The chapter from Platform Capitalism reminded me a lot of Angela McRobbie's Be Creative: Making a Living in the New Culture Industries, in which she examines the increasing precarity of the gig-economy in correlation with the neoliberalist entrepreneurial ideology that's become part and parcel of working in the cultural industries:
I argue that the call to be creative is a potent and highly appealing mode of new governmentality directed to the young in the educational environment, whose main effect is to do away with the idea of welfare rights in work by means of eclipsing normal employment altogether… this mode of neoliberal governmentality is also a general and widespread process of precarization. (p. 14)Read next to works like Platform Capitalism or Scholz's Uberworked and Underpaid: How Workers are Disrupting the Digital Economy, it could be a useful read for anyone else who's work resides at the intersection of art and technology.
Link to a book review I found by Paz Concha, a PhD Candidate at LSE:
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2016/04/26/book-review-be-creative-making-a-living-in-the-new-culture-industries-by-angela-mcrobbie/
Thanks, this is interesting! I'm also interested in what creativity means today, in relation to attachment, identification and newer forms of precarious labor. Creativity is a term that makes me cringe, but also a concept I don't know if I'm willing to let go of. I'm interested in if there are ways to think about creativity that don't reinforce a neoliberal ethics, but also don't fall back on outdated and fraught myths of creative intention.
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