ACCESS: CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN EDUCATION

2017, VOL. 38, NO. 1, 66–83

https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2016.1194738

Dwelling and creative imagination in Gaston Bachelard’s

phenomenology: Returning to the poetic space of education and
learning
James M. Magrini
Philosophy Liberal Arts Department, College of Dupage, Glen Ellyn, IL, USA

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
In response to the so-called crisis in contemporary education in the institutions Phenomenology; curriculum;
standardization; higher
of higher learning (USA)—the encroachment of corporatism and pervasion of
learning
standardization—there is a move to offset this dominance by reconceiving the
university in terms of an intimate space of dwelling in learning and education.
In light of this moribund condition in education, I address the following ARTICLE HISTORY
concerns: How should educators approach the ‘space’ of learning in the new First published in
millennium with respect to the supposed ‘new face’ of education in higher Educational Philosophy and
Theory, 2017, Vol. 49, No. 8,
learning? What implication will such changes to curriculum have on the 759–775
‘context’ of learning? Will the context of learning now need to be
reconceptualized, and if it is, what effects will this have on students and
educators? Herein I consider the contributions that the philosopher Gaston
Bachelard’s phenomenological ontology of space, dwelling, and the creative
imagination might make to the formulation of rejoinders to these crucial
questions and concerns, which offer the reader a reconceived view of the space
of learning that is radically at odds with our contemporary conceptions that
might be linked with social efficiency ideology.

In response to the so-called crisis in contemporary education in the institutions of higher learning,
e.g. the encroachment of corporatism and pervasion of standardization, we have encountered many
viable and inspirational responses by curriculum theorists and philosophers of education such as
Pinar (2011), Smith (2011), and Maxwell (2012). These thinkers have stressed that higher education
is moving, and continues to move, farther away from Humbolt’s inspirational idea of the university
as a place of deep, sustained meditative study as opposed to a place, or space, of research. We find
this in Pinar’s exploration of ‘study not curriculum,’ Smith’s exploration of Eastern forms of wisdom,
and Maxwell’s intriguing notion of ‘wisdom-inquiry’ being integrated into the curriculum to offset
the dominance of what he terms ‘knowledge-inquiry.’ In relation to the university, or better,
learning, conceived in terms of a space of dwelling in education, I draw the reader’s attention to the
fact that in Attic Greek, ηθοϛ has a distinct meaning that sets it off from the term εθοϛ, and yet both
are often erroneously transliterated as ‘ethos’: the latter indicates ‘learned, practiced, and
habituated behaviors’ while the former, in a more primordial and original rendering, intimates one’s
intimate space of ‘dwelling, of abode, with others,’ be that in the agora, the temple, or when
gathered around the hearth’s fire. All of these examples have a distinct and unique notion of ‘space’
attached to them. There is also a unique space (ηθοϛ) that is proper to education, and it too indicates
an intimate mode of dwelling with others. It is this mode of dwelling in learning, within the context

© 2017 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia

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or space of the classroom, or perhaps more correctly, the space of learning, that I address in this essay.
For this ‘space’ and ‘dwelling’ in higher education is now under siege—i.e. the space of the
educational experience is being up-rooted. For the future of higher education, if such authors as
Bradley, Seidman, and Painchaud (2012) have their way, might be characterized by the bleak and
destitute condition of what I term throughout as ontological, estrangement in the context of
learning. This condition is indeed what Dreyfus and Kelly (2011) define as an affect of nihilism.
Bradley et al. (2012) seek to drastically reduce class-time in the universities, which they believe
is an ineffective way to structure learning in order to ‘deliver’ an education. Thus, their proposed
Three-Year Integrated Competency-Based Model (ICBM) for higher learning eliminates one
complete year of course work. Their critique of contemporary pedagogy in the university, when
discussing the problems with ‘classroom instruction,’ or ‘contact time,’ centers exclusively on the
didactic model for teaching—passive students to whom knowledge is transferred by the ‘sage on
the stage. ’This is a disingenuous and reductive move on the part of the authors. They offer other
ways that are supposedly more advantageous for authentic ‘learning’—which is curiously described
in terms resembling at once a behavioral and neurological model for storage, process, and effective
retrieval. All of these alternative ways include the incorporation of Internet-based learning, i.e.
creating virtual spaces for learning which they argue are more appealing to students and more
effective in the transfer of information—learning as ‘competency.’ The authors also draw inspiration
from the corporate model for organizing an effective business, and one does not need to perform
an intricate analysis or de-construction of its language to recognize that the so-called ‘themes’
around which the models of learning are organized: student as environment builder, as effective
group/team member/ influencer and motivator, manager and leader, as strategic thinker and analyst.
These are terms with which every college business major is well acquainted. In education, according
to Postman (2008), the problem is not the lack of information or knowledge our students have or do
not have, i.e. it ‘has nothing to do with insufficient information,’ rather the ‘problem lies elsewhere,’
namely, in the loss of what he terms ‘transcendent narrative’ in our lives (p. 77), which is relatable to
my theme of the ‘existential’ space of human meaning.
Based on the foregoing observations, I ask the following questions: What does this all say about
the ‘space’ of learning in the new millennium with respect to the supposed ‘new face’ of education
in higher learning? What implication will such changes to curriculum have on the context of
learning? Will the context of learning now need to be reconceptualized, and if so, what effects will
this have on students and educators? Importantly, what implication does the ICBM have for the
future potential of students and educators to dwell in an authentic context of learning in
community? Moving forward, I consider the contributions that the philosopher Gaston Bachelard’s
phenomenological ontology of space, dwelling, and the creative imagination might contribute to
the formulation of rejoinders to these crucial questions and concerns. I hope to offer the reader a
reconceived view of the space of learning that is radically at odds with our contemporary
conceptions that might be linked with social efficiency ideology. I begin by briefly unpacking the
ICBM for higher education as proposed by Bradley et al. (2012).

