Amanda Weate's Genealogy of Creativity

This article looks back at the little-known work of an Australian art educationist, Amanda Weate, who conducted a study on the disparate origins of the concept of creativity in psychology, aesthetics, and art education. Adopting a Foucauldian lens, Weate provides a genealogical approach to this conceptual history in order to reflect on the ways in which psychological ideas tended to govern the idea of creativity, especially in the field of education. The article provides an opportunity to consider the breadth and expansion of creativity as a buzzword in the second half of the twentieth century, streaming out of psychometrics into economics and popular culture. It also affords readers a chance to step back from the assumption that creativity is a natural human attribute in order to more rigorously attend to the conditions necessary for the production of creativity as a concept.