1967 - Imagination and Creativity in Childhood (Lev S. Vygotsky)

Creative acts (acts that give rise to something new) are opposed to reproductive acts (acts that reproduce or repeat, more or less accurately, something that already existed, behavior patterns that had already been mastered, etc.). This ability to imagine and create orients human beings towards the future, something different from what is, towards “creating the future and thus altering his own present” (Vygotsky, 2004, p. 9). This makes imagination important to all aspects of cultural life (artistic, scientific or technical).

Affirming it as universal and inherently human, central to how humans relate to their natural and cultural environments, for Vygotsky creativity and imagination are differentiated along development lines - “It does not develop all at once, but very slowly and gradually evolves from more elementary and simpler forms into more complex ones.” (Vygotsky, 2004, pp. 12–13) - and it is dependent, because of its combinatorial nature, on prior experience and the internalization of cultural tools.

The author describes a developmental movement from the ludic to the productive, from toying around to seriously engage with something. In fact, emphasis is placed on how creativity also develops in the area of technology, and how “[c]hildren who attempt to master the process of scientific and technological creativity are relying on the creative imagination to the same extent as in the area of artistic creation.” (Vygotsky, 2004, p. 87). This adds to the importance of creativity and imaginations. Future oriented, the productive forms of scientific and technological creativity bring the focus to the creation and the production of a world and a future and this makes up “the particular importance of cultivating creativity in school-age children. The entire future of humanity will be attained through the creative imagination; orientation to the future, behavior based on the future and derived from this future, is the most important function of the imagination. (…). The development of a creative individual, one who strives for the future, is enabled by creative imagination embodied in the present” (Vygotsky, 2004, pp. 87–88). Who are those who imagine the future, and how (and how not) is this activity supposed to happen?

Vygotsky emphasizes the role collective history and social and cultural environment have in the opportunities and possibilities for creativity. This meansthat not all have the same conditions to create or be creative, and that creativity is never individual in a strict sense. More than he may be aware of, his explanation provides a clear illustration of how creations dialogue and re/produce social and historical discourses - the examples he brings, contrasting the creative possibilities and opportunities of primitive and civilized people, of differentially privileged classes (often dialoguing with other authors of his time, particularly Ribot) follow the dominant colonial, eurocentric and classist narratives and power lines of his (and our) time.

PF