The ICBM for higher education: Clearing ‘space’ for a new curriculum
According to Bradley et al. (2012), the ICBM for higher education has three basic components or
under- lying assumptions: (1) the elimination of ‘seat time,’ or ‘contact time,’ as the primary indicator
of student learning and delivery of content; (2) the creation and establishment of competencies that
allow for an integrated curriculum grounded in measurable learning outcomes; and (3) the
designing and structuring of learning experiences that are inspired by the competency-based
standards for learning. The model works off the premise that four-year Bachelor’s degrees suffer
from ‘redundancy’ in course content and this can be alleviated and at the same time bring a greater
depth to and allow for greater coverage of material of the course content by eliminating unwanted
academic ‘waste’ and accomplish this at a highly reduced cost to students, the parents of students,
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and the university. As opposed to a traditional course load, the students would participate in what
the authors conceive as ‘modules of learning,’ each of which are structured around essential skill-
sets that must be demonstrated by students, all contained in what is called the ‘Program
Competency reinforcement Plan’ (p. 50). The ICBM is also predicated on the claim that other three-
year models for higher education, e.g. the Accelerated Model and the Prior-Skills/Experience Model
suffer fatal flaws that the ICBM might overcome, and therefore prove more effective in readying
students for the work-force while at the same time assuring that they possessed the level of skill or
competency required of traditional four-year graduates of institutions of higher learning. The reader
will note that I have chosen to focus on the ICBM because it egregiously bastardizes the notion of
ontological space as conceived by Bachelard.
Prior to addressing what I term the ‘dissolution of the space of education,’ as related to the
phenomenology of Bachelard, I present in brief the proposed plan for redesigning and reinventing
the traditional notion of an educative community. The ICBM ‘entails active learning, is outcomes
driven, and encourages student collaboration and cooperative work for maximum learning
effectiveness. A virtual collaborative environment can extend the classroom through time and space
and can facilitate the learning paradigm as well as the other value-added dimensions’ of the
curriculum (Bradley et al. 2012, pp. 103–104, my emphasis). ‘Virtual’ here is not limited to cyber-
space, but also includes the notion of spaces not yet conceived or enacted in contemporary education.
The claim is that virtual learning environments are value-laden spaces of educative activity, and
these spaces of learning can be extended through time and space in such a way as to enhance a
collaborative atmosphere where teachers and students work together to assure that the
competencies necessary for graduation are transferred to and acquired by students. The authors
envision student cohorts moving through learning modules and state that this is an example of
community building, for ‘student collaboration works for maximum learning effectiveness’ (ibid., p.
104). The cohorts are organized around the skill-sets of self-evaluation and peer auditing, both of
which are ‘important for academic and employment success’ (ibid., p. 106). The ICBM stresses
problem-based learning and collaborative learning, which comprise an ethical virtual space where
‘goals are pursued without competition’ (ibid., p. 111). Included in the notion of virtual learning are
Web-based collaborative groups, which extend learning beyond the ‘walls and time frames by the
kind of web-based virtual collaborative environments that are already in use in many distance
education programs throughout higher education’ (ibid., p. 113), and this includes course
management systems and Web 2.0 technologies such as social media networks, interactive blogs,
and wikis.
‘Dwelling’ in the ICBM consists of dwelling inside the classroom, outside the classroom,
dwelling in cyber space, and in virtual worlds. All of this with the purpose of creating dwelling
communities (cohorts—groups) of learners who are ‘educated’ because they have mastered the
competencies established for the various modules of study for degree. As related to the points I
make about Bachelard’s phenomenology, what this bleakly indicates about dwelling in learning is as
follows: (1) learning is re-defined as retention, retrieval, and the acquisition of skill-sets or
‘competencies.’ The authors are highly critical of the didactic method of transfer, but adopt an
approach to education traceable to the Tyler (1950) rationale, i.e. pre-established benchmarks,
toward which teachers (and ‘trained’ students) lead students. What is this if not for
behavioral/cognitive manipulation? (2) With this notion of ‘learning’ grounded in a reductive
epistemology, whether inside or outside the classroom, the ontological under- standing of dwelling
in a community of learners is absent; and (3) In the efforts to expand the world and dwelling space(s)
of education for the purposes of efficient learning (grounded in competency), the ICBM obliterates
‘space’ in terms related to what I term ontological space (lived space). Thus, although the authors
discuss alternatives for ‘contact time/seat time’ in the university, the following question is raised for
phenomenology: What is the ontological relationship between these alternatives for human and
educative interaction and our ‘lived experience’ of Being-with the other-in-learning? How do the
alternatives enhance, hinder, or betray the sense of our potential to dwell authentically within the
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onto- logical space of education? I argue that the phenomenological concern for ‘lived space,’ or
ontological space, which refers to the proximity of our Being in relation to the Being of others, is
ultimately at issue when responding to these important queries.

