Thinking About Creativity

It's going to seem kinda weird, but almost all of my formal training on the nature of creativity to this point in my life has come from studying Classical Chinese philosophies, Confucianism and Daoism.

The title of this blog comes from my thinking about a Classical Confucian text, the 中庸 (Zhongyong) and my reception of that text in light of contemporary Continental philosophers. I'm specifically interested in the works from Roger Ames and David Hall.

Although I recognize that theirs is a somewhat specific and at times controversial project, I can't shake the feeling that even were their translations wholly wrong (which no one seems to say), what they have to say about the nature of humanity, living, the universe, etc. is what needs to be promoted today.

Today we have this amazing capability, broadly distribute, to create through the appropriation of others' work (the mash-up, DJing, etc.) in a manner that just wasn't possible thirty years ago. To this Ames & Hall have already written:

One must be creative to take full advantage of appropriated culture, both in shaping it for his own place and time, and in using it as a structure through which to realize his own possibilities. He must labor assiduously to acquire the culture transmitted from ancient times but must be able to take it a step further in maximizing the possibilities of the prevailing conditions....Thinking Through Confucius (48)

Paul D. Miller (DJ Spooky) has written a bit about this appropriation activity in his book Rhythm Science where he states, "today, the voice you speak with may not be your own." An uncanny feeling, that I might not be who I state I am; to this Ames & Hall say:

The dynamic of becoming whole, construed aesthetically, is precisely what is meant by a creative process. It is thus that cheng (誠) is to be understood as creativity. Creativity involves both the realization of the focal self and of the field of events, the realization of both particular and context. Self-actualization is a focal process that draws upon an aggregate field of human experience. And the field and focus are reciprocally realized. Focusing the Familiar (32)

The problem of who I am and what is the nature of art are not so distant, it's been discussed and debated by Baudelaire, Breton, Brecht, Benjamin, Adorno, Heidegger, etc. The problem is this: if who we are is subject to capitalist economic relations, then everything we do, ultimately is a question of how to turn what we do into a commodity to be sold on the marketplace. Don't believe me? Then how do we account for the phrase, "I don't buy it," when we don't believe something? What aren't you buying? Is it that my sincerity is questioned?

The virtue of the term “sincerity” is that it describes a commitment to one's creative purposes, a solemn affirmation of one's self-actualization....Since all selves are constituted by relationships, integrity means being trustworthy and true in one's associations....integrity is the ground from which self and other arise together to maximize benefit. It is not what you are, but how well and how productively they are able to fare in their synergistic alliances. Focusing the Familiar (33)

The world changes and we must respond, but what is typically neglected in that response to change is the creativity necessary to change with the times.

Not only is change an integral characteristic of things, but real creativity is a condition of this continuing transformative process. That is, our immediate experience is composed of fluid, porous events that entail both persistence and the spontaneous emergence of novelty, both continuity and disjunction. In this evolving order, there is at once familiar rhythm to life, and the newness of each moment. Dao De Jing (16)

This cosmic unfolding is not “cyclical” in the sense of reversability and replication but is rather a continuing spiral that is always coming back upon itself and yet is ever new. Dao De Jing (28)

Who we are, fundamentally, is a creative event:  

Cheng (誠) [creativity], then, is the extending of the specifically human activity of actualizing genuine personhood from man himself to all constituents in the process of existence. Thinking Through Confucius (58)

Wolfgang Schirmacher calls this "artificial life."

Follow-up to Nancy Post

My new sister-in-law and favorite faculty member at the University of Otago (the research institution in New Zealand and nicely located next to some delicious wine country), Meegan, wrote some questions about my previous post on Nancy. I also got some questions, via Facebook, from my friend, Matt so what follows, although it's in direct response to Meegan, I think also somewhat addresses one thing that Matt was asking after.

I really appreciate any feedback that comes this way, it's not as though reading this stuff is fun, let alone then coming up with any questions, so thanks, y'all!

I welcome any and all feedback.

So, let's see, the section in question is this one, right:

"Those that are against homosexual marriage seem to be making the claim that homosexuals cannot have a relationship as described in Figures 4 & 5.
Perhaps this is why their arguments seem so flat and are thus typically dependent upon religious claims. The irony, of course, is that religious claims are based on an Intimacy model of truth, so evangelical Christians are forever going on about their Personal Relationship with Christ, and how we must accept Christ into our hearts (a place decidedly not publicly verifiable)."

This is a pretty sloppy shorthand I put here, I apologize - I wrote this in a stream of consciousness manner primarily over the course of an hour so it's no wonder that the result is not easy to read.

This sentiment about marriage equality originally burbled into my mind after I read an Onion article wherein a fundamentalist protester in the "story" had a sign that said, "God Hates Modified Sexual Organs! The gist of the "story" was that Fundamentalist Christians were up in arms because homosexuals, in order to get around the problem of same-sex marriage, were having one partner switch genders so they could be legally married. I thought that this was brilliant commentary on the "problem."

