Over the past two decades, the number of studies of creativity has in creased enormously. Although these studies represent a wide variety of perspectives, the largest proportion of them falls within the province of the social and behavioral sciences. Perhaps this is due to the impetus of experimental psychologists, who recognized the special problems that arise when originality is treated under a general theory of cognition. But what ever the reason, human creativity has come to be viewed as one of the major concerns of the twentieth century. It has been referred to as the most pressing problem of our time. In spite of the importance of the topic, few philosophers have either analyzed or speculated systematically about creativity, as a distinct topic. This neglect may be the expression of a tacit and sometimes explicit con viction that creativity must be taken for granted and not subjected to analytic scrutiny. In any case, the determination of so many behavioral and social scientists not to fall behind in the search for understanding creativity has led to a proliferation of publications that are unrelated to one another and that lack dearly ordered and reflective consideration of what creativity is. Too few writers have either acknowledged or examined what they presuppose about creative acts, about human activity, and a bout the nature of explanation when they focus on so complex a phenome non as creativity.

Walter Benjamin claimed that the notion of novelty took on unprecedented importance with the growth of high capitalism in the nineteenth century. In this book, Kristina Mendicino analyzes a selection of canonical texts that reflect profound concern with novelty and its apparent contrary, the eternal return of the same, including Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Baudelaire's lyric and prose poetry, and Marx and Engels's Communist Manifesto. She also addresses Eternity by the Stars by Louis-Auguste Blanqui, who is less well known and often underestimated in considerations of his significance for revolutionary political theory. Mendicino argues that the notion of a novum cannot be understood without attentiveness to the language of announcement, not least of all because the "new" has always been associated with a particular mode of linguistic performance. Through close readings of emphatically annunciatory texts, she demonstrates how the extreme possibilities of expression that they present through specific citational and rhetorical praxes render the language of announcement overdetermined and anachronistic in ways that exceed any systematic account of historical time and experience. This excess in and through language is precisely what opens hitherto unheard of alternatives for conceiving of historical temporality and political possibility.

Contemporary society has seen an unprecedented rise in both the demand and the desire to be creative, to bring something new into the world. Once the reserve of artistic subcultures, creativity has now become a universal model for culture and an imperative in many parts of society. In this new book, cultural sociologist Andreas Reckwitz investigates how the ideal of creativity has grown into a major social force, from the art of the avant-garde and postmodernism to the ‘creative industries’ and the innovation economy, the psychology of creativity and self-growth, the media representation of creative stars, and the urban design of ‘creative cities’. Where creativity is often assumed to be a force for good, Reckwitz looks critically at how this imperative has developed from the 1970s to the present day. Though we may well perceive creativity as the realization of some natural and innate potential within us, it has rather to be understood within the structures of a very specific culture of the new in late modern society. The Invention of Creativity is a bold and refreshing counter to conventional wisdom that shows how our age is defined by radical and restrictive processes of social aestheticization. It will be of great interest to those working in a variety of disciplines, from cultural and social theory to art history and aesthetics.

This is a volume on the concepts, theories, models and social consequences of creativity. It contains articles by well-known cognitive scientists, economists, mathematicians, philosophers and psychologists.

The conundrum of understanding, practising and teaching contemporary creativity is that it wants to be all things to all people. Almost all modern lists of creativity, creative thinking and how-to ‘becoming creative’ books begin with one premise: the creative individual/artist is not special, rather each of us is creative in a special way and these skills can – and must - be nurtured. Increasingly, industry and education leaders are claiming that creativity is the core skill to take us into a prosperous future, signalling the democratisation of creativity as industry. Yet centuries of association between aesthetics, mastery and creativity are hard to dismantle. These days, it is increasingly difficult to discuss creativity without reference to business, industry and innovation. Why do we love to think of creativity in this way and no longer as that rare visitation of the muse or the elite gift of the few? This book looks at the possibility that creativity is taking a turn, what that turn might be, and how it relates to industry, education and, ultimately, cultural role of creativity and aesthetics for the 21st century. In proliferating discourses of the commodification of creativity, there is one thing all the experts agree on: creativity is undefinable, possibly unteachable, largely unassessable, and becoming the most valuable commodity in 21st-century markets.

Contemporary society has seen an unprecedented rise in both the demand and the desire to be creative, to bring something new into the world. Once the reserve of artistic subcultures, creativity has now become a universal model for culture and an imperative in many parts of society. In this new book, cultural sociologist Andreas Reckwitz investigates how the ideal of creativity has grown into a major social force, from the art of the avant-garde and postmodernism to the ‘creative industries’ and the innovation economy, the psychology of creativity and self-growth, the media representation of creative stars, and the urban design of ‘creative cities’. Where creativity is often assumed to be a force for good, Reckwitz looks critically at how this imperative has developed from the 1970s to the present day. Though we may well perceive creativity as the realization of some natural and innate potential within us, it has rather to be understood within the structures of a very specific culture of the new in late modern society. The Invention of Creativity is a bold and refreshing counter to conventional wisdom that shows how our age is defined by radical and restrictive processes of social aestheticization. It will be of great interest to those working in a variety of disciplines, from cultural and social theory to art history and aesthetics.