The ontological-immemorial space of human dwelling: What Bachelard’s

phenomenology teaches about being-well
Bachelard’s phenomenology, which is referenced as ‘topoanalysis,’ ultimately reveals the
ontological state of ‘topophilia’ (the love of space), which comes about through the
phenomenological move of bracketing ‘references to geometric spatial reality’ in the attempt to
examine the ‘valorized space expressed in images of special well-being’ (Smith, 1984, p. 120).
Bachelard (1994) gives the reader a clear view of his practice of phenomenology in The Poetics of
Space. There he seeks to wrest from concealment the ‘essence’ of dwelling in intimate spaces, and
he looks to the most primordial instance of what he considers human dwelling sheltered in the
poetic image of the house. As Bachelard formulates his grounding question, he simultaneously lays
bare the phenomenological method for the reader:
Transcending our memories of all the houses in which we have found shelter, above and beyond
all houses we have dreamed we lived in, can we isolate an intimate, concrete essence that would
be a justification of the uncommon value of all of our images of protected intimacy? (p. 8)
This is not a process whereby we merely seek out a multitude of examples of places wherein we
have dwelt that made us feel comfortable and safe from which we inductively ‘generalize’
conclusions. rather, phenomenology must go beyond generalization and mere description, ‘in order
to attain to the primary virtues, those that reveal an attachment that is naïve in some way to the
primary function of inhabiting’ (ibid., p. 4). Bachelard’s phenomenology employs the term ‘naïve’ in
the sense of referring to a primordial mode of inhabiting the world, which discloses the ontological
structures unique to giving form to that world. By attending to the most powerful and primordial
poetic images of dwelling, ‘the phenomenologist makes the effort needed to seize upon the germ
of the essential, sure, immediate well-being it encloses’ (ibid., p. 4). Bachelard ultimately concludes
that the essence, or ontological meaning-structure, of intimate dwelling, the value of ‘all inhabited
space … bears the essence of the notion of home’ (ibid., p. 5). It is through the ‘creative
imagination’—and more about this phenomenon below—which ‘functions in this direction
whenever the human being has found the slightest shelter,’ that allows it to grasp the ontological
truth of felicitous space (ibid., p. 5). For Bachelard, it is only through poems that ‘the ultimate poetic
depth of the space of the house’ is made available to us (p. 6). And when we are in the presence of
the essence of dwelling, ‘the soul comes and inaugurates the form, dwells in it, takes pleasure in it’
(ibid., xxii). A few words about ontological dwelling, or ontological space, are necessary at this point.
To grasp Bachelard’s intricate phenomenology of ‘space’ and ‘dwelling’ it is necessary to
understand the basic traits of this form of primordial space. Bachelard marks off ontological space
from Cartesian space, or geometric space, which is located in a view of the res extensa, or more
properly, the world of extended matter, i.e. the three dimensions of space. This idea of space is
absolutely essential when attempting to create the ‘geometric’ space of the living room or kitchen;
we indeed require measurements and floor plans in order to coordinate the placement and
arrangement of furniture and appliances to ‘fill the space’ as it were in a manner that is convenient
for our access. From a phenomenological and ontological perspective, the ICBM is more concerned
with what Bachelard terms ‘thematic space,’ i.e. space as related to the position of objects within the
dimensionality of ‘four walls’ (e.g. students inside and outside the classroom), which is a Cartesian
understanding of space. The ICBM is more concerned with the productive ‘use’ of space than it is
about how educators inhabit and dwell in ontological space. Even the use of the Internet, when
speaking about ‘cyber space,’ is conceived in terms of thematic space (dimensionality), e.g. the
computer is viewed as a tool or medium which ‘bridges’ the distance between two people, the same
way the telephone was conceived many years prior to the Internet. In attempting to bridge or close
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the gap in the ‘space of learning,’ the ICBM actually promotes the alienation of the students from
their original and ontological mode of ‘spatial dwelling. ’The desire to do away with distance is a
fleeing in the face of the phenomenological understanding of the authentic ‘lived experience’ of
space. We find the understanding of ontological space in Bachelard’s philosophizing of the space of
the house, as a metaphysical phenomenon, and in his poetizing of the creative imagination, as a
form of dwelling within the poetic image and the primordial experience of education or learning
this inspires.
Bachelard’s (1994) phenomenology most importantly deals with the primordial power of the
poetic image, which emerges after long sustained ‘readings,’ wherein the phenomenologist lives or
dwells within the poet’s art, the poet’s image. Practicing a phenomenology of the imagination
allows the reader to study the poetic image as it ‘emerges into the consciousness as a direct product
of the heart, soul, and being of man,’ and in such moments of dwelling, the human being is
‘apprehended in his [most primordial] reality’ (p. xviii). Phenomenology allows Bachelard to explore
the ontological realm that avoids reduction to objectifying forms of thinking, which are associated
with psychology and psychoanalysis. It is also a form of philosophical dwelling that resists the split
between res cogitans and res extensa, for within such a dualist metaphysics there is but one and
proper ‘rational’ way to deal with matter, namely, as a thing that persists through time, is extended
in space, and is divisible. Phenomenology shows us that the body has a secret life that might be
termed the ‘dynamic life of the body,’ which is irreducible to a mere material body that takes up
space and is beholden to the mechanical, causal laws of the physical world. Bachelard (1991), for
instance, makes the distinction between the geometric hand and the dynamic hand, this is not to
merely indicate that one is static and the other is in motion. rather, it indicates the unique manner
in which the dynamic hand dwells in ontological space, and in this existence the ‘hand has its dreams
too, and its own hypotheses. It helps us to come to know matter in its secret, inward parts’ (p. 105).
For example, when engaged, or dwelling, in the activity of kneading dough, there is a ‘naïve
chemistry,’ as opposed to a ‘natural geometry’ at work, for when we ‘mold, knead, and shape, there
is no longer any geometry, nor any sharp edge or interruption,’ and it is a ‘rhythmic activity, whose
precise, insistent rhythm tales possession of our whole body’ (ibid., 105).
Thus, Bachelard makes a radical differentiation between the body’s ‘dynamic involvement’ with
its world in terms of ontological space and dwelling and its physical and mechanical involvements
with the world. For example, to illustrate Bachelard’s view of ontological space as related to
education, I am at-home in the dwelling space of learning only when there is a close proximity
between my Being and the Being of the student or students with whom I am sharing the space, or
place, of learning. It is important to note that in this description the measurable or calculable
distance that sets us apart is of no consequence. For I can be situated quite close to a student with
whom I’m conversing—in Cartesian space—and yet be at an insurmountable ontological distance
from that same student in terms of our educational experience instantiating a truly ‘meaningful’ and
ontological connection between us. The ‘space’ which I share with the student’s Being, as opposed
to Cartesian space, represents for Bachelard the intangible, but nevertheless indisputable,
ontological distance that highlights our original mode of Being-in-the-world, which we experience
when dwelling within various situations of our concerned and solicitous involvement with the world
and others. In this immersed form of understanding, ‘place’ is not reducible to ‘position,’ as in the
positioning or arrangement of artifacts or objects in space. rather, place, as in a place of ontological
dwelling, is always representative of a network of interconnected meanings that we share with
others. This network of interconnected meanings that we share we might call the world of our
meaningful involvements, which have the potential to be opened up to us through the interpretive,
imaginative, and poetic activity that Bachelard’s phenomenology inspires. However, we must resist
the temptation to view the ‘network of interconnected meanings’ in terms of a web or integrated
network of collected ‘facts,’ which provide a rational, atomistic, and isomorphic picture of the ‘real,’
external, and ‘objective’ world. Instead, this network of interconnected meanings emerges from out
of ontological ‘meaning structures,’ which Bachelard (1994) terms ‘concrete essences’ (p. 9). These
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‘concrete essences’ allow for other human beings and the entities with which we deal to show up,
or presence, in meaningful ways. For Bachelard, this phenomenon occurs prior to, and is hence more
primordial than, the emergence of any psychological, anthropological, or epistemological
categories or paradigms.
So, when Bachelard (1994) poetizes the ‘space’ of the house within which we dwell, and in turn,
dwells in us, in ‘poetic’ imagery, it must be understood in terms of a space or place comprised of the
inhabiting practices of the imaginative and creative subject. This is related directly to what was
introduced earlier as the primordial sense of ηθοϛ, an in-dwelling within our world or home. ‘Space
that has been seized upon by the imagination,’ claims Bachelard, ‘cannot remain indifferent space
subject to measures and estimates of the surveyor. It has been lived in, not in its positivity, but with
all the partiality of the imagination’(p. xxxiii). For Bachelard, to become close in space and dwelling,
to dwell in the most primordial way possible, is to learn to live within the poetic image, as we find in
Rilke:
House, patch of meadow, oh evening light
Suddenly you acquire an almost human face
You are very near us, embracing and embraced. (ibid., p. 8)
The house poetized in this imagery is more than human, more than friend. rather it is the human
being’s original world, or place of safe dwelling, ‘it maintains him through the storms of the heavens
and those of life’ (ibid., 8), in terms of an ontological power that centralizes, gathers, and integrates
‘the thoughts, memories, and dreams for mankind,’ and it ‘allows him to dream in peace’ (ibid., p. 7).
It must be noted that unlike other phenomenological philosophers engaging in what Bachelard
terms, ‘hasty metaphysics,’ such as Heidegger (1962) and Sartre (1995), Bachelard believes that the
human’s most original and primordial condition is actually the original state of Being-at-home, and
not the reverse. This view runs counter to Heidegger’s primordial state of Dasein’s not-Being-at-
home-in-the-world and Sartre’s existential mode of forlornness, which is the primordial existential
condition of alienation from both God and any intrinsic and luminous realm of values. According to
Bachelard (1994), and here is one of his most radical and original contributions to Western
