Name: AGAINST CREATIVITY.
ISBN: 9781786636485

OLI. MOULD

AGAINST CREATIVITY.

Danny White

As Zeynep Tufekci said (and is worth repeating) 'we cannot outsource our moral responsibility to machines'.

Creativity can be used to produce more social justice in the world, but it must be rescued from its current incarceration as purely an engine for economic growth.

Creativity is a distinctly neoliberal trait because it feeds the notion that the world and everything in it can be monetised

individualisation-masked-as-collectivism (fuelled by the neoliberal ideology of the importance of the enterprising self) explains the rise of 'co-working spaces' as the model working environment

Invoking Jane Jacob's adage that 'new ideas must use old buildings', the 'creative quarter' that utilises old industrial units or even constructs them anew is as homogeneous as it is ubiquitous.

We are nearly half a century on from when Neil Armstrong proclaimed that mankind had made a giant leap. Now, any giant leaps we make are dictated by private capital...

...Capitalism attempts to stop us from believing in the impossible, or at the very least, reconfigures our imagination so that any realised impossibilities must be profited from first.

Oli Mould

Everything you have been told about creativity is wrong. From line managers, corporate CEOs, urban designers, teachers, politicians, mayors, advertisers and even our friends and family, the message is 'be creative'. Creativity is heralded as the driving force of our contemporary society; celebrated as agile, progressive and liberating. It is the spring of the knowledge economy and shapes the cities we inhabit. It even defines our politics. What could possibly be wrong with this? In this brilliant, counter intuitive blast Oli Mould demands that we rethink the story we are being sold. Behind the novelty, he shows that creativity is a barely hidden form of neoliberal appropriation. It is a regime that prioritizes individual success over collective flourishing. It refuses to recognise anything - job, place, person - that is not profitable. And it impacts on everything around us: the places where we work, the way we are managed, how we spend our leisure time. Is there an alternative? Mould offers a radical redefinition of creativity, one embedded in the idea of collective flourishing, outside the tyranny of profit. Bold, passionate and refreshing, Against Creativity, is a timely correction to the doctrine of our times.

Against Creativity

240 pages of word salad mixed with truisms and drizzled with a spicy title.

Creativity has been co-opted by capitalism and turbocharged by neoliberalism. Creativity needs rescuing from this incarceration as an engine purely for economic growth.

Creativity should instead be used to “produce more social justice in the world”. Practical suggestions on how to go about this are limited to “sortition, local currencies, direct action”.

240 pages of word salad mixed with truisms and drizzled with a spicy title.

Here’s the crux, as I understood it:

Creativity has been co-opted by capitalism and turbocharged by neoliberalism. Creativity needs rescuing from this incarceration as an engine purely for economic growth.

Creativity should instead be used to “produce more social justice in the world”. Practical suggestions on how to go about this are limited to “sortition, local currencies, direct action”.

AGAINST CREATIVITY.

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