1st Edition
Digressions and the Human Imagination Tracing the Indirectness of Cultural Creativity
Digressions and the Human Imagination makes a significant contribution to our anthropological knowledge about human creativity. The creative force of the human imagination is widely considered as a key ingredient in understanding how social and cultural transformations occur. And yet, what we know about the nature of creative processes is surprisingly limited. Taking their cue from literary studies, the contributors to this volume explore digression as human creativity’s main impulse. They offer a series of experimental explorations of digression in different arenas of social life – literature, conversations, myths, humor, art, wayfinding. In their examination of the relationship between creativity and digressive processes, the contributions challenge and eventually collapse conventional distinctions between ‘artistic’ and ‘scientific’ imaginaries. The book articulates with clarity the freedom and joy of wandering off in new directions, but also the potentially transgressive and even revolutionary character that digression has when it is put to work through the creativity of the human imagination. It will be relevant for anthropologists and other scholars from across the humanities and social sciences with an interest in creativity.
Introduction
1. “One Failure…”.
By Morten Nielsen
Part 1. METHODOLOGY
2. “Mind-Wandering and Mushrooming in Russian Art and Literature”
By Birgitte Pristed
3. “Learning how to Digress in Clown Training Workshops”
By Noa Vaisman in collaboration with Ofer Ravid
4. “…and Six Digressive Leaps: Methodology”
By Morten Nielsen
Part 2. TIME
5. “… a digressive conversation about digression in creative writing”
By Sofie Kragh-Müller, Ida Marie Hede and Hannah Lutz
6. “Digression Doubled: Stand-Up Comedy as Transformative Trickery”
By Marianna Keisalo
7. “…and Six Digressive Leaps: Time”
By Morten Nielsen
Part 3. CONNECTIONS
8. “Mythic Digressions in Science”
By Gregory Schrempp
9. “Comedic Comparisons: Absurd Juxtapositions and the Value of Digressive Truths”
By Rane Willerslev & Morten Nielsen
10. “…and Six Digressive Leaps: Connections”
By Morten Nielsen
Part 4. INTERIORITY
11. “Myrkur as Mother North: Feminist Digressions in Black Metal Culture”
By Mathias Nordvig
12. “Beating Around the Bush: Digression while Wayfinding the Kalahari Desert”
By Pierre du Plessis
13. “…and Six Digressive Leaps: Interiority”
By Morten Nielsen
Part 5. AESTHETICS
14. “Life-Affirming: The Digressive Practice of Art Appreciation”
By Nigel Rapport
15. “Fischart … Sancho … Beckett … Joyce; or, An Essay in Praise of Babble”
By Samuel Frederick
16. “…and Six Digressive Leaps: Aesthetics”
By Morten Nielsen
Part 6. TRACES
17. “Naboland. Unplanned Journeys of Discovery”
By Reinhard Behrens
18. “Universal Basic Income and the Colonization of Mars: tracing the effects of policy ideas that are yet to be implemented”
By Nina Holm Vohnsen
19. “…and Six Digressive Leaps: Traces”
By Morten Nielsen
Biography
Morten Nielsen is a social anthropologist working on socially sustainable urban development. And stand-up comedy. Since November 2018 he has been based at the National Museum of Denmark as research professor and head of the Research Center for Social Urban Modelling (SUMO). Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Southern Africa (Mozambique), Latin America (Brazil), the US (New York City), UK (Scotland) and Denmark, he has published on such issues as urban development, state formation, vernacular architecture, time and temporality, human creativity and stand-up comedy.