phenomenology, prior to being ‘cast into the world,’ in terms of existential thrownness—which is an
existential state of ontological alienation from the world and others—the human being is, in the
most primordial manner of its existence (Being-in- the-world), always already at-home within the
dwelling of the welcoming abode of the house, in terms of being-well. And it is ‘being-well’ that
Bachelard claims is ‘originally associated with being’ (p. 8). It is only when the human is cast out, or
‘thrown out, outside the being of the house’ that it experiences the conditions ‘in which the hostility
of men and of the universe accumulates’ (ibid., p. 8). So, this is a crucial point, which will be related
to the forthcoming discussion on education: Bachelard believes this existential condition as
described by Heidegger and Sartre represents a secondary metaphysical state and in addition that
the conceptual structures and paradigms of psychology and epistemology, for example, have
worked to occlude the primary ontological ‘truth’ that we are already at-home-in-the- world.
Bachelard believes that it is to this primordial, ontological mode-of-Being (being-well) that we should
strive to return, to relive, and dwell within through our immersion in the poetic image and flights of
the creative imagination. For ultimately, the house shelters human solitude—existential solitude—
and solitude for Bachelard (1969), as we find most perfectly lived and embodied in the child, harbors
and shelters our most profound powers of creativity, for solitude is the ontological state of being-
well.
Childhood knows unhappiness through men. In solitude, it can relax its aches. When the human
world leaves him in peace, the child feels like the son of the cosmos. And thus, in his solitudes, from
the moment he is master of his reveries, the child knows the happiness of dreaming which will
later become the happiness of the poets. (p. 99)
According to Bachelard, reverie is nothing other than the unfolding of the creative imagination
and is linked in an ontological manner to childhood and what I have termed existential solitude, for
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in the solitude of the child ‘we return to the lair of reveries, to reveries that have opened the world
to us. It is reverie which makes us the first inhabitant of the world of solitude’ (ibid., p. 102). Within
the ontological well-Being provided by the dream-like reverie of the ‘oneiric house,’ we dwell in the
originary solitude of the child, which the house shelters and preserves. Here ‘we inhabit the world
better because we inhabit it as the solitary child inhabits images’ (ibid., p. 102). And this is related to
the understanding of intimacy in dwelling, for the ‘localization in the spaces of our intimacy is more
urgent than determination of dates’ of accumulated facts or the most thoroughly conceived theory,
and, we might even add to this list the seemingly best plans for our educational institutions
(Bachelard, 1994, p. 8). Hence, we learn from phenomenology that we are in the presence of new and
unique ways of imagining our Being-in-the-world when dwelling in the presence of the poetic
image, which brings us into ontological proximity, in terms of ontological space, with the oneiric
house, the dwelling that allows us to, in a safe and secure way, ‘dream well’ (p. 8). For as Gaudin
(2005) states, Bachelard’s phenomenology reveals and indeed teaches us that ‘in being’ there is an
‘irresistible movement toward well-being’ (p. xxvii). Bachelard (2005) shows us that when relating to
the Being of the house through the power of the poetic image, which ‘demonstrates repose of the
being,’ we are brought into the presence of our own Being, our ontological way of inhabiting (in-
dwelling) the most intimate of all habitats, the house. For Bachelard, ‘reverie illustrates a state of
well-being’ (p. 71).
To conclude this section, I return to the earlier discussion of the ‘network of interconnected
meanings’ comprising the world of ontological space in order to consider the relationship of
belonging between the human, house, and its various rooms. In addition, I explore the relationship
between the house and the universe. Against Cartesian space, or the various divisions of the house
into ‘room-space,’ the poetized relationship between the human and the cellar, attic, closets,
bedrooms, etc., are relationships that poetically live in terms of the rooms proximity to the Being of
the house, as in-dwelling, where the experience in reverie, or wakeful dream, of the various rooms
approaches ‘the immemorial’ (ibid., p. 10). When dwelling in the house in terms of human dwelling
in ontological space, Bachelard tells us that the ‘moments of confined, simple, shut-in space are
experiences of heartwarming space, of a space that does not seek to become extended’ (ibid., p. 10).
The attic, for example, if viewed and experienced from a Cartesian perspective, seems as if it lacks
enough space to move about in, or feels too cold to inhabit without proper dress for warmth.
However, in poetic reverie, through the flights of the creative imagination, ‘recaptured through
daydreams, it is hard to say through what syncretism the attic is at once small and large, warm and
cool always comforting’ (ibid., p. 10), because in this instance the meaning structure is organized in
terms of a ‘concrete essence,’ i.e. around the ontological structure of being- well. In poetic terms, the
house and its rooms are irreducible to ‘geometric forms,’ for when conceived in terms of ontological
space ‘inhabited space transcends geometric space’ (ibid., p. 47). For although a geometric object
would appear to defy any anthropomorphic metaphors or allusions, whenever it is clarified and
idealized in the poetic image, a ‘transposition to the human plane takes place,’ a transfiguration
occurs, and ‘the house is considered a space for cheer and intimacy’ (ibid., p. 48). It is also the case
that the house we inhabit is set within nature, or the dynamic unfolding of physis, and there is also,
between the house and universe, a relationship rooted in ontological space. For Bachelard, the house
mirrors the human existential condition, and the‘house’s virtues of protection and resistance are
transposed into human virtues’ (ibid., 46). Bachelard claims that the metaphysics in which the
human is ‘cast into the world … mediate[s] concretely upon the house that is cast into the hurricane,
defying the anger of heaven itself’ (ibid., p. 46). The house, in such poetically transfigured moments,
inspires the human by teaching it the responsibility of Being-in-the-world as a maker and creator of
the world ‘in spite of the world’ (ibid., p. 47).
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The space of learning and the creative imagination: Bachelard, education, and
imaginative dwelling
Having elucidated what it is to authentically dwell in the ontological space of the house and what it
means to learn of our Being-well in the presence of the Being or ‘concrete essence’ of the house,
which shelters most originally our existential solitude, a revelation first made possible because of the
inspiration drawn from poetic imagery, I now consider the following question: What is it to dwell
authentically in the creative imagination, in the poetic image, and what might the immersion in
poetic reverie intimate about education, about an original sense of dwelling in learning? My initial
rejoinder is that if we follow Bachelard into his philosophy of the imagination, we find that the
dynamic process of dwelling in poetry is in fact a communicative process, where we commingle,
communicate, and commune intimately with the poet while at once growing and developing in
terms of learning something new about ourselves. In Bachelard, when dwelling in the poetic image
a process of learning or education unfolds; a process of formation and transformation to one’s soul
or Being occurs. This process is indeed linked to the ancient Greek understanding of poiesis, which
for Bachelard indicates that there is a making, a creating, a sense of bringing something new into
existence when dwelling in the creative imagination. To begin, Bachelard’s ‘pedagogy’ might be
grasped in terms of a renewed approach to philosophical inquiry that, as opposed to imposing rigid
and indelible a priori categories upon the phenomena it wishes to interrogate, is attuned in advance
by and to the unique ‘address’ of the phenomena it seeks to study. In essence, philosophy allows
the world to dictate its method of inquiry. Bachelard (1968) urges philosophers to ‘break with the
ambition of finding a single, fixed point of view for judging the totality of a science as vast and as
changing as physics’ (p. 10). Philosophy needs to be open to the ever-changing nature of
phenomena, listening for their address occurring in and out of a multiplicity of voices, speaking with
manifold tongues. This notion of authentic inquiry is present to Bachelard’s early work in the
philosophy of science and this approach to and view of inquiry does not change when he moves to
the ontology of the imagination. For Bachelard, poetry always dictated the method of approach,
and the method best suited, of course, is phenomenology (Gaudin, 2005). As the paper progresses,
the reader will note that such a view of inquiry advocated by Bachelard is opposed to ‘learning’ as
defined by Bradley et al. (2012), which is reducible to skills, abilities, knowledge acquisition, and
most importantly, ‘competencies.’
Bachelard (1968) offers a different and highly unique view of education, which I develop in
relation to the space of learning and the form of dwelling that is proper to it. His view of education
is decidedly ontological in nature as it deals with human transcendence. As stated, in Bachelard’s
earlier writings relating to epistemology and the New Scientific Mind, he is already forging a unique
notion of philosophy, with its own proper ‘space’ and locale. Philosophy, as he conceives it, is a
viable practice for inquiry, and, as stated, the nature of the unfolding of that inquiry is decidedly
‘pedagogic’ in nature, for it is a view to learning that focused on the thinker’s attunement to
education and the pedagogic task as an open-ended process. In essence, then, education might be
conceived as a process of renewed inquiry. It is possible to state that for Bachelard, as will be shown
when discussing the educative nature of reverie and the creative imagination (poetic imagery),
education is essentially a life-long process of encountering ‘new experience,’ and for Bachelard, ‘new
experience,’ like both philosophy and education, ‘says no to old experience, otherwise we are quite
evidently not up against a new experience at all’ (p. 9). Gaudin (2005) echoes these sentiments when
writing that Bachelard believes that the pedagogue needs to be attuned to the fact that education,
in its essence, should be highlighted by ‘living thought’ that is represented most authentically by its
‘shifting character,’ and for Bachelard, ‘this is the sine qua non of the modern educator’ (p. xxxiii).
Although Bachelard (1968) believes it is the mistake ‘of general education to establish the inflexible,
one-way relationship of teacher to pupil,’ he would never endorse the notion of the reduction of
pedagogue to the role of ‘guide on the side,’ because there is, in the space of authentic education,
an undeniable intimacy between teacher and learner, between poet and reader, and vice versa: ‘The
fundamental principle of pedagogy,’ writes Bachelard, ‘is as follows: He who is taught must teach …
74 J. M. MAGRINI

