Accidental Creatures: Whitehead's Creativity and the Clashing Intensities of More-Than-Human Life. (June 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Rousell, David
• Other Names: Harris Daniel guest-editor.; Rousell David guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Qualitative inquiry. Volume 28:Number 5(2022)
• Page Start: 566
• Page End: 577
• Publication Date: 2022-06
• Subjects: creativity -- more-than-human life -- Whitehead -- anarchiving -- ecological aesthetics -- speculative inquiry; Social sciences -- Methodology -- Periodicals; Social sciences -- Research -- Periodicals; 300.72
• DOI: 10.1177/10778004211065811
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1077-8004

Abstract

As a principle of unrest stirring at the heart of events, Whitehead's concept of creativity proposes a novel togetherness of creaturely experience where nothing has executive control, and everything that happens bears the mark of a creative accident. Drawing on stories of return to Bundjalung Country in New South Wales, Australia, this article explores the speculative potentials of Whitehead's creativity for sensing creaturely relations at the nexus of artistic practice and more-than-human social life. Ranging from termite-riddled book collections to environmentally degraded art installations, each story opens onto a problematic field of creative activity that generates novel contrasts and intensities of experience.