Inscribing Creativity Into Economics in a Somewhat Creative Fashion
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Jan Løhmann Stephensen: “Inscribing Creativity Into Economics in a Somewhat Creative Fashion”.
Paper presented at Inventing Connentions-conference arranged by Danish Association for Science and Technology
Studies at Aarhus University, June 9-10 2011.
Inscribing Creativity Into Economics in a Somewhat Creative Fashion
Jan Løhmann Stephensen
In the last couple of decades a recurrent theme among trend setters in management
literature and economic theory (economics) has been the positive (re-)emergence of the
notion of creativity within discourses on economy, work and societal development
(including those concerned with new media technologies). This “creativity discourse” is rich
on ambiguity: on one level creativity for instance constantly seems to be oscillating
between being presented as the means to and the aim of this development. This argument
is quite dominant in the writings of one of the most quoted writers in the field, Richard
Florida, who insists, that “the driving force behind the shift” towards this new, creative
economy lead by the rising creative class is, in fact, human creativity itself (Florida 2002:
4, Stephensen 2010: 146-147). Hence, creativity and creativity related economic practices
and products come to be perceived and celebrated as not only in-consumable/-exhaustible
entities (in contrast to the old, material economy), but even as “self-generating;” hence the
growth potentials often imagined.
! On another level creativity can also be regarded as the very origin of the discourse
itself – rather than the phenomenon it claims to be reporting on. And thereby – as I will
argue – also participating crucially to the construction of the phenomena itself: the so-
called creative age. Creativity, imagination and so on are no longer just modes of
escapism (e.g. thru daydreaming or art), but rather – to paraphrase Appadurai – “a staging
ground for action.” (Appadurai 1996: 7)
! One of the reasons why I just referred to this rise of creativity as a “positive re-
emergence” within discourses on economy, work and society is the fact that the term
creativity has also previously played an important role in these economy related
discourses; although one quite different from the present. Looking back at anti-work, anti-
capitalism, anti-bureaucracy, and anti-technology lingo of the 1960s counterculture,
creativity was back then repeatedly hailed as everything all these things were not and
which was being hindered by techno-bureaucratic capitalist modernity. One of the
dominating dichotomies of the time was “creativity versus alienated labour.” So it was a
positive term in the sense that it was the epitome of what life should be, yet negative in the
sense that it was a critical concept: Capitalismʼs Other, its negation, all that it was not (yet).
1
Jan Løhmann Stephensen: “Inscribing Creativity Into Economics in a Somewhat Creative Fashion”.
Paper presented at Inventing Connentions-conference arranged by Danish Association for Science and Technology
Studies at Aarhus University, June 9-10 2011.
! Fast forward to today, things have really changed. Now creativity is apparently
integral to phenomena like work, management, all kinds of economic transactions as well
as technology – especially those “technologies of cooperation” (Rheingold 2007) which are
supposedly situated at the heart of “Web 2.0” (OʼReilly 2005). Obviously, this positive spin
on creative work, creative economy, creative capitalism, etc. can to a large extent be
perceived as the result of a merely rhetorical recuperation of this previous critique of
capitalism in order to neutralize its critical effect and thus re-legitimize the practices and
mechanisms of capitalism. At least according to Boltanski & Chiapellos (2005) critical
analysis of the new spirit of capitalism, this kind of positive discourse on work, capitalism
and creativity, can be perceived as a buzzword infected ideological sugarcoat aimed at
glossing over economic practices which on the surface might appear transformed to the
better, but which in reality has retained their exploitative nature.