An education that one receives without transmitting it develops minds without dynamism, without
self-criticism’ (p. 244). I continue this line of thought when moving into the realm of poetic dwelling
in the imagination and images.
On my reading, what is called Bachelard’s ‘Copernican revolution in Imagination’ has several
key advancements to thinking or philosophizing the imagination as linked with ontology, and this
view takes him beyond Sartre’s (1972) unique interpretation of the imagination: (1) there is a break
with a dependence on psychology and psychoanalysis to explain the so-called ‘deep meaning’ of
images; the image in nocturnal dreams is (a) not the most primordial form of imagery we experience
and is (b) irreducible to the workings of the unconscious, the Id, or the libido. It is not psychotic or
neurotic complexes that explain or give life to poetic images, rather it is the inverse, complexes get
their initial life force from the poetic image, which, for Bachelard, resides in the ‘in-between’ zone,
dwelling between the human being’s unconscious and rational states of mind—as opposed to a
sexual origin, images are rather intellectual in nature (Gaudin, 2005); and (2) there is a break with
traditional esthetic theory and critique, which view the poetic image in terms of a symbol/metaphor,
which points away from itself in order to acquire its meaning. rather, the poetic image for Bachelard
is not esthetic at all in terms of formalist, expressionist, realist, or postmodern esthetic views. This is
because it is not properly an ‘object of esthetics,’ beyond this, it is not an object at all in terms of
being conceptualized in terms of a mental representation brought to stand in a rational explanation.
Instead, the poetic image lives at a primordial level, and, as Smith (1984) states, it ‘contributes to
psychological well-being through its dynamism,’ and this is because ‘such activity restores being to
its full potential’ (p. 104), and it is possible to state that, ‘subjective being is determined by the
dynamic imagination’ (ibid., p. 97), which is due to the image’s ontological origin, in terms of
representing a potential new beginning (ibid., p. 104). With respect to the understanding of the
Copernican Revolution in the Imagination, Bachelard (2005) is clear that ‘images can no longer be
explained by their objective TRAITS, but by their subjective MEANINGS’ (p. 14), and this ‘revolution’
understands an order of things contrary to the popular view, wherein we have,
dream before reality
nightmare before tragedy
fright before the monster
nausea before the fall. (ibid., p. 14)
This indicates that we are primordially attuned by the poetic image prior to our perception of
the experience, for Bachelard locates ‘the image not only prior to thought, before narrative, but also
before any emotion’ (ibid., p. 14). It is the case that Bachelard has the tendency to allow his
metaphysics to border, at times, on the mystical. With this most difficult notion of the image
harboring within it a power that is prior to emotion or perception he means the following: If the
poet employs the image of a ‘frightful situation,’ it is not a direct, objective description of a frightful
situation or encounter. rather, the image, in its most primordial ontological state, already harbors
within it the ‘essence’ of fear by stir- ring ‘the fundamental dynamic imagination,’ and so holds the
power to attune us and put us in a ‘fright situation’ (ibid., p. 14). In a sense, any and all so-called
‘frightful’ situations are already posterior to and dependent upon the ‘essence’ of fear that the
original poetic image harbors and reverberates. Bachelard (2005) finds these sentiments in D’
Annunzio’s words, ‘The richest events occur in us long before the soul perceives them. And, when we
begin to open our eyes to the visible, we have long since committed ourselves to the invisible’ (p. 16). As
related to the theme of this paper, the so-called ‘invisible’ powers unfolding in the image hold an
educative function, for as Bachelard claims, we are already ‘educated through reverie before being
educated by experience, if experience follows as confirmation of its reveries’ (ibid., p. 16).
Bachelard states that the notion of symbol is ‘too intellectual’ (ibid., 14) to relate to either the
image or the imagination, and here we have arrived at a critique of formal education. Traditional or
conservative forms of ‘instrumentalism’ in education will fall into the trap of wrongly ‘rationalizing’
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the poetic image in the effort to understand it, classify it, and relate it to an end or ultimate meaning.
In doing so, it bastardizes the poetic image’s ontological potential. According to Bachelard (1994),
educators must be receptive to the fact that poetry, in its primitive and primordial emergence, ‘must
always be accompanied by the creation of a new language,’ which is bound up with the concomitant
danger that it ‘may well be hampered by the language that has already been learned’(p. 100). In the
extreme, in the institutions of learning, ‘poetic reverie’ would inevitably ‘turn into scholarly reverie,
that is to say, into the reverie learned in the classroom. We must rid ourselves of books and teachers
if we are to redis- cover poetic primitivity (ibid., p. 101). of course, Bachelard is speaking for effect
here, what he means to indicate, as Smith (1984) draws our attention to, is that primal poetry, and
this emerges through the phenomenological inquiry, ‘discovers that being cannot be limited to
external reality, to that which can be conceptually designated’ (p. 99). For example, when swept
away within and by the poetic image of flight, this cannot be limited or reduced the ‘re-presentation’
of one or another winged creature (the re-presentation of the physical wing in the imagery), for this
would already be a move to conceptualize and intellectualize the image, to codify it and reify it in
terms that betray its Being, its ontological life force. To begin to conceive of the educative aspect of
dwelling in the poetic image, I draw the reader’s attention to Bachelard’s view of his
phenomenology as ‘dynamology,’ wherein, as Smith argues, it is ‘an expansion of phenomenology
to include the description of the subject’s dynamic relationship with the world and the inner of
transformation such a relationship can bring about’ (p. 107), and this relationship, it is possible to
state, is grounded in a dwelling with images in learning.
Bachelard (1994) distinguishes between the formal, material, and dynamic imagination, but for
the purpose of this paper I focus on the ‘creative imagination,’ which, in a poetic sense, changes the
way we understand ourselves and the world, because it allows us to envision a new reality:
‘Imagination is not, as its etymology would suggest, the faculty of forming images of reality; it is
rather the faculty of forming images which go beyond reality, which sing reality’ (p. 15). This
indicates that images transcend reality, and this notion of transcendence, in various manifestations,
is ultimately educative. Bachelard (1969) informs us that dreams (reve) are not the same as reveries
(reverie), just as dreams (songe) are not the equivalent of daydreams (songerie). ‘Then,’ Bachelard
states, ‘by using the division of the psyche into animus and anima,’ it is possible to classify reverie as
‘a manifestation of the anima’(pp. 29–30). Anima is opposed to the masculine animus, which is linked
to system and order, for ‘reverie,’ as Bachelard tells us, ‘is linked with the feminine,’ with all that is
creative—‘an image received in the anima puts us in a state of continuous reverie’ (ibid., p. 65). It is
possible to link reveries and daydreams to the creative imagination, which is ‘active’ as opposed to
the dream, which is actually a phenomenon when the unconscious subject is in a passive and
receptive state, open to suggestion and manipulation. When dreaming at night, as opposed to
‘daydreaming,’ we undergo a perceptual experience on a pure unconscious level. With this
understanding, if we consider Freud’s understanding of the dream, as the unconscious unfolding of
our involvements with the material world or the residue of material reality, there is not and cannot
be an involved subjective form of poetic, or creative, activity. And, for Bachelard, in reverie, as
opposed to dreaming, there is a crucial involvement with the waking subject, and Bachelard
indicates this involvement within his philosophizing of the dreamer’s cogito, or the daydreamers’
attuned and ‘active’ state-of-mind (ibid., pp. 146–170). In addition, the Freudian interpretation of
dreams locates a material origin of the dream, upon which its images and symbols are dependent
for their life, and these images lend themselves to psychological explanations and not
phenomenological description.
Reverie, as daydreaming, is a reflexive activity and process of deep subjective involvement, for
reverie ‘is an oneiric activity in which the glimmer of consciousness subsists,’ which is to say that the
daydreamer is present to his/her daydream, and ‘even when reverie gives the impression of a flight
out of the real, out of time and place, the dreamer of reverie knows that is he who is absenting
himself’ (p. 150). This is why reverie holds the potential for transcendence, self-development, and
self-fulfillment, and hence perhaps the most pure and original educative experience we can
76 J. M. MAGRINI

