Imaginatelligence: Desire and Disaffection in Posthuman Futures

Imaginatelligence addresses the contemporary “crisis” in imagination by advancing a nonanthropocentric, posthumanist account of this vital function. Rather than treating imagination as a uniquely human faculty, Natasha Lushetich presents it as an activity that stretches across species and remains inseparable from potentiality. If imagination arises from sensing, conjecturing, intelliging, and improvising, there is little reason to confine it to human experience alone. In this view, imagination becomes a distributed force, operating across biological, technological, and material domains.

Lushetich begins by considering the demise of human imagination alongside the neglect of other-than-human forms. She then considers creativity across nonhuman beings, examining cross-species intelligence and extending to iterative processes in what are typically regarded as inanimate objects. If the activities of organic and machinic agents are comparable, Lushetich argues, disciplinary divisions separating them become increasingly untenable.

Drawing on posthumanist approaches to liminality, distributed agency, and shared memory, Imaginatelligence proposes the emergence of a multispecies imaginatelligence. This perspective not only redefines imagination but also demonstrates how a cross-disciplinary configuration of imagination—linking critical thought, artistic practice, and scientific inquiry—is both possible and necessary. Lushetich reaffirms the relevance of critical posthumanism for everyday practice and for imagining the possibility of a future multispecies society.

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