(Pre-)Scripted Creativity: An Examination of the Creativity Movement in Spain’s Contemporary Music Education Literature

Author(s):

Antia Gonzalez Ben(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

29. Research on Arts Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

29 SES 09 A, Arts education: historical approaches

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-10

11:00-12:30

Room:

557.Oktatóterem [C]

Chair:

Thomas Popkewitz

Contribution

Creativity is a pervasive topic in current discourses on music education in Spain. Creativity is commonly seen as an entirely positive and desirable attribute. Also, the construct is often seen as neutral and universal. In this paper, I challenge these two premises. I begin by situating the creativity movement within socio-political and economic coordinates, evidencing creativity’s contingency as a cultural construct attached to a particular set of ideas and values and produced within a particular regime of truth. Discourses on creativity in music education contribute to the fabrication of an ideal type of student and, by extension, to the “creation” of a particular kind of citizen for the Spanish state. Next, I present an analysis of Spain’s literature on creativity in music education, providing a close reading of one of these texts. The Spanish notion of creativity is a composite of both foreign and local meanings. The combination of these two sets of meanings produces an idiosyncratic understanding of the construct of creativity in Spain. Finally, the paper looks at some of the repercussions, both positive and negative, that the construct of creativity has for the ways people think, feel and act in the world in relation to music education.

Method

I carry out a systematic critical discourse analysis of the contemporary notion of creativity in Spain’s music education. My examples come both from archival documents (policy texts, official reports and related literature) and from secondary sources on the topic of creativity in music education. My arguments are exposed in the form of a “history of the present,” through which I try to unpack the systems of reasoning that order and organize the ways in which we think and act upon the world in relation to creativity and music education. I read these discourses both with and against the grain, looking beneath dominant discourses into the “empirical” power relations that may have both kept the music education machinery moving, but also, in some instances, compromised its very existence. I also draw on Popkewitz’s notion of “double gestures” in order to point out creativity’s contradictory effects of inclusion and exclusion. My intention here will be to point out that current discourses on creativity, despite their promising character, are essentially a group of people’s response to their fears and anxieties. As a result, the construct of creativity serves both to support and encourage (certain) people to take on risks, and to also deter people from going too far in this pursuit. It encourages individuals not to be too rigid, but to constantly look for new solutions that will help them adapt to a changing environment. At the same time, creativity operates to deter people from taking a too transgressive stance that will position them at odds with society’s current value system and which would challenge the present "statu quo" in more general terms. As such, creativity allows for certain ways to imagine oneself in the world and the world itself, at the same time as it casts out other ways of being, knowing and feeling in the world.

Expected Outcomes

I argue that Spain’s discourses on creativity in music education strategically integrate the construct of creativity because of its tactical productivity in at least two planes. First, creativity imbues these curricular proposals with a certain authority through references to scientifically sounding psychological sources. Second, creativity discourses guarantee that the texts will have a fairly good acceptance, for creativity is currently a hot topic associated with progressive tropes and surrounded by an all-positive aura. Despite these productive outcomes, there are also significant side effects related to the incorporation of a discourse on creativity in music education. Most notably, creativity produces various processes of abjection justified in the name of inclusion. For instance, creativity is commonly portrayed as an all-positive and limitless notion. And yet, creativity, like any other construct, has its own limitations. Also, creativity is often followed by a neutral and universal aura that conceals its economy-driven nature and the socially sanctioned value system in which it rests. Finally, creativity re-inscribes difference in music education through its present support of music in schools. This ultimately poses a threat to the sustainability of music as a school subject for, if creativity were to fall out of favor, so would music education. Creativity shapes what is now thinkable, what counts and what is overlooked by Spain’s music education community and by Spain’s society in more general terms. It shapes the definition of Spain’s social, economic and music education issues. On one hand, creativity provides a generative viewpoint from which to approach Spain’s contemporary music education and this country’s broader socio-economic situation as well. On the other hand, creativity’s all-positive and universal-sounding discourses also foreclose a whole array of alternative approaches to those events.

References

Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, translated by Daniel Heller- Roazen. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995/1998.  Aróstegui Plaza, José Luis. “El Desarrollo Creativo en Educación Musical: Del Genio Artístico al Trabajo Colaborativo” [Creative Development in Music Education: From Artistic Genius to Collaborative Work]. Educação: Universidade Federal Santa Maria 37-1 (Jan. 2012): 31-44. Bourdieu, Pierre & Wacquant, Loïc. “On the Cunning of Imperialist Reason.” Theory Culture Society 16, 1 (1999): 41-58. Cohen-Cole, Jamie. “The Creative American: Cold War Salons, Social Science, and the Cure for Modern Society.” Isis 100-2 (2009): 219–262. Foucault, Michel. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-1979, translated by Graham Burchell. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Garaigordobil Landazabal, Maite; Pérez Fernández, Jose Ignacio. “Efectos de la Participación en el Programa de Arte Ikertze sobre la Creatividad Verbal y Gráfica” [Effects of Participating in the Ikertze Art Program on Verbal and Graphic Creativity]. Anales de Psicología 18, 1 (2002): 95-110. Genovard, Cándido; Prieto, María Dolores; Bermejo, María Rosario & Ferrándiz, Carmen. “History of Creativity in Spain.” The International Handbook of Creativity, edited by James C. Kaufman & Robert J. Sternberg, pp. 68-95. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Guilford, Joy P. “Creativity.” American Psychologist 5 (1950): 444-454. Hacking, Ian. “Kinds of People: Moving Targets.” In Proceedings of the British Academy 151: 2006 Lectures, 285-318. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007. Koza, Julia E. “‘Save the Music’? Toward Culturally Relevant, Joyful, and Sustainable School Music.” Philosophy of Music Education Review 14-1 (Spring 2006): 23-38. Pereyra, Miguel A.; González Faraco, J. Carlos; Luzón, Antonio & Torres, Mónica. “Social Change and Configurations of Rhetoric: Schooling and Social Exclusion–Inclusion In Educational Reform In Contemporary Spain.” In International Handbook of Comparative Education, edited by R. Cowen & A. M. Kazamias, 217–238. New York, NY: Springer, 2009. Pérez Rebollo, Adolfo. “Taller de las Coplas de Ciego” [‘Coplas de Ciego’ Workshop]. In Creatividad en Educación Musical [Creativity in Music Education], edited by Maravillas Díaz Gómez & María Elena Riaño Galán, pp. 29-36. Santander, Spain: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Cantabria, 2007. Popkewitz, Thomas S., ed. Inventing the Modern Self and John Dewey: Modernities and the Traveling of Pragmatism in Education. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

Author Information

Antia Gonzalez Ben (presenting / submitting)

The University of Wisconsin-Madison

Curriculum and Instruction

Madison

Search the ECER Programme

Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
Search for authors and in the respective field.
For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.