Aesthetic Wit(h)nessing Within a Matrixial Imaginary.

This article is the first in depth introduction of Bracha L. Ettinger's matrixial theory to education, with implications for how it reads empathy differently and critically compared to a phallic theory approach which tends to dominate generally in the world of art and aesthetics in modern times. The authors (life-partners), as educators and as artists, reflect on an experience of tragedy in their lives, while presenting a collaborative art series in order to demonstrate some of the qualities of matrixial art. Matrixial theory suggests we have to think differently about thinking itself and thinking-the-aesthetic and role of art as a transport station for trauma (and potential healing) in the context of our contemporary world. Aesthetic/art education can offer, as can some socially-engaged art-events, an effective counter-hegemony and critical re-thinking, reconnection and concomitant change and transformation of the way we perceive the world and live in/with it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]