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Creativity and Health A Deleuzian Tautology?

This paper delves into the intersection of creativity and health through a Deleuzian lens, examining how creative processes impact well-being and the body without organs. It explores sociological approaches to creativity, the relationship between creativity and health, and the implications of creativity on individual and societal health. Drawing on theories of positive desire and becoming-other, it proposes a theoretical framework for understanding the dynamic interplay of creativity and health. The discussion highlights the potential benefits of creative processes on health outcomes and calls for further empirical research in this area.

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Creativity and Health A Deleuzian Tautology?

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  1. Creativity and HealthA Deleuzian Tautology? Nick Fox University of Sheffield Paper presented to the BSA Medical Sociology Conference, Durham 2010

  2. Introduction • What is Creativity? • Sociological Approaches to Creativity • Is Creativity Good for Our Health? • A Deleuzian Perspective on Creativity and Health • Creativity and the Body without Organs

  3. What is Creativity? I looked for an answer to this within: • Psychology: a personality trait independent of cognition • Psychoanalysis: a sublimation of unconscious desire, usually sexual • Marxism: a representation of class interests • Evolutionary theory: successful adaptation

  4. Mark Rothko at work

  5. Sociology and Creativity 1 Sociology tends to focus on the contexts of creative production ‘ ... aesthetic and scientific practices connect even in their most intimate moments of genesis with concrete social and institutional conditions ‘ (De Fillippi et al 2007)

  6. Sociology and Creativity 2 Creativity is a social process: ‘... anything that people can examine and judge, including communicated ideas and processes judged independently of the outcomes they produce. ... a subjective judgment made by members of the field about the novelty and value of a product (Ford 1996)

  7. Exhibits at the Royal Academy summer exhibition

  8. What have we learnt? • Not a lot • All the theories skirt around the question of the creative process • The missing body: need for an embodied approach to creativity • Can the relationship between creativity and health help?

  9. Is Creativity Good for Us? • Liberal humanist view that high art is good for the soul, morality and social order • Popular view that the arts contribute to the quality of life • Art and music therapy • Arts and health movements (e.g. writers, artists in residence): under-theorised

  10. Assumptions of the Arts and Health Movement • Creativity can be therapeutic • Creative products can ‘humanise’ modern institutions such as hospitals and schools • Creative products improve the health of those in their vicinity • BUT ...

  11. Is this True? • Thomas Chatterton • Vincent Van Gogh • Amadeo Modigliani Edvard Munch: ‘The Scream’

  12. Wallis: ‘The Death of Chatterton’, 1856

  13. A Deleuzian Perspective • Gilles Deleuze: influenced by Nietzschean concept of ‘the will to power’ • Embodied conception of positive desire that motivates organisms • The ‘body-without-organs’ describes what a body can do and what it can become: its relations and affects

  14. Relations and Affects • The sum of psychological, emotional and physical connections that a body has: with family and friends, with colleagues, with objects or activities, or with abstract ideas and social constructs. • These establish the limits of the Body-Without-Organs

  15. Deleuze and Creativity • From this perspective: • Creativity is the positive desire of the organism: the capacity to engage ‘productively’ • Creative products (artistic, crafts, science, writing, cookery, sexuality etc) are the ‘becoming-other’ of the body • Creativity reflects the relations and affects of the producer

  16. Jackson Pollock: Untitled no. 3

  17. Deleuze and ‘Health’ • From this perspective: • Health is also a reflection of what a body can do: its capacity to become other • The sum of the BwO’s relations and affects define its health

  18. Implications • It would not be surprising to find a relation between creativity and health • The two concepts are both aspects of the capacity of a body to become other • The arts and health movement may assess how creative processes may contribute to well-being: of producers or recipients

  19. Conclusions • The Deleuzian perspective offers a theoretical underpinning for those working on creativity and health • There is a need for empirical studies using these theoretical tools, to learn more about creativity production and reception and health and sickness

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