Read More

Jean-Luc Nancy "Being Singular Plural"

I apologize to those of you that like to drop-in for a read as I've not written anything in about a week. I am preparing for the Annual Meeting of the Georgia Sociological Association being held this weekend. I am presenting on Friday around 3 and I'm having a tough time shifting gears.

This will be a brief post that's been inspired by a recent friend and administrator/editor/head-honcho of the blog Prōlogus, Nathan Everson in Australia. Nathan posted a quote from Nancy's book "Being Singular-Plural" on Facebook and there was a question of what all those words meant. Philosophy and "Theory" tend to be dismissed immediately for being too obtuse, too full of jargon, which is unfortunate since I think the most important thinkers of their times always tend to write as clearly as they can. Thinking is not just one thing, some may think in terms of music, or of colors, or of relations between objects - thinking as it is communicated in what has to this point been called Philosophy uses words as its currency. But already I am having a difficult talking in these terms because already we'd have to explain, then, symbolic logic, cinema, architecture, painting, etc. Let's stay simple for a moment and accept that words are problematic but they beat the alternative: no words.

Here are the confusing words that inspired this writing:

Compassion is not altruism, nor is it identification; it is the disturbance of violent relatedness -- Jean-Luc Nancy, Being Singular Plural (xiii)

Someone commented on Nathan's post that this was not very clear and so I feel compelled to write a lil' bit here. In part I'm writing about this because my background in thinking is inspired by the East Asian Traditions, particularly Classical Confucianism and Mahayana as well as Zen Buddhisms. Compassion has a very rich and radically different meaning between these traditions and the West. This is primarily due to how these two cultures understand agency, in other words, how we understand the self when we say (in English) "myself" or "I" is not universal; in East Asia there is a radically different notion of the self. The best introduction (and frankly a book I return to frequently) to understanding how these two forms of agency can transform a culture is found in Thomas P. Kasulis' Intimacy or Integrity: Philosophy & Cultural Difference (2002). As Kasulis states, culture is a recursive pattern, like a fractal; once we can get a purchase on what the general pattern being repeated is, we can begin to understand more deeply why these cultural differences exist. As an added bonus we can also begin to revisit assumptions within our own tradition and perhaps propose different ways of being, maybe find ways of changing institutions that seem to no longer be generating the results we'd like to see.

Read More

Chris Fynsk Evening Lecture

Chris Fynsk gave an evening lecture wherein he discussed how Jean-Luc Nancy might inform our thinking about cuisine. If memory serves the title of the talk was Image en Cuisine, and the ideas came to him after having the rare opportunity to dine at elBulli, voted the best restaurant in the world numerous times over the last several years.

He's working with Nancy's propositions concerning art as well as the image of the food itself with its suggestions of mimesis and participation.

We begin with the image because Ferran Adrià (the head chef of elBulli) is primarily concerned with deconstruction - particularly how the image is mobilized in the distended time of the meal.

• an image appears in its presentation of itself, through its sameness - an uneven dissemblance that unattaches from itself
• the image comes upon us by detachment of its traits, its trace - a play of approach and withdrawal and overcoming

There are two forms of dissemblance in Heidegger:

1. withdrawal (Nancy's favorite)
2. a play of dissemblance, where we can't tell

• the latter gives art its ambiguity or opacity as art, dissembles itself, it remarks

We enter into a savory world with elBulli, an infusion through penetration which touches our own intimacy. There is a sixth sense that is enticed when Adrià touches upon our terroir.

In order to understand gourmandise we must first understand hospitality

• the real presence of the image in cuisine obliges us to practice a new form of hospitality
• with Adrià's approach there is an interruption of the taking of the Host (referencing Communion)
• There is a double play of participation and mimesis which brings about a synesthesia
• Stimmel - you can't think a ground effectively without the stimmel of Dasein according to Heidegger

There are two phases of the culinary image:

1. visual and olfactory - a visual form of brilliance; often the visual presentation gives one pause because we don't want to disturb its presence
2. the moment of truth - an experience of vast ...

The element of hesitation: "Can I eat this?" is always present in cuisine.

• "Is this thing edible?" Upon putting into our mouth, after disrupting presentation, when the culinary habitus is disrupted, it occurs to us that we might not be able to digest this.
• That we might not be able to digest this, or that it may kill us
  

We appreciate what exceeds our expectations in presentation

• elBulli can't avoid whether it's good or bad tasting
• the guests were forced to rethink their expectations of what taste can be

If there is a rhythm in the image of the dish, there is also a rhythm in the sequence of the presentation of the dishes

• Can we align this rhythm with the rhythm of hospitality in mitsein?
• How would we describe the end of the meal?

What is the meaning of this meal?

• an intellectual stimulation which touches on memory and perception
• Groundlessness in the empty-centered bread which is shattered before we eat our dessert

[END OF LECTURE]