Poetic Thinking
Committed to equality, inclusion, and respect for all, Poetic Thinking creates a space for users to share and discuss academic and artistic work. Participants are encouraged to see themselves as active contributors to any work they engage with, read, or listen to. Active in shaping the worlds they inhabit, they are no longer the mere passive recipients of historical wisdom or past artistic expression. Drawing on existing experience with blogging, it explores new possibilities for the sharing of intellectual and artistic work.
The project began with the urgent need for community space outside both commercial social media and the classroom. In this immediate context, Poetic Thinking aims to encourage students to write and discuss course materials and new ideas openly. More broadly, Poetic Thinking is envisioned as a platform that can serve any community of learners and creators who wish to remain independent of the demands and abuses, which are often experienced in commercial social media.
Hannah Arendt’s concept of “thinking without a banister,” which emphasizes the importance of free personal and communal reflection, is the formative principle of the Poetic Thinking platform. Building on Arendt’s idea, the project strives to construct an uninhibited and critical public sphere in which everyone gathers together in an open exchange without “falling over one another.”
On the Poetic Thinking platform, critical analyses and creative contributions—such as questions, visual art, poetry, video, and other inventive forms of contemplation—are assigned equal importance. This nonhierarchical approach to different types of practice and diverse modes of generating and sharing knowledge mirrors the project’s egalitarian ethos; above all, the Poetic Thinking platform is designed to cultivate equality, inclusion, and respect. Poetic Thinking continues to grow with experience, with the contributions of new students, and as new, inspiring pedagogical projects appear.
Poetic Thinking is a project of the Poetic Media Lab.
