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6 - The Just-In-Time Self?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2018

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Summary

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

Soren Kierkegaard (1843, p. 306)

In opening this book we argued that capitalism now flies the banner of creativity, in part because of the increasing importance of intellectual property to corporate prosperity. Companies can no longer rely exclusively on scientific managers to drive innovation, but must look elsewhere for the symbolic and intellectual labour required to make them competitive. In narrow utilitarian terms, the ‘creative economy’ is simply a project to persuade artists to transfer their skills in commercially viable directions – to abandon the garret for the graphic designer's studio or the copywriter's office. But creativity is more than simply a set of skills. From a romantic perspective, it involves expressing the inner self in symbolic form – through, for example, the quest to produce the masterpiece or the virtuoso performance. In this deeper sense, the creative economy is a bid to conscript workers’ cultural, emotional and intellectual energies for post- Fordist work. New capitalism needs more from labour (whether as wage labourers or subcontractors) than ‘skill’ and obedience.

For workers, long denied any semblance of vocational fulfillment, the idea of creative work appears to hold the promise that they might (a) salvage a modicum of craft satisfaction from the ruins of Taylorism (b) participate in the traditional arts from which they were long excluded or (c) make a living from their cultural/ subcultural enthusiasms even where these involve protest and resistance. It is not easy for capitalism to conscript energies that originate in the private, communal and recreational spheres, especially because most available ‘creative work’ does not satisfy these ludic/ craft/ bohemian/ subcultural ideals. The jobs do not match the passions, nor even the training and skills.

To overcome this reticence, capital must shift the definition of the term ‘creativity’ – to extend its lexical range – so as to encourage workers to reassign their ambitions, skills and energies in new and unanticipated directions. This relies on the idea that creativity is not simply an intrinsic quality of a task but a product of the discourse surrounding the labour.

Type
Chapter
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The Creativity Hoax
Precarious Work in the Gig Economy
, pp. 105 - 116
Publisher: Anthem Press
Print publication year: 2018

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