Creativity and Genius

Creativity is an imperative that aggressively structures our society. The idea of a creative per­son­ality dates back to the eighteenth century and originally serves to valorize a societal margin, the sphere of art production. The Junior Research Group Creativity and Genius attempts to re­con­struct how this idea could become a paradigm for whole industries and an obligatory standard for individual subjectivity.

Media, entertainment, design, architecture, consul­ting, public relations and research are creative industries; moreover, creativity is a key concept for self-fashioning in social net­works, lonely heart ads or job applications. Theoretical conceptions of universal cre­ativ­ity, ranging from “aesthetic regime” and “aesthetic capitalism” to a “regime of crea­ti­vity”, all interpret it as an expansion of aesthetic practices and preferences to non-aesthetic areas of life. This interpretation poses three main challenges to the Humanities: to identify these practices, to contextualize them historically, and to establish creativity as an object of theory.