THE WORDS TAKEN AWAY: DEFENCE OF CREATIVITY AND THE CONDITIONS OF RADICAL IMAGINATION

Text topic: Studies

Text author: Ирена Ристић

This paper examines contemporary interpretations of creativity and

instrumentalisation of the concept itself, both in neoliberal discourse

and in public policies that have become the driver of ever deeper

society inequalities. A review of divergent production research from

the second half of the 20th century, as the foundation of all further

psychological studies, and the analysis of implicit social agendas

reveal three controversial points of theoretical starting points in which

creativity was viewed exclusively as adaptive ability validated by the

product – the outcome of individual achievement. A response to this

simplified concept of creativity has arrived from researchers focused

on emerging processes within the collective. In new studies, they have

confirmed the primacy of social interaction in a cognitive development,

shifting the research focus from adaptive to transformative function,

from productivity to processuality, from individual to group level of

creativity. Therefore, at this moment, it seems to be fully justified to

examine creativity in the light of wider social changes, considering the

conditions of Castoriadis’s concept of radical imagination, especially

because the neglected features of creativity are a common resource, as

well as a requirement of change.