Allington, Daniel
(2011).
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Abstract
My position in this chapter is that there is no such thing as creativity. I mean this in two senses. First, creativity is not an object: not something that can be looked at from different angles, conceived in different ways. It is a concept, which is to say that unless one subscribes to Plato's theory of Forms it has no existence apart from its own history as a concept. This history is recent and largely Western. Attempts to contrast 'Western conceptions of creativity' or 'post-Romantic conceptions of creativity' with their opposites are, on this understanding, attempts to contrast tautologies with oxymora, one might as well contrast Christian and non-Christian conceptions of Original Sin. Second, creativity is not an objective property: not something that can be present in or absent from particular people, acts, texts, utterances, etc. It can only be ascribed, which is to say that it is always a function of social interactions that - often retrospectively, and always provisionally - produce particular people, acts, texts, utterances, etc. as creative or non-creative. This is the approach that I call 'critical'.
| Item Type: | Book Chapter |
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| Copyright Holders: | 2011 Daniel Allington |
| ISBN: | 0-230-57560-9, 978-0-230-57560-8 |
| Academic Unit/Department: | Education and Language Studies > Centre for Language and Communication |
| Interdisciplinary Research Centre: | Centre for Research in Education and Educational Technology (CREET) |
| Item ID: | 29478 |
| Depositing User: | Daniel Allington |
| Date Deposited: | 15 Sep 2011 14:52 |
| Last Modified: | 22 May 2013 06:47 |
| URI: | http://oro.open.ac.uk/id/eprint/29478 |
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