Virtualism
Iʼm not going further down this road today, but the reason Iʼve mentioned it is that this way
of looking at economic discourse has at least one crucial thing in common with that part of
the economic sociology which applies the term virtualism (Carrier & Miller 1998) to
describe the relationship between economics as a discourse and economy as practice,
namely: the insistence upon this relationship as one of misrepresentation. An
understanding akin to the Baudrillardian idea of economics, accounting, etc. as some kind
of “simulacrum” which no longer has any reference to the “realities” of economy but
instead circulates in a “hyperreality” of self-referential models (cf. Baudrillard 1988,
Macintosh et al. 2000). But also a “topology” reminiscent of the marxist notion of ideology
as “false consciousness” (Chiapello 2003: 156-157), although, of course, a lot of this
discourse dresses up as evidence-based, hard facts rather than mere “ideological world-
views”. In any case, there is a “double ontology” at play between pure virtuality and the
hidden, invisible real; quite similar to the one we know from the Wachowski brotherʼs The
Matrix (1999) and to some extent also Christopher Nolanʼs film Inception (2010), although
in the latter case, it is a bit more complicated.
! The reason Miller insists on this double ontology can most likely be found in the fact
that he seems rather keen on preserving what one might describes as a non-virtual
reference point with normative precedence, up against which we can measure and criticize
the falseness of these “virtual” discourses. And this is the reason that it is imperative to
2
Jan Løhmann Stephensen: “Inscribing Creativity Into Economics in a Somewhat Creative Fashion”.
Paper presented at Inventing Connentions-conference arranged by Danish Association for Science and Technology
Studies at Aarhus University, June 9-10 2011.
Miller to “radically separate out the market as a ritual and ideological system constructed
by economists and the actual practice of economies.” (Miller 2002: 224) Thus allowing
economic sociologists (like Miller) to place themselves in the position of Neo exposing and
battling the misconceptions and misrepresentations of economic discourses (Barry &
Slater 2002b: 301).
Performativity
Millerʼs notion of “virtualism” is, however, not the only way the STS-part of economic
sociology has attempted to describe the relationship between economics and economy.
Others, like for instance Michel Callon, has instead applied the notion of “performativity” to
describe the knowledge discourse of economics as a kind of text which “performs, shapes
and formats the economy, rather than observing how it functions” (Callon 1998: 2). This is
also the term Nigel Thrift (2006) uses. He doesnʼt really differentiate between the terms
“performativity” and “virtualism”, but what he is talking about is most certainly
performativity. And according to Thrift, contemporary capitalism is increasingly becoming
performative. By this he means that now, more than ever, it is “a constantly mutating
entity”, “always engaged in experiment”, “permanently ʻunder constructionʼ” and thus a
“project” which is “perpetually unfinished” (Thrift 2006: 3-4). Now, this is in essence the
“perennial gale of creative destruction” described by once heterodox economist Joseph
Schumpeter back in the 1940s (1976: 84), although with the twist that this description of
the logic of change within capitalism is no longer heterodox economics, but rather the
“mainstream Gospel” of economic, mercantile and management theory (Giersch 1984,
McCraw 1991), which means, that it “performs” on the perceptions and activities of
economic agents.
! Crucial to these constant mutations is the role played by the so-called “cultural
circuits of capitalism” (management consultants and “gurus”, business schools, but also
economics, accounting, etc.) which Thrift describes as
the discursive apparatus [...] which, through the continuous production of propositional
and prescriptive knowledge, has the power to make its theories and descriptions of the
world come alive in new built form, new machines and new bodies. (Thrift 2006: 11)
And one of these ideas increasingly purported by this cultural circuit of capitalism is, of
course, that of creative destruction, which since the 90s has become ever closer related to
3
Jan Løhmann Stephensen: “Inscribing Creativity Into Economics in a Somewhat Creative Fashion”.
Paper presented at Inventing Connentions-conference arranged by Danish Association for Science and Technology
Studies at Aarhus University, June 9-10 2011.
discourses on new digital media and economies based on intellectual property rights,
which is generally de-/prescribed as the backbone of the creative economy – hence
Schumpeterʼs mainstreaming (Nakamura 2000).
! So whereas Millers virtualism is marked by this rather sharp distinction between the
“seemingly real” discourses of economics (Carrier & Miller 1998: 2) and “the actual
practice of economies” (Miller 2002: 224), theories of performativity emphasize their
immanent enmeshment or entanglement, beyond the categories of “true” and “false” one
might say.
