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What is called the imagination (from image, magi, magic, magician, etc.) is a practical vector from the soul. It stores all data, and can be called on to solve all our “problems.” The imagination is the projection of ourselves past our sense of ourselves as “things.” Imagination (image) is all possibility, because from the image, the initial circumscribed energy, any use (idea) is possible. And so begins that image’s use in the world. Possibility is what moves us.
—Amiri Baraka, “The Revolutionary Theatre”, Liberator, July 1965
Paul Cato
A student of religious thought and intellectual history at the University of Chicago, Paul Cato is currently pursuing a PhD from the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought. Deeply interested in theories of love and intersubjectivity, he is especially concerned with those that attend to the social and political realities of the world. His dissertation is an examination of “black active love” – a particular conceptualization of love found in the work 20th century African American intellectuals. His interests in interrelatedness also extend into more practical fields of human sociality such as race relations, disability studies, and social justice. In addition to his scholarly endeavors, Paul is heavily involved in the fights against racism and ableism and is a founding members of an international epilepsy awareness organization and an active alumnus of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship and diversity program.
University of Chicago