Abstract:
This paper explores the implications of looking at creativity in terms of repeated
sameness rather than observable difference. Drawing on insights from hip-hop
culture that focus on sampling as creativity, and looking in particular at
philosophies of difference that make iterability and performativity central, this
paper opens up a discussion of repetition, reenactment, and recontextualization
as forms of creativity. A common approach to language and creativity draws on a
very particular cultural and intellectual history that posits a core of human,
cultural, or linguistic similarity, with creativity as marked divergence from the
core. The alternative, or at least complementary, understanding discussed in this
paper takes flow and difference as the norm, pointing to the need to account for
how the previous expression of others is recontextualized, and suggesting that
contemporary acts of digital sampling can be seen in relation to a parallel
philosophy of creativity. An understanding of this flip-side of creativity, where
difference is taken as a given and sameness needs to account for itself, has major
implications for some of the ways we think about writing, learning, and
language variation in applied linguistics.
