Overview

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.

Full Product Details

9781786636492

Table of Contents

Reviews

For the past 20 years, creativity has been ubiquitous, an essential part of designs for office interiors, inner-city makeovers, and boosterish attempts by governments to redescribe precarious parts of their economies. It needs to be taken seriously--but it also, arguably, needs to be taken down. In this provocative, and often funny book, Oli Mould points up the absurdities of the creative economy, and some ways we might think beyond creativity. --Richard J Williams, author of Sex and Building

Superb, thought-provoking. Mould turns the notion of the 'creative worker' on its head. - Pop Matters For the past 20 years, creativity has been ubiquitous, an essential part of designs for office interiors, inner-city makeovers, and boosterish attempts by governments to redescribe precarious parts of their economies. It needs to be taken seriously--but it also, arguably, needs to be taken down. In this provocative, and often funny book, Oli Mould points up the absurdities of the creative economy, and some ways we might think beyond creativity. --Richard J Williams, author of Sex and Building There are few personal and collective traits that are prized more highly in neoliberal societies than 'creativity'. In this powerful and well-aimed critique, Oli Mould lifts the veil on this ideology, to reveal a set of economic and political forces, pushing all of us to bend to the needs of capital. - Will Davies, author of Nervous States

Author Information

Oli Mould is Lecturer in Human Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London. His work focuses on issues of urban activism, social theory and creative resistance. He is the author of Urban Subversion and the Creative City (Routledge, 2015) and blogs at taCity.co.uk.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available