undergo. reverie is an original mediating ‘poetic’ and ‘creative’ force between human and world,
however not conceived as res cogitans and res extensa, but rather human subject within the world
of its ontological dwelling. Smith (1984) eloquently elucidates this relationship between
daydreamer and world:
For the daydreamer, be he poet or reader, is conscious both of his own subjective being and of the
subjectively viewed world, to the point that one is an enhancement of and confirmation of the
other…Where objectivity requires the subject to accommodate itself rationally organized physical
reality, resulting in the separation between subject and object, self-aware reverie accommodates
the world to subjective reality, thus transcending the subject-object opposition without
destroying the separate identity of the subject. (p. 127)
And so in this in-dwelling in reverie, the subject holds the potential for growth, and development
and at one acquires or inherits the potential to change the world, by learning something ‘new’ about
his/ her relation to both the self and world. This is traced to the original power of poetic language,
which is linked to the function of unreality at work in the image. For Bachelard (2005), this is the
equivalent of the ‘potential’ for change through poetic transfigurement. However, in everyday states
of conscious- ness we lose sight of the potential for transfigurement through poetry because the
presence of reality, ‘with all its force and its terrestrial matter,’ imposes itself so forcefully on us that
it is ‘easy to forget the unconscious impulses, the oneiric forces ceaselessly overflowing into
conscious life’ (p. 13). As stated, Bachelard’s phenomenology seeks to remind us of this forgotten
phenomenon. In the creative imagination there is a break with reality and the immediate, for as
Bachelard states, ‘The new thought and new poetry require a rupture and conversion’ (ibid., p. 15).
Whereas the tradition believes imagination is the ‘faculty of forming images,’ as we find in Locke’s
empiricism and Croce’s idealism, imagination is ‘rather the faculty of deforming the images offered
by perception, of freeing ourselves from the immediate images’ (ibid., p. 19). Poetry, when it is
authentic, never merely translates life, rather it opens the possibility for a new life, because ‘the
poem is essentially an aspiration to new images,’ which is linked to the ‘essential need for newness
that characterizes the human psyche’ (ibid., p. 20), as this manifests as human transcendence. Herein
lies the ‘double function’ of the poetic image as educative medium to at once ‘create a different
meaning and to invoke a different reverie’ (ibid., p. 26).
The imagination ‘creates images, but above all it creates a world which opens anew with each
image’ (Smith, 1984, p. xlviii), imagination ceaselessly ‘reaches beyond what is given; it magnifies
and deepens, it gathers the whole world into a simple image and the whole subject within its reverie’
(ibid., p. xlix). The language of poetry is not a symbolic language of signs and signifiers organized
into a tight and immutable grammar, it is rather the original voice of the cosmos. Smith observes,
‘language is not only a source of meaning,’ when conceived in its intimate relation to the poet and
his/her reverie, ‘it is also a source of being. The opening of the world by logos is at the same time the
creation of the world’ (ibid., p. xlii). For Bachelard (1969), the poet resists confusing ‘the language of
meaning with poetic language,’ for translating one into the other ‘could be no more than a poor
trade,’ rather the ‘poet’s exploit at the summit of his cosmic reverie is to constitute a cosmos from
the word,’ in the world of the word (p. 187). So radically novel is the poet’s language, ‘above
customary language,’ that indeed ‘the language it speaks is so new that correlations between past
and present can no longer be usefully considered,’ the world and the cosmos have indeed changed
for us (Bachelard, 1994, p. xxix). Through language, which inspires the mediating force of the poetic
image, in the counter-striving relationship between the subject and his/ her world, an idealized
doubling occurs, and immediately a ‘particular cosmos forms around a particular image,’ and this
occurs as ‘soon as the poet gives the image a destiny of grandeur’ (ibid., p. 176). As the poet poetizes
his/her imagery it gives ‘the real object its imaginary double, its idealized double,’ and this ‘idealized
double is immediately idealizing, and it is thus that a universe is born from an expanding image’
(ibid., p. 176). For the poet tells us not about how things are but rather, through the clarifying lens
of his/her art, intimates how things might be or become in the future.
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Gaudin (2005) states that ‘man realizes himself only by reaching beyond himself,’ and this
reaching beyond is the human being’s ontological predisposition for transcendence, and this is what
poetic images inspire, and in fact, first make possible (p. xlix). What this indicates is that the poet and
reader, in and through their participation in the image, one channeling its force and communicating
it, the other being drawn into the vortex of its creative energy, the ontological potential for the
subject to go beyond itself opens. In and through participation (dwelling) in the poetic image he/she
becomes something other. The continued upsurge of the creative human life is most powerfully
understood through participating and dwelling in the poetic image, which ‘reverberates’ within the
soul. As stated, for Bachelard (2005), the creative imagination and the language of the poet do not
work to ‘formulate images of reality,’ rather it is the poet’s unique ‘faculty of forming images which
[go] beyond reality’ that is important (p. 15). This for Bachelard is representative of poetry’s power
of tapping into and releasing a ‘super human faculty,’ and a ‘man is a man insofar as he is a super-
man, A man must be defined by the tendencies which impel him to go beyond the human condition’
(ibid., p. 16). The potential for transcendence must be awakened in us, and this occurs because of the
‘reverberation’ we experience when participating in the poet’s image, enraptured by his/her
language, which brings forth an image that is variational in nature and never reducible to
conceptual language that would be constitutive. According to Bachelard (1994), it is due to the
radical newness of the language, through ‘the brilliance of the image,’ because of ‘its novelty and its
action, [that] the poetic image has an entity and dynamism of its own’ (p. 84). When enraptured by
the image, it reverberates within us and sets our strings, in song, moving in sympathetic vibration,
we are moving along within the sway and oscillation of the poetic image.
Reverberation, states Smith (1984), ‘refers to the images awakening of sentimental surface
experience, which in turn stirs archetypal echoes’ (pp. 120–121), which, as Bachelard (1994) tells us,
in a duplicitous sense, touches our mind (Geist) and soul (Seele). Poetic images emerge from the
depths of Being’s wellspring and the ‘outpourings of the mind’ are transfigured into ‘profundities of
the soul’ (p. xxiii). reverberation, according to Bachelard, in line with human transcendence, induces
a change to our Being as through the poet’s being (ibid., p. xxii). reverberation sets in motion a
veritable awakening of poetic creation,’ and ‘by going immediately beyond psychology and
psychoanalysis, we feel the power of a single poetic image, we feel the poetic power rising naively
within us … it becomes a new being in language, expressing us by making us what it expresses’
(ibid., p. xxiii). To approach the phenomenology of images is to at once ‘explore their power of trans-
subjectivity. They reverberate in the reader’s consciousness and lead him to create anew while
communicating with the poet’ (Gaudin, 2005, p. xli). And it is here that we come to understand the
profound communicative aspects of poetry, which beckons the participation of a multiplicity of
readers. Here there is the potential for transcendence at a communal level, at a level that is at once
subjective and trans-subjective. Because of poetry’s power to speak to humanity from out of the
original and primordial depths of Being, it inspires a conversation between poet and his/her readers.
Ultimately, it is poetry’s potential to engender human transcendence that represents the true
educative power of the creative imagination. However, it is not enough to merely derive felicitous
emotions from the poet’s images, rather there involves a long and arduous training antecedent to
authentically dwelling in the imagination, and for Bachelard, this is the process of reading and
rereading the poems and poets that speak most deeply and powerfully to us. Poetic reverie,
according to Gaudin, ‘far from being a complacent drifting of the self, is a discipline acquired
through long hours of reading and writing’ (ibid., p. xxviii), and here we might say a dwelling in
sustained and meditative study, which is the very opposite of calculative thought. The creative
imagination calls for the ‘constant practice of “surveillance de soi,”’ which might be thought of as a
process of intense, rigorous, and renewed self-examination, which might be likened to a form of
Socratic care for the soul (ibid., p. xxviii). ‘Images,’ as Gaudin points out, ‘reveal nothing to the lazy
dreamer’ or learner for that matter (ibid., p. xxvii).
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What Bachelard teaches about dwelling in learning: Returning to the authentic space
of education
Enlightened and informed by Bachelard’s ontology of the creative imagination, I return to the ICBM
for higher education. The conclusion of this paper is concerned with allowing Bachelard’s
phenomenology speak to us about education in the hopes of experiencing a ‘reverberation’ in the
work that might inspire the reconceptualized-enactment of learning in a mode of dwelling perhaps
best suited for it. The reader will note that the problem that I am addressing in education/curriculum
is one that has been a concern for both philosophers of education and curriculum theorists. It is
located in the overarching concern with the so-called ‘loss or forgetting’ of ontological questions in
education and the privileging of epistemological concerns, e.g. even Spencer, although greatly
concerned with morality in the curriculum, ultimately reduces education to now famous question
concerning what knowledge is of most value? (Weber, 1960). I suggest that there are valuable things
we can learn about learning that Bachelard’s unique view of philosophy and phenomenology
intimate, which relate to learning as an intimate and ontological mode of human dwelling. There
were already hints of this notion in the fore- going analysis of dwelling in the house and world by
means of the creative imagination in communion with the poet and his/her images. This form of
poetic learning distilled from Bachelard runs counter to and is radically opposed to the notion of
learning that the ICBM endorses that is linked directly to the student’s readiness for graduating from
the three-year Bachelor’s program, which is preparatory for his/her entrance into society as a
productive and contributory member of the work force. With this in mind, Gaudin (2005) reminds
us that if we approach learning and education from the perspective of Bachelard’s philosophy and
phenomenology we must avoid such views and practices that reify our thinking ‘into a system
divorced from its “formation,”’ for in such views linked with social efficiency there runs the ever-
present danger of stultifying or even ‘paralyzing discovery’ (p. xxi). I claim that it is the ontological
sense of discovery—which the reader will recall is the hallmark of the poetic image’s power to inspire
human transcendence—that defines an authentic education.
As we have already seen, it is the reader’s relationship with the poet and the participation within
his or her ontologically inspired imagery that abolishes the Cartesian subject-object dichotomy that
is embraced in much of standardized education driven by social efficiency. Poetry for Bachelard is
instantly and at once a metaphysical phenomenon, for poetics of the world ‘should give us both a
view of the world and the secret of a soul, a being of objects at one and the same time’ (Bachelard
as quoted in Jones, 1991, p. 92). And this is what Jones’ calls Bachelard’s ‘subversive humanism,’
which is precisely the ‘desire to abolish the frontiers of the internal and external worlds’(ibid., p. 92).
Poetry sets up the dialectic between concept and image, wherein ‘we experience the changing
tensions of subject and object, the shifting and breaching of their familiar frontiers’ (ibid., p. 92).
Immediately, based on these remarks and the foregoing analysis, education as inspired by Bachelard
might be envisaged as the movement between our conceptualizing the world and our poetizing of
the world, and this process is open-ended and ever-renewed through our participation in poetic
images that stir the imagination to ever greater heights of creativity, which in turn affords us greater
powers of creative conceptualization. Because as opposed to merely acquiring skills or internalizing
knowledge, poetry puts us in connection with the most primordial aspects of our dwelling, which
contributes to the growth of our souls in ways that defy the logic of the syllogism, observable
behaviors, and criteria for establishing ‘competency’ in education.
Learning, for Bachelard, if we are authentically attuned to the unfolding of phenomena, is
bound up with the sense of uncertainty that accompanies moments of disruption to our long
familiar thought patterns, because it represents the potential shattering of our current view of
things, for in reverie, as Jones (1991) reminds us, accompanying, and indeed because of, the
reverberation of the image within our soul and imagination there occurs a ‘break with the
immediate’ (p. 96), which opens the potential for bringing something new, something never before
seen or experienced into existence. Poetry, if we draw an analogy between it and learning, as indeed
it is a most primordial mode of being-educated, ‘is specifically “surprising,”’ and the newness and
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radical nature of its images ‘are therefore unpredictable’ (ibid., p. xxxi). This is because, as we have
seen, the poetic image emerges from a form of creative language that ‘is always a little above the
language of signification’ (ibid., p. xxvii). If learning is a process of growth and development, there
can never be a moment when we have arrived at an end, at some pre-determined fixed point, or
disposable benchmark, that demonstrates we have grasped the truth of the things into which we
inquire and investigate. But, how does the notion of dwelling in learning in Bachelard relate
specifically to the classroom, or the space of learning that the ICBM wants to drastically reduce and
replace with other apparent modes of dwelling in learning, which might be understood in terms of
peripatetic cohorts trundling their studies through the space of one or another module of academic
learning?
The ICBM believes that it can stretch the boundaries of time and space by setting up learning
com- munities outside the classroom to better maximize the so-called ‘time-space continuum’ of
learning. Ultimately, it is possible to state that in order for a student in the ICBM to dwell
‘authentically’ (efficiently and effectively), he or she must ‘understand how and be able to function
as an effective team, group, and organizational leader’ (p. 198). As intimated earlier, this is not
indicative of what a dwelling in community, residing in the habitat of learning, would look like when
viewed from Bachelard’s phenomenological ontology. To move the so-called ‘dwelling space’
outside of the university is not to ensure in any way, shape, or form that learning will improve,
because such a view ignores the original and poetic notion of ontological space. As stated, for
Bachelard (1994), this notion of ontological ‘space’ is indeed the essence of and key to
understanding all forms of human dwelling, which at root are grounded ontologically in ‘felicitous
space’ (p. xxxv), which ‘bears the stamp of topophilia’ (ibid., p. 12). To authentically dwell in learning,
and to reiterate a point introduced earlier, one must understand that the poetic image manifests
human existence in terms that are variational in nature, a mode of existence irreducible to the realm
of the concept, which is constitutive. The latter codifies, reifies, and sets in place; the former opens
the passage unto subjective liberation (transcendence) and transsubjectvity (interpersonal relations),
which represents the potential for growth and learning in the community of others, and this is the
dwelling associated with existential spatiality, the ontological proximity we share with others.
Ultimately, this is the ontological relationship between the subject’s Being and the Being of those
with whom the subject dwells in learning.
To further elucidate these thoughts, learning associated with our creative/imaginative
participation in poetic imagery has two interdependent components: a subjective component and
a transsubjective component, which represents the interpersonal aspects of the poetic image. First,
there occurs ‘the onset of the image in an individual consciousness,’ which Bachelard tells us restores
‘the subjectivity of images’ and allows us to measure ‘their fullness, their strength,’ and, importantly,
to experience and intuit ‘their transsubjectivity’ (ibid., p. xix). Secondly, this indicates that our
dwelling in the presence of the poetic image, in and through the creative imagination, grounded in
a primordial-ontological realm, pushes us beyond ourselves in human transcendence, and
transcendence always includes the intimate communion with others and the world. In line with what
was already stated about pedagogy’s link with philosophy, with its open-ended, ever-evolving
components, in authentic education ‘these subjectivities and trans-subjectivities cannot be
determined once and for all’ (ibib. p. xix). This communion with others, inspired by the image’s poetic
power, puts us in touch with what is ‘immemorial’ (ibid., p. 12). The ontological communication that
we share with others and the poet cannot be reduced to a form of communication that is
propositional in nature, which is either verifiable or falsifiable, able to be transmitted without
distortion from teacher to student. This is because the understanding that accrues in such original
moments of communicative learning is akin to whispering ‘secrets’ to those with whom we dwell in
the communal context of poetry. According to Bachelard, all we can hope to ‘communicate to others
is an orientation towards what is secret without ever being able to tell the secret objectively. What
is secret is never totally objectivity. In this respect, we orient oneirism but we do not accomplish it’
(ibid., p. 13). Thus, there is a directionality here and an orientation to Being, i.e. poetry intimates the
80 J. M. MAGRINI

