Introduction to “Mobilizing Creativity, Part 1”: A Humanities Perspective

Abstract

This double-issue special focus section of the minnesota review proposes and mobilizes a contemporary notion of creativity from a practice-based, responsive, and prospective positioning of the concept. Taken together, the articles in this issue, as well as in the next (Issue 101), develop updated conceptions of creativity. These conceptions are relevant for and responsive to the contemporary moment of algorithmic, environmental, and world-systemic dynamic processes that shape what we have in common as well as how we radically differ from each other today. Creativity is a power that is everywhere—in us, among us, and around us in individual and social and in biological as well as cultural processes. As such, creativity can exceed sociohistorical frameworks, utilitarian goals, and strategic aims. Bearing this in mind, we explore creativity in this special section as an open process and dynamic presence of ongoing transformation.