! How does this performativity-thing work, then? Well, briefly put, the performativity of
this/these cultural circuit(s) of capitalism springs from the way problems are singled out
and addressed, projections are made and solutions are anticipated and offered (Barry &
Slater 2002a: 180). !Still, it might be useful to distinguish between two different metaphors
or degrees of performativity at play in these theories: one which is strong, and one which is
weak, moderate or soft. The point that I will eventually be making is that these two kinds of
performativity are actually homologous with the two notions of creativity, which have
dominated western philosophy, religious cosmology and theology as well as art since pre-
antiquity (Hope Mason 2003). I will briefly sketch these, before I return to how they are
parallel with different kinds of performativity within economic sociology.
Two models of creativity
On the one hand there is the tradition, which historian of ideas John Hope Mason has
labeled the “judeo-christian tradition”, which historically has been the dominant one.
4Jan Løhmann Stephensen: “Inscribing Creativity Into Economics in a Somewhat Creative Fashion”.
Paper presented at Inventing Connentions-conference arranged by Danish Association for Science and Technology
Studies at Aarhus University, June 9-10 2011.
This is the act of creation we know from “Genesis”: the act of “pure creation”, in which the
world (the product of creation) is “made up” in a strong sense, in one singular event
performed by one Creator, out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo), in a finite completed state.
This is also the conception which was later, with Romanticism, to become the dominant
view on creativity of the artist genius. According to for instance Goethe, every good work of
art “actually creates a little world of its own, in which everything follows certain laws, seeks
to be judged according to its own laws, seeks to be experienced according to its own
character.” (Goethe “Über Wahrheit und Wahrscheinlichkeit der Kunstwerke”, 1798). This
view leads Goethe to speculate on the production process of the autonomous work of art
as a certain kind of process (here specifically on Mozartʼs Don Juan:
“How can one say, Mozart has composed [componiert] Don Juan! As if it was a piece of
cake or biscuit, which had been stirred together out of eggs, flour and sugar! It is a
spiritual creation, in which the the details, as well as the whole, are pervaded by one
spirit, and by the breath of one life; so that the producer did not make experiments, and
patch together, and follow his own caprice, but was altogether in the power of the
daemonic spirit of his genius, and acted according to his orders.”
5Jan Løhmann Stephensen: “Inscribing Creativity Into Economics in a Somewhat Creative Fashion”.
Paper presented at Inventing Connentions-conference arranged by Danish Association for Science and Technology
Studies at Aarhus University, June 9-10 2011.
So according to Goethe, the artwork should be perceived as a created, autonomous world,
wondrously emerging out of nothing “by the breath of one life”, not through some tedious,
laborious process of handling artistic material. Although Goethe is far from the only voice
on this matter, and opinions differ, this view is nonetheless often associated the
fundamental logic of the art world tour court (Manovich 2003: 14; figure 2).
On the other hand, there is the “renegade tradition” which Hope Mason labels “the lost
tradition” (figure 1, right column), since it has been historically suppressed, first by (neo-)
Platonic philosophy and Christian Theology in cahoots, and then later by the “ideology of
the aesthetic” (cf. Eagleton 1990). According to the lost, but – as we shall see – recently
re-found tradition, the creative process does not happen out of nothing (ex nihilo). Here,
creativity is – in principle – a perpetual, continuos process of re-ordering/arranging already
existing, “found” material (hence: “ex materia”) of pretty much any kind; both “artistic”
materials (cf. Duchampʼs Mona Lisa-remake (figure 3)) and “non-artistic” material
(Duchamp: Bicycle Wheel (figure 4)).
6Jan Løhmann Stephensen: “Inscribing Creativity Into Economics in a Somewhat Creative Fashion”.
Paper presented at Inventing Connentions-conference arranged by Danish Association for Science and Technology
Studies at Aarhus University, June 9-10 2011.
In fact a process very much akin to all those things the creative act according to Goethe
was not: “composed [componiert]” and “stirred together” though a process in which “the
producer did ... make experiments, and patch together, and follow his own caprice.” (op.
cit.). This is what Manovich triumphantly refers to as “the logic of new media” (figure 2,
right column), which sits at the center of a brand new cultural paradigm, era and age which
he sums up under one term and one praxis, namely: “remix” (Manovich 2008: 195-202).
