Bergson and Technical Creativity

Abstract

Bergson portrays technics as a central expression of human creativity, but he also describes it as degenerating, mechanistic instrumentality. Can technics be truly creative or is it bound to the mechanistic processes of matter? In this paper, I develop a Bergsonian analysis of technical creativity based on two main reformulations of his ideas. First, I extend the Bergsonian theory of creative emotions presented in The Two Sources of Morality and Religion to technical creativity, as material affectivity. Second, I develop a materialist reading of Bergsonian intuition, based on Deleuze and Guattari’s formulations in A Thousand Plateaus. Through these reformulations, we can indeed find in Bergson’s thought a fruitful ground for an analysis of technical creativity. For this, we need to develop an affective conception of materiality and, in addition, acknowledge the importance of a material context for Bergsonian intuition.