Cultural Performance, Creativity and Social Change

Social performativity and social creativity are the two sides of the same token. In this paper we analyze the ingredients needed to build up a theory of social creativity borrowing ideas from Georg Simmel, Cornelius Castoriadis and Hans Joas. With this theoretical frame we analyze modern forms of social action that express social creativity. Creativity and performativity go together. Those types of social action embody, are carriers of social creativity and, therefore, social change. Thus we study the rise of the carisma as well as the rise of the first modern revolutionary personality according to Max Weber, the power of modern collective revolutionary mobilization in Tocqueville, the power of collective effervescence and the new modern resacralizations according to Emile Durkheim and the power of social performativity and “re-fusion” according to Jeffrey C. Alexander.