Creative industry

Culture machines and (our) mutual obligations

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  • Published 20250506
  • ISBN: 978-1-923213-07-4
  • Extent: 196 pp
  • Paperback, ebook, PDF

Creativism is creativity stripped of its critical potential.
– Pascal Gielen, Creativity and Other Fundamentalisms (2013)

AT THE END of 2011, data scientists at LinkedIn reported that the term its then 135 million members most frequently used to describe themselves was ‘creative’. Other popular terms included ‘industrious’, ‘innovative’ and ‘visionary’. One thing this illustrates is that we expect nothing bad – and perhaps too much – from creativity. On this inclination, sociologist Andreas Reckwitz, in The Invention of Creativity: Modern Society and the Culture of the New (2017), points out that

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FictionMarty was my algorithm. He told me which internet plan to get. He researched the best conductive wall heater. He chose my clothes every night for the next day. He gave me a list of where I could go on my lunchbreak. Sometimes his decisions were arbitrary, or mysterious to me. But I did not care. It was, yes, like being a child again. And maybe Rachel was right; maybe there was something to that, something deep in my psyche. But all desire came from that deep, dark place of infancy. Your leather penchant is my life-coach-boyfriend-boss. None of us can take the high road here.

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