Creativity out of difference: Theorising the gaps in social interaction

Human creativity is ubiquitous, occurring in everyday actions and interactions. Accordingly, we suggest, it must be grounded in the most basic processes of human symbolic activity. This presentation seeks to identify the roots of human creativity in the most fundamental cultural psychological processes of semiotically mediated activity. Starting with the mediational pyramid of self-other-object-sign, we suggest that creativity arises out of two disjunctions, differences or ‘gaps.’ First there is always a gap between representation, the sign, and the world, or what is signified. Action is guided by symbolic meanings of anticipated outcomes, but the outcomes of action are often surprising. Second there is always a gap between the perspectives of self and other. Not only does the other ‘exceed’ self (Bakhtin, 1923), but the other also sees things about self which self is unaware of. Central to creativity, we argue, is not any particular ‘gap’ but rather the more dynamic movement between these psychological orientations.