Creativity and Contexts

In Chap. 1 I briefly traced (i) the roots and reasons for today’s renewed interest in the creativecreative faculty; (ii) the culturalcultural and psycho-socialsocial paradigmsparadigm with which it has been framed within the humanhuman sciencesscience; (iii) the “transcendent” and “symbolic”symbol naturenature of its enormous innovativeinnovative capacitycapacity; and, finally, (iv) the natural ease with which it is capable of transcendingtranscending the limits of human intelligencesintelligences, offering a great opportunity of empowerment. The objective of this chapter, more markedly sociological, is to show how at the origin of creativecreative faculty and, equally, of all its subsequent developments lies not just the capacitycapacity (more or less ingenious) of individualsindividual but rather an active, constant, and necessary interactioninteraction between the latter and the socio-culturalcultural contextcontext in which they operate. In other words, from here on we want to study creativitycreativity as an “emergent effect,emergent effect” as a phenomenon resulting from the interaction of two or more elements in the field. We will see how the socialsocial context in which it operates is not just a “wrapping”: it not only borrows from the outside the tools and operational materials through which subjectivity can express itself but also proceeds (not always consciously) to construct subjectivity itself from within through the repetition of social practicespractice. Even “motivation,”motivation perhaps the most subjectivesubjective element and certainly that which is most responsible for the activation of creative practicespractice, must therefore be read in a relationalrelational key.