved amid the continuous unfolding of reality. That is why the proposed notion of imagination and praxis of images stresses the dynamic and deforming operation of images in socio-environmental research. Thus, the latter field of research can have, as a possible objective, to thoroughly analyze the epistemological and political stakes surrounding metaphors, and to produce new ones for reframing research objects. Therefore, it is key to emphasize that this transversal stance of images overflows the strictly scientific field, encompassing other queries, such as ethics and aesthetics. Inversely, these ethical and aesthetical practices themselves can utilize images to trace connections with scientific practices and theories.

It is proposed that a particularly productive metaphor in socio-environmental studies is the commons. It ranges many variations and proposals which are somewhat connected to an ecology of practices, especially with ways of knowing and being that are systematically excluded from scientific socio-environmental analysis, such as traditional people’s knowledge, as well as artistic, experimental, and non-linguistic knowledge. To conclude, we emphasize the possibility of future research in this sense, which, by utilizing allagmatics, operates a dialogue between scientific knowledge and other ways of knowing, addressing the wide complexity of contemporary problems in a transversal and imaginative manner.

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• Nota:
  Este texto se deriva de la disertación de maestría que resultó de la relación de orientación entre los autores durante los años 2022 y 2023. Una primera versión de este trabajo fue presentada en el XI ENANPPAS en septiembre de 2023 y publicada en los anales de esta conferencia.
• Note:
  This text is derived from the master’s dissertation that resulted from the advisory relationship between the authors during the years of 2022 and 2023. A first version of this work was presented at XI ENANPPAS in September of 2023 and published in this conference’s annals.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  20 Dec 2024
• Date of issue
  2024

History

• Received
  16 Apr 2024
• Accepted
  26 June 2024