ORIGINAL FORMAT VIDEO https://youtu.be/xX8awTM6FIQ Lecture | Raphaël Julliard
Raphaël Julliard | Anthropology of the Creative Process | Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Sociale, Ehess, Paris, France
"The Creative Engine and the Sense of Rightness"
My research operates at the intersection of anthropology, the psychology of creativity, and micro-phenomenology. It is driven by a central question: in the uncertainty of the creative act, how do creators know when it works? While traditional approaches often rely on retrospective reconstruction, my work focuses on the "creative engine": the real-time feedback loop between Action (what the maker does) and Affect (how the emerging form acts back upon the maker). I posit that creativity is not a cognitive planning process, but a navigational skill steered by a pre-reflective affective criterion—a felt sense of fitness we conceptualize as "Rightness"—guiding the artist between the risks. To study this, I have moved from historical analysis to experimental ethnography, developing a novel methodology—The Researcher-As-Obstacle (RAO)—designed to investigate the creative mind in action. My goal is to establish a rigorous anthropology of this navigational competence, specifically addressing how subjects maintain agency and a path toward Rightness within the flow of creation.
Links to referenced texts: Julliard, R. (2025). Action and affect: Ritual dynamics in Jackson Pollock’s creative process. Journal of Material Culture, 30(2), 171-190. → https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/xpbcw_v1 Julliard, R., Roy, D., & Botella, M. (2026).
The Researcher-As-Obstacle: A methodology for the study of creativity while it happens. Qualitative Research, 26(1), 3-22. → https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/shnax_v3
“The Feeling of Life”: Creative Dynamics Captured in Real Time → https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/92fxy_v1