proper relationship of the human to its primordial modes of dwelling, and this ontologically inspired
spatial relationship can be experienced powerfully, but in no way can it be expressed with certainty,
never can it be explained fully and quantified.
Education, inspired by Bachelard’s phenomenological approach to poetry and the creative
imagination, would demonstrate an acute awareness of and respect for the so-called ‘content’ of
the curriculum, e.g. there would be a focus on not only how to ‘read.’ but as well the content of what
is being ‘read.’ There would undoubtedly be a heavy focus on the humanities, i.e. literature and
poetry that would be required, however, beyond this, a concern for the quality of content would be
necessary in order to learn in the most rich and deep way possible. This concern is in no way
reducible to ‘academic content’ as conceived by the structure of the disciplines movement, where
students are viewed as neophyte scholars and taught the techniques and methods of the
professionals in the various academic fields. rather, in line with Bachelard’s (2005) phenomenology,
this would represent the selection of poetry/literature that inspires the imagination in ways that
facilitate the transcendence of students, revealing a ‘new life’ and ‘new spirit,’ opening the students’
eyes to ‘new types of vision’ (p. 16). Ultimately, educators would seek out images that, like education
itself, would allow students to ‘put aside outworn knowledge, formal and allegorical mythologies
that survive in education devoid of life and force (ibid., p. 16). Bachelard refers to images with such
power as an invitation to the voyage (L’ invitation au voyage), and with this notion, we might also
envision authentic learning in terms related to the ontological themes of this essay, for with
this invitation we register, in our inner being, a gentle impulsion which shakes us, which sets in
motion beneficent reverie, truly dynamic reverie. If the initial image is well chosen, it is an
impulsion to a well-defined dream [daydream], to an imaginary life that will have real laws of
successive images, really vital meaning. (ibid., p. 21)
Ultimately, when selecting poetic images, or the content of the curriculum, educators are
searching out those images concerned with because they are inspired by the ‘concrete essence’ of
existence. The ontological question that Bachelard poses to the poets might well be asked of
contemporary educators, ‘Tell me what your infinite is and I’ll know the meaning of your universe: is it
the infinite of the sea or the sky, is it the infinite of the earth’s depths or of the pyre’ (ibid., p. 23, emphasis
in original)? The selection of the content of study takes into consideration both the ‘polyphonic’ and
‘polysemantic’ aspects of poetic imagery: for if ‘meanings become too profuse, it can fall into
wordplay. If it restricts itself to a single meaning, it can fall into didacticism,’ the ‘true poet,’ and we
might say without distortion, the true pedagogue ‘avoids both dangers’ (ibid., p. 28). In this
polyphonic and polysemantic movement that is poetic education, the poet both ‘plays and teaches’
(ibid., p. 28). This is because authentic ontological imagery condenses infinite meanings in the
language of the poem and thus awakens in the learner the ‘unconquerable desire to be reread’ (ibid.,
p. 28). This is the educator’s invitation to her students to come and dwell with the poet in his or her
imagery, and, because of the depth of the poetry selected, ‘we immediately have the impression
that the second reading will tell more than the first. And the second reading—contrary to an
intellectual reading—is slower than the first. It is contemplative’ (ibid., p. 28). In essence, education
might be conceived as a dwelling with the image and experiencing its profound potential for
meaning in excess. For if human transcendence can be thought to represent the ‘essence’ of
education, this essence is found in the ‘imagined mobility’ of the human spirit that poetry inspires,
for ontological transcendence is neither accomplished through didactic techniques nor does it occur
by means of rational ‘scientific’ theories, i.e. the application of calculative knowledge to the
problems of existence and education. For transcendence ‘is not properly aroused by the description
of reality,’ rather the ‘true voyage of the imagination is the voyage to the land, to the very domain
of the imaginary’ (ibid., p. 22).
In human transcendence, as in authentic education inspired by Bachelard’s phenomenology,
lies the potential, in communion with poetic images and reverie, to go beyond what are in the
present moment when dwelling intimately within an ontological context that shelters and preserves
the primordial capacity of human transcendence. For Bachelard (1969, 1994), to return to our earlier
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thoughts, this is dwelling with our solitude. In such moments of attunement, we are not alone or
separated off from things, rather we are at one with the universe (cosmos), prior to any structures of
consciousness, prior to the formation of the ego. This is because our poetic reveries ‘toward reveries
of our childhood [existential solitude] introduce us to a being preconditional to our being, a whole
perspective on the antecedence of being’(Bachelard, 1969, p. 108). In terms of ontological space, we
are transported in reverie into close proximity to the ‘being of cosmic childhood,’ for in ‘solitude it
reappears in our reveries (ibid., p. 108). However, Being-at-home in the ontological experience of
dwelling within the Being of childhood, which is primordial being-well, has been lost to us as adults
and educators, for we are always more focused on ways to overcome what we perceive as not-Being-
at-home in the world (recall that this represents a secondary metaphysical phenomenon, according
to Bachelard) through the pursuit of rational strategies and scientific theories. In social efficiency, this
manifests as the application of quantitative educational research to educational praxis in the
curriculum. As a result, this mode of being-well that subtends cos- mic childhood remains
adumbrated. To the point, in the technical-instrumental age of standardization educators are
deafened to the poet’s song. In order to ‘restore’ or return to this primordial condition, this original
space of childhood as being-well, following Bachelard, education must find that ‘it is nec- essary to
beautify’ (ibid., p. 115), and this calls for the turn to poetry and the awakening of the creative
imagination in students and educators alike:
In our dreams (songes) toward childhood, in the poems we would all want to write in order to make
our original reveries live again, to give back the universe of happiness, childhood appears, in the
very style of the psychology of the depths, like a real archetype, the archetype of simple happiness.
(ibid., p. 123)
How different and humane such thoughts are when compared to the manner in which
contemporary education conceives of the child, the learner, and the student—as the mere
possessor of skill-sets and competencies. Where is the safety of existential solitude, which is the
ontological space of day-dreaming in the contemporary standardized curriculum?
Authentic education, drawing inspiration from Bachelard is ultimately about creating a
dwelling space within which the change to our Being, soul, and orientation to the world and others
is nurtured, sheltered, and facilitated. Education rests in human transcendence and various modes
of primordial ‘poetic’ attunement, e.g. the solitude of the child that we too can return to if we
approach the poet and his or her poetry in the manner Bachelard recommends. This does not
include psychological or cognitive theoretical explanations; this does not include formal and
traditional esthetic critique; this does not include the Scientific Method or Metacognitive strategies
that are applied to the various problems that we encounter either inside or outside the classroom.
As we have seen, for Bachelard, such ‘conceptual’ approaches cannot touch or penetrate into the
most original aspects of our Being. Gaudin (2005) drives home this point when stating, ‘Pedagogy is
an essential category of thought and not a mere application of the general principles of knowledge
to the teaching of the ignorant’ (p. xxv). Education might be said to ‘educate itself’ when it realizes
that it is only through the ‘continuous and collective process of error correction,’ which, as the reader
will recall, instantiates Bachelard’s approach to philosophical thought, that it is ‘in a constant state
of pedagogy’ (ibid., p. xxv). Gaudin’s analysis includes the notion of pedagogy drawn from
Bachelard’s work in epistemology and the New Scientific Mind. I too have touched on Bachelard’s
(1968) re-definition of ‘philosophy’ for the new age, in terms of saying ‘no’ to all-encompassing
definitions of the world captured in sure and certain knowledge. Philosophy must be open and
‘capable of collecting together all shades of meaning’ (p. 13). And this is precisely what poetry
teaches us about an authentic education, because its imagery always resists being closed off in
categorical explanations, for the image is always a force associated with excess. As Gaudin (2005)
observes, ‘Images are the sign of an élan—an indication of excess. Imagination always reaches
beyond what is given; it magnifies and deepens, it gathers the whole world into a simple image and
the whole subject within its reverie’ (p. xlix).
82 J. M. MAGRINI

