The Creativity Complex: Art, Tech, and the Seduction of an Idea - Softcover

Shannon Steen (author)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0472056271 ISBN 13: 9780472056279

Publisher: University of Michigan Press, 2023

Synopsis

“Creativity” is a word that excites and dazzles us. It promises brilliance and achievement, a shield against conformity, a channel for innovation across the arts, sciences, technology, and education, and a mechanism for economic revival and personal success. But it has not always evoked these ideas. The Creativity Complex traces the history of how creativity has come to mean the things it now does, and explores the ethical implications of how we use this term today for both the arts and for the social world more broadly. Richly researched, the book explores how creativity has been invoked in arenas as varied as Enlightenment debates over the nature of cognition, Victorian-era intelligence research, the Cold War technology race, contemporary K-12 education, and even modern electoral politics. Ultimately, The Creativity Complex asks how our ideas about creativity are bound up with those of self-fulfillment, responsibility, and the individual, and how these might seduce us into joining a worldview and even a set of social imperatives that we might otherwise find troubling.

About this title

About the Author

Shannon Steen is Associate Professor of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies and American Studies at UC Berkeley.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Michigan Press
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0472056271
• ISBN 13: 9780472056279
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256