Here new, collective, collaborative forms of authorship & producer-user-symbiosis result in
a (potentially) eternally unfinished process of creative co-production taking place through
digital networks (Manovich 2003: 14).
! So, on the one hand we have the quasi-religious, “romantic” or “heroic” notion of
creativity; and on the other: a much more mundane, “post-heroic” view on creativity as a
way of “remixing” (Manovich 2003, 2008, Lessig 2004, 2008), “knitting together” (Ingold &
Hallam 2007: 4), “making do” (de Certeau 1988), “cultural participation” (Glavenau 2011),
etc. It is worth noting that although Mason insists that this lost tradition of creativity is as
old as the dominant tradition of the Creator, there is certainly a historical shift at play here,
which has made commentators toss up terms like “emancipation,” “democratization,” and
“demystification” of the creative process. And no doubt, the agenda of a broad variety of
movements of the 20th Century can to a large extent be read as an engagement with
these specific issues on a concrete, political level (for instance the artistic avant-gardes
and cultural studies). But it is also “just” a shift in analytic perspective.
! British anthropologist, Tim Ingold (2010), has also been there (figure 5),
distinguishing between a model of creation (which he ascribes to Aristotle) and a model of
creativity (which he claims can best be explained with reference to Deleuze & Guattari).
These two traditions bear a striking resemblance to the previous dichotomies Iʼve
7Jan Løhmann Stephensen: “Inscribing Creativity Into Economics in a Somewhat Creative Fashion”.
Paper presented at Inventing Connentions-conference arranged by Danish Association for Science and Technology
Studies at Aarhus University, June 9-10 2011.
presented (obviously, I am cutting a few corners here, but not as many as one perhaps
would think).
Once again we see this dichotomy between, on the one hand, final products and finite
states of matter (objects/works of art). And on the other hand, the processes of
transformation, flux and flows of the so-called meshworks, which are always “becoming.”
Or, as one might more adequately name this last category in order to grasp their
processual aspect: processes of meshworking. These are described as “the way in which
materials of all sorts, with various and variable properties [...] mix and meld with one
another in the generation of things” (Ingold 2010: 2). This second, Deleuzian model is –
needless to say – in Ingoldʼs view the most accurate description, whereas the former, is
both flawed and mystifying.
Different notions of performativity
So, how does that relate to the performativity of economics? Well, first of all itʼs important
to note, where the performativity-term comes from, namely: from John L. Austinʼs How to
do things with words from 1962 (MacKenzie 2004: 305, Didier 2007: 293). Here, he
distinguishes between “denotative utterances” (which are descriptive statements about the
world) versus so-called “performative utterances,” which for instance is what the priest
8Jan Løhmann Stephensen: “Inscribing Creativity Into Economics in a Somewhat Creative Fashion”.
Paper presented at Inventing Connentions-conference arranged by Danish Association for Science and Technology
Studies at Aarhus University, June 9-10 2011.
does, when he declares two people husband and wife: he makes it so. In other words: the
distinction between, on the one hand: what economic theories claim to be doing
(describing something “out there” like the economy and its mechanisms, etc.); and on the
other hand: what economics is really doing all the time; at least according to the theory of
performative capitalism (MacKenzie 2004, Thrift 2006).
! But how does this performativity take place? And what is the extent or depth of this
performative reframing of the economy? Here these two traditions of creativity come in
handy, and as a result, it could perhaps even be argued that the term “performativity” is
just as inappropriate as “virtuality.” At least this is what Emmanuel Didier has suggested. In
stead he has proposed that the term “expressing,” which he draws from no other than
Gilles Deleuze (once again!), could be more adequate in describing the ways in which
economics, statistics and various mercantile disciplines intimately interact with – and are,
in fact, part and parcel of – specific economic practices. He describes this in the following
passage, which I have quoted at length:
ʻexpressingʼ takes place when various elements [...] are gathered in a particular way,
and this particular relation evinces a new feature of the whole composed by that
coming together. […] Each time, the expression gives birth to a characteristic that
becomes existent. […] Expression means doing something, making some previously
nonexistent properties stand out, and the important word here is doing/making, for
expression does something to, makes something of the objects expressed. But if
expression is an action, that does not make it a creation. When speaking of expression
we are not referring to a process in which an entity (statistics, for example) would have
the demiurgic power to bring another entity, such as the agricultural economy, into
existence all by itself, by dint of its own strength and resources. (Didier 2007: 303-304)
So, expression (or expressing) means a certain way of combining and arranging already
existing phenomena. And it is the concrete, specific way in which this (re-)combinatory
praxis is carried out/performed which is innovative/creative, and which casts a new light on
what is being examined and discussed and perhaps “gives life” to this (Didier 2007: 305).
