| Are artists autonomous agents? Are they individuals? Engaging with these seemingly commonsensical questions is the objective of this doctoral dissertation. Moreover, my answer to both questions is: no. My objective herein, then, will be to develop the following argument: that because the individual elements of creative, art-producing networks are so profoundly relational, to speak of individual elements or of agents or artists at all is to describe an incomplete picture. After all, how can any individual action occur or individual element exist in the absence of that upon which that action is enacted, or without that action being made possible by another element or "individual"?;I dismantle and then recast how we think about artistic creativity by arguing that if individuals are so intertwined with their networks that their very capacities are produced by the network's relationality itself, they (individuals) might be able to be (categorically) dispensed with entirely. In other words, I begin to ponder the question: How can we think about networks without thinking -- or making assumptions about -- individuals? I suggest -- with the help of theorists like Deleuze, Whitehead, and Spinoza -- that emphasizing that relationships are the generative actors that produce actuality compels us to rethink anthropocentric assumptions, and can lead to more open and creative ways of relating to the world around us.;I conclude by arguing that since our fate, existence, and identity as creators is inextricably linked to, and determined by, our relations with others, we must predispose ourselves to this co-fatedness by recalling Nietzsche's invocation that we embrace and be open to our fate by loving it -- that we "amor fati." In other words, in order to attune ourselves to the fullest range of possibilities in a situation -- in order to be truly creative and to "become-artist" -- we must become open to the creative potential of relationality itself, even if it requires that we assume a more modest view of ourselves.;By engaging with these questions this dissertation challenges conventional notions of creativity, individuality, and agency by suggesting that creative forms of expression -- for example: artistic, technological, social, political -- are always collective enunciations that issue forth and come into being as products of interdependent relationships. |
