This lecture is devoted to the study of the creative process in the arts, and in particular to the question of its completion or incompletion. It draws on theories, reasoning, models, notions and empirical material produced by a wide range of disciplines : sociology, law, economics, history, psychology, psychoanalysis, art studies - art history, musicology, literary studies, literary genetics. We are not placing this entire apparatus under the control of any one of the disciplines mentioned, since the various problems analysed are, with a high degree of concordance, the result of several approaches, and the areas of theoretical convergence are sufficiently numerous that the main thrust of the analysis to be carried out is based above all on criteria of relevance and explanatory effectiveness.
This year, we are focusing on a number of important properties of the creative process :
- work intensity and its particular significance,
- the formative content of the work
- the degree of autonomy and pressure at work,
- the processual dynamics of work, which obey neither a simple propulsive causality nor a simple teleological aim,
- the multiple temporalities articulated or telescoped in designers' work schedules.