Creativity and Other Fundamentalisms

At first, the creation of a flat world happened, on the sixth day — the "Creativist" was born, and on the seventh — the ban on work was lifted. The book by Belgian sociologist of culture Pascal Gielen Creativity and Other Fundamentalisms (2012) is arranged to an eight-day journey unfolding within the period from the 1980s till the beginning of the 2010s, where Gielen explores the social context of creativity. How has creativity become "today's necessary demand" and is it still capable of retaining its meaning despite its excessiveness after migrating from the realm of culture into economics and politics?

In the book Gielen considers creativity on the three levels: individual, organizational and sociological in general, he engages in the dialogue with Slavoj Žižek, Peter Sloterdijk, and Alessandro Baricco. Gielen uses metaphors that these authors make to describe the present to interpret and understand our social reality.

"The magic word these days is 'creativity'. And not just for artists: managers and policymakers alike demand creativity. Even family therapists and mediators urge us to find more creative solutions. Nowadays, creativity is all about positive morality. We expect nothing but good from it. But what remains of the meaning of the word when just about everybody is using it to death? And where does this hunger for creativity come from? Isn't it instead a sign of a creeping loss of true creativity?" (Prologue fragment by Pascal Gielen)

The publication was prepared with the support of Flanders Literature and Andrii Bozhok.

Details

Publisher: ist publishing

Author: Pascal Gielen
Translation from Dutch: Oksana Smerek
Copy editing and proofreading: Iryna Troskot
Design and layout: Misha Buksha