Creative thinging: The feeling of and for clay
Abstract
Humans are organisms of a creative sort. We make new things that scaffold the ecology of our minds, shape the boundaries of our thinking and form new ways to engage and make sense of the world. That is, we are creative ‘thingers’. This paper adopts the perspective of Material Engagement Theory (Malafouris 2013) and introduces the notion ‘thinging’ to articulate and draw attention to the kind of cognitive life instantiated in acts of thinking and feeling with, through and about things. I will focus more specifically on Creative thinging , or creative material engagement, exploring the importance of thinging for understanding our species unique capacity for inventiveness.
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For Malafouris, a common fallacy is assuming that form pre-exists the processes that give rise to it.
“For Malafouris, a common fallacy is assuming that form (organic or artificial) pre-exists the processes that give rise to it”
From Toward an Enactive Conception of Productive Practices: Beyond Material Agency (2023) · cites this paper as Malafouris, 2014
Creativity cannot be solely attributed to agents themselves.
“creativity cannot be solely attributed to agents themselves, very much in tune with Malafouris's (2014) concept of thinging”
From Toward an Enactive Conception of Productive Practices: Beyond Material Agency (2023) · cites this paper as Malafouris's (2014)
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Malafouris, L. (2019) · Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1007/s11097-018-9606-7 · Cited by 181 · see citing works
“Grounded in the anthropological archaeology of the mind (Malafouris 2004; Malafouris and Renfrew 2008, 2010; Renfrew 2004; Renfrew et al. 2008; Iliopoulos and Malafouris 2014), the material engagement approach is committed to observing and describing cognitive life as we find it, enacted inside the world by the people…”
BackgroundInfluentialSelf-citationMaterial Engagement Theory and its philosophical ties to pragmatism
Iliopoulos, A. (2019) · Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1007/s11097-018-9596-5 · Cited by 46 · see citing works
Immaterial engagement: human agency and the cognitive ecology of the internet
Clowes, R. W. (2019) · Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1007/s11097-018-9560-4 · Cited by 45 · see citing works
Human innovation and the creative agency of the world in the age of generative AI
Peschl, M. F. (2024) · Possibility Studies & Society · doi:10.1177/27538699241238049 · Cited by 23 · see citing works
“This implies that we have to walk the fine line between a hylomorphic approach (e.g. Ingold, 2013; Malafouris, 2014; Malinin, 2019) of projecting our own ideas and concepts onto the world on the one hand, and being guided and attracted by its emerging potentials on the other, if we want to create…”
BackgroundMaking hands and tools: steps to a process archaeology of mind
Malafouris, L. (2021) · World Archaeology · doi:10.1080/00438243.2021.1993992 · Cited by 22 · see citing works
Self-citationToward an Enactive Conception of Productive Practices: Beyond Material Agency
Di Paolo, E. A., Lawler, D., & Vaccari, A. P. (2023) · Philosophy & Technology · doi:10.1007/s13347-023-00632-9 · Cited by 17 · see citing works
“Since these initial proposals, the idea of material agency has developed into the notion of “thinging” in order to focus on the unfinished and creative aspects of material engagement (e.g., Malafouris, 2014, 2016).”
Background
- Authors
- Malafouris, L.
- Affiliations
- University of Oxford (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Malafouris, Lambros
- ORCID
- Malafouris, Lambros
- Venue
- Pragmatics & Cognition
- Publisher
- John Benjamins Publishing Company
- Published
- 2014-12-31
- Volume
- 22
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 140-158
- ISSN
- 0929-0907 (ISSN-L)
- 1569-9943
- OpenAlex
- W2248231709
- Cited by
- 145
- References
- 9
- Citations by year
- 2026: 16 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 24 · 2023: 19 · 2022: 17 · 2021: 10 · 2020: 14 · 2019: 9 · 2018: 11 · 2017: 8 · 2016: 3 · 2015: 1
- FWCI
- 2.23
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Pragmatics & Cognition (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Embodied and Extended Cognition
- Social Sciences › Cultural Studies › Posthumanist Ethics and Activism
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Creativity in Education and Neuroscience
- Keywords
- material engagement theory, human creativity, inventions
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