Abstract

This prefatory text is conceived as a review of the critical terms generative of the pulsatile: pulsion (sphygmon), chôra, rhythm, caesura, interruption, ‘change of rhythm,’ and syncopation, pathos, disimagination (Entbildung), disfiguring (Entstellung), deformation, aphaeresis. It aims to connect further with the latest of the contemporary scholarship of phenomenology and to set up a theoretical frame to promote advances that this book will bring in the pulsatile imaginary and the theory of image and disimagination. The pulsatile imaginary and various ways of disimagination are inspected in expository themes. A typology of selected artists and masters of the pulsatile runs selectively and non-chronologically from prehistory to Anselm Kiefer and from Stravinsky/Nijinsky to Brancusi to define two fundamental modes of de-representation and disimagination in the manifestation of the pulsatile forces.