Creative Practice as a Way of Life: After Barthes (Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture) - Softcover

Tay, Eddie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 3031522532 ISBN 13: 9783031522536

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 2025

Synopsis

This book combines autoethnographic reflections, poetry, and photography with the aim to bridge the gap between creative practice and scholarly research. Drawing on an innovative combination of different forms of knowledge, creative writing and street photographs are presented as means to reflect on the development of knowledge and self-knowledge through a thought-provoking dialogue with Roland Barthes’ post-structuralist work. What does it mean to be a creative practitioner in a world traversed by values of capitalism and artificial intelligence? What does it mean to teach creative practices in such an environment?

The urban landscape of Singapore, with the Jewel Changi mall, the Universal Studios, and Little India in the background, is the stage where the capitalist demands of modern city life grapple with the solitary act of writing poetry and taking photographs through the personal experience of the author. Capitalist realism and depression realism entwine with Barthes' notion of vita nova in a mesmerizing phantasmagoria that drags the reader to the bowels and secret pleasures of the creative process.

About this title

About the Author

Eddie Tay is Associate Professor in the Department of English at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR. Born in Singapore and a long-term resident in Hong Kong, he is a poet and a street photographer, and director of Cart Noodles Press, the department’s recently-established literary imprint. In the Palgrave Studies of Creativity and Culture series he already published Hong Kong as Creative Practice (2022).

 

From the Back Cover

"This is a highly original contribution where poetry, street photography and auto-ethnography are mobilized to advance a reflection on artistic practice, celebrated as an underdetermined, emergent achievement. Showing a vibrant vitalist sensitivity, Tay follows Roland Barthes’ precept, ‘live according to nuance’, to discuss the complex nexus of urban capitalism, depression, and creativity."
Andrea Brighenti, University of Trento, Italy
 
“This short book combines scholarly rigour with artistic flair. It is set to become a classic example of artistic autoethnography both describing, presenting, and carefully analysing the creative process through the lens of the later work from Roland Barthes. A key read for scholars of Barthes, creativity, and the arts, as well as those interested in different lenses with which to approach social problems.”
Wendy Ross, London Metropolitan University, UK

This book combines autoethnographic reflections, poetry, and photography with the aim to bridge the gap between creative practice and scholarly research. Drawing on an innovative combination of different forms of knowledge, creative writing and street photographs are presented as means to reflect on the development of knowledge and self-knowledge through a thought-provoking dialogue with Roland Barthes’ post-structuralist work. What does it mean to be a creative practitioner in a world traversed by values of capitalism and artificial intelligence? What does it mean to teach creative practices in such an environment?

The urban landscape of Singapore, with the Jewel Changi mall, the Universal Studios, and Little India in the background, is the stage where the capitalist demands of modern city life grapple with the solitary act of writing poetry and taking photographs through the personal experience of the author. Capitalist realism and depression realism entwine with Barthes' notion of vita nova in a mesmerizing phantasmagoria that drags the reader to the bowels and secret pleasures of the creative process.

Eddie Tay is Associate Professor in the Department of English at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Born in Singapore and resident in Hong Kong, he is also a poet and a street photographer.

 

 

Edition details

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3031522532
• ISBN 13: 9783031522536
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 197