But in the sense that something new appears (which is, obviously, quite different from
something comes into existence in literal terms).
! Comparing this definition of “expressing” – or “soft performativity” – to those
traditions/models of creativity mentioned earlier, the parallels to the meshworking (Ingold)
modularities of the lost tradition (Mason) and the logic of new media (Manovich) seem
almost too obvious to mention. They are distributed over time, space and various agents
9Jan Løhmann Stephensen: “Inscribing Creativity Into Economics in a Somewhat Creative Fashion”.
Paper presented at Inventing Connentions-conference arranged by Danish Association for Science and Technology
Studies at Aarhus University, June 9-10 2011.
(which are not/no longer hierarchically distributed); they occur in several moments/phases,
and they take existing materials as their starting point. And by emphasizing these specific
aspects, the tendency of especially the term “performativity,” to invoke the impression that
the entire economic landscape can be instantly transformed into a new economy if only a
strong enough theory should enter is easier avoided (which is the important point: to get
rid of this creatio ex nihilo-heritage from the “Austinian performativity” (MacKenzie 2004:
305); the idea that economics produce economies in their own image, by waving some
magic wand (Didier xxx)). Expression is on other words a way of making something stand
out, a way of “folding” (and unfolding and refolding) the economy differently. In this sense,
this modeling of the world is not “pure creation” by some heroic “architect” like in Inception
(2010). Itʼs rather a kind of remodeling. Or, as someone has put it – again with reference to
Deleuze – a way of engaging the world as some kind of “origami cosmos” (May 2005: 38)
– although with the important difference from ordinary origami that you never really know if
you folding or being folded, that is: who is (re)configuring/(re)constructing who?
! In this sense there seems to be quite a perfect match between this transformed
notion of human creativity and the so-called performative turn of the economy. Both on the
“inside” of these discourses, one might say: what is being “preached” by the priesthood of
the cultural circuits of capitalism; and “on the outside” – that is: the performative utterances
on economic matters as acts of creativity themselves which have quite concrete, “real
world” implications. Of course not in the one-way-sense often advocated on the inside of
the creativity discourse, especially in business and so-called “how to”-literature, where
there is a straight line from creativity, over innovation to diffusion (Coade 1997: 2), but
rather a kind of creativity like the one Pop Art-artist Jasper Johns tongue-in-cheek
described the following way:
Itʼs simple, you just take something, and then you do something to it, and then you do
something else to it. Keep doing this, and pretty soon youʼve got something.” (Johns
1958)
Manageable creativity
The reason why it seemed important to me a couple of minutes ago to emphasize the
activity-aspect of the right side of Ingoldʼs dichotomy (cf. “meshworking” rather than
“meshwork”) is because this implied shift in the conception of creativity parallels a more
general shift within creativity research over the last decades. This shift can be illustrated
10Jan Løhmann Stephensen: “Inscribing Creativity Into Economics in a Somewhat Creative Fashion”.
Paper presented at Inventing Connentions-conference arranged by Danish Association for Science and Technology
Studies at Aarhus University, June 9-10 2011.
through Mel Rhodes (1961) distinction between 4 different aspects of creativity, the so-
called “4 Pʼs”: Person, Product, Process, and Pressure (which, of course, predates the
actual shift, but nonetheless provides us with a good set of tools).