With this in mind, it has been my primary focus to elucidate for the reader a form of educational
dwelling that might be drawn from Bachelard’s phenomenological ontology of the creative
imagination and the poetic image. I have attempted to show that a new form of dwelling might be
conceived, which is irreducible to dwelling in the traditional classroom, cyber-realms, and so-called
‘virtual’ com- munities of learning advocated in the ICBM and other standardized approaches to
education driven by scientific instrumentalism for curriculum. I have attempted to show that
authentic learning is about dwelling in terms of ontological space, i.e. the authentic space of
subjective human transcendence and transsubjective inter-personal human relations, a ‘space’ of
dwelling that is irreducible to the ‘proximity’ associated with the three-dimensions of Cartesian
space. This is because it is intimately linked with a sense of spirituality, creative intuition, and the
intangible ontological aspects of our existence that remain elusive, remained concealed from
empirical modes of investigation, but are made available for appropriation through the practice of
phenomenology. rather, than attempting to establish principles for education, or outlining the
specific goals and aims of a poetic/ontological education, the reader will note that I have tried to
inspire him/her to think, imagine, and dwell in a space beyond the four walls of the classroom, an
imaginative space that Bachelard’s phenomenology makes possible. Perhaps the attentive and
careful reader or educator that is open to the power of both philosophical and poetic works, and
who, like Bachelard, is prepared to devote ‘long hours of reading and writing,’ will have an
understanding of an education that unfolds in terms of authentic discovery in the ‘surveillance of de
soi’ (Gaudin, 2005, p. xxvii). This surveillance of the soul as education occurs within moments of
human transcendence, which is awakened through a dwelling in poetic imagery as guided and
inspired by the pioneering work of Bachelard.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
James M. Magrini is an adjunct professor of western philosophy and ethics at College of Dupage (USA). He
has published three books: Social Efficiency and Instrumentalism in Education: Critical Essays in ontology,
Phenomenology, and Philosophical Hermeneutics (Routledge Press 2014); new Approaches to Curriculum as
Phenomenological Text: Continental Philosophy and ontological Inquiry (Palgrave Press 2015); and re-
Conceiving Plato's Socrates at the limit of Education (Routledge Press 2016). He received the award—
‘outstanding Part-Time liberal Arts Instructor’—from the College of Dupage in 2013. He is currently working
on a book on Heidegger's "Turn" and the potential implications this philosophical move has on our
contemporary understanding of literature, poetry, and education.

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