Philosophy and Porous Imagination: Between Coral Reefs

Abstract

Diving into the life of the tropical coral reefs and Amadou Hampâté Ba’s reflections on the person conjoin in this work, which is at once philosophical
and poetic. The permeable parameters of philosophy, which enable thought to hover between unstable contours rather than to prioritize secure foundations, open to a porous imagination, tracing and retracing panoramic geographies and contemporary tensions of globalization and development. Porous imagination slips, glides, between archipelagos of clay rooftops and refuge dotting the Sudan and the smallest of creatures, source of half the earth’s oxygen and base of the global food chain, the plankton. Concomitantly, ideational codes of nation, continent, humanity, nature, land and water interactively stretch and unwind, shaping a polymetrics of sites and an aesthetics of nourishment. In an epoch beset by the treacherous fractals of overpowering domination and luminous liberation, the morphosis of philosophy through transdisciplinary and transcultural interpretation offers new ways of listening to and retuning songs of sorrow and lament.

Pp. 429-435