! According to Chris Bilton (2007, 2010) we have in recent years witnessed a shift
from heroic to structural creativity through which emphasis has increasingly been placed
on process and pressure (context, structures, social setting, etc.) rather than person (trait)
and product (what Ingold refers to as “object” and Manovich “work of art”). “Attention,” says
Bilton, hereby “shifts from individual compentences to the social and organizational
frameworks” (Bilton 2007: 24), to the “processes and systems” (23).
! Initially, of course, primarily by parting with the idea of the artist geniusʼs monopoly
on creativity, which had been dominant since Romanticism, and thereby shedding some of
the essentialism traditionally related to the idea of creativity. This transformation has
obviously implications for what we regard as creativity, where we look for it, and from
whom, and so on. And ultimately it also influences the way we perceive our own actions:
are they creative or not? And thus: am I creative or not? (which didnʼt even concern most
people the slightest some decades ago, I would argue). This shift in accentuation is also
present in the writings of STS-related theoretician Andrew Barry, who in this passage
distances himself particularly from the essentialist product-oriented view on creativity,
instead focussing on the structural and temporal conditions of creativity:
What is inventive is not the novelty of artefacts in themselves, but the novelty of the
arrangements with other activities and entities within which artefacts are situated. And
might be situated in the future. (Barry 1999)
A view which is parallel to Masonʼs “lost tradition” in which there are no finite products of
creativity as such, only continual deferral of closure, and where applying the verdict
“creative/not creative” very much depends on the specific, yet unpredictable uses the
various technologies and ideas are put to!
! A crucial point in Biltonʼs observation about the shift in accentuation within “the 4 Pʼs
of creativity” is the fact that this has obviously made creativity more manageable (Bilton
2010). Whereas managing heroic creativity is an activity primarily concerned with
recruiting creative individuals/persons and thus in effect renders management rather
peripheral, the activity of managing post-heroic, structural creativity is concerned with true
11Jan Løhmann Stephensen: “Inscribing Creativity Into Economics in a Somewhat Creative Fashion”.
Paper presented at Inventing Connentions-conference arranged by Danish Association for Science and Technology
Studies at Aarhus University, June 9-10 2011.
management stuff like orchestrating innovation processes, designing and intervening in
organizational settings, building company cultures and so on.1
Hyper-complex terminology and counterperformativity
Although I might have given that impression up ʻtill now, this tendency towards process
and/or pressure-oriented understandings of creativity is not total, nor in complete unison.
Pending on the situation or the specific context, various “creativities” are called upon – and
often even simultaneously, which most of the time actually seems to strengthen the power
of this discourse and not, as one might expect, make them implode, so to speak.
! Obviously, in economic discourses on creativity one never really loses track of the
product-approach. This is the raison d'être of the whole enterprise and the true measure of
the creative effort is obviously the productʼs salability. But the person-approach also
becomes important on a number of occasions. This is for instance obvious in relation to
issues on copyright and other intellectual property (IP), where there is a very strong
emphasis on the intimate relationship between the producer/owner and his product/
property. This has for instance been pointed out by Lawrence Lessig (2004, 2008), who
has introduced a dichotomy of his own between RO-culture (“Read only”) and R/W-culture
(“Read/Write”). The first one based on authorial authority and passive “readerism”; second
on logic on “borrowing”, reader co-authorship and remixing – in sum: “Rip, mix, and burn”.
This distinction is, of course, homologous with Manovichʼs distinction between the logic of
art versus the logic of new media (as well as the other dichotomies), with strong emphasis
on the author-rights on the left side/column of figure 2 (should graphically be on the other
side, I suppose (cf. “copyright” vs. so-called “copyleft” etc.)).
! Lessing argument is, that this insistence on an out dated mode of ownership has in
fact turned out to be a counterperformative economic model – in the sense MacKenzie
(2004: 306-307) suggests – since these legislations on copyright, which where originally
invented to encourage creativity through extrinsic motivation (financial reward), now in
stead have come to stifle this real “new” creativity as it is taking place right now all over the
place, thus making us all unfree. Therefore we either need a variety of different kinds of
voluntary agreements (Creative Commons) or – as he has