Évelyne Grossman
The Creativity of the Crisis

It is sometimes proclaimed that crises generate creative powers. An idea to consider, beyond the banal advertising or entrepreneurial statements about the fruitful nature of crises (political, social, economic, or personal). It is the psychic, literary, and philosophical aspect of the notion of crisis that is explored here in its relationship to creation. The crisis of creativity: silence, withdrawal, sterility. Everyone knows these periods of emptiness, of depressive obstruction. Is the creativity of the crisis the simple reversal of it?

As Deleuze or Beckett, Nietzsche or Foucault knew, but also many modern artists and creators, it is not easy to endure the instability required by all creation, the forces of bewilderment that it unleashes, everything like its undeniable ecstasy. Creation is undoubtedly an apprenticeship in insecurity.

Professor at the University of Paris, former president of the International College of Philosophy, editor at Gallimard of Antonin Artaud’s works, Évelyne Grossman is a specialist in literary theory. She situates her work at the crossroads of literature, philosophy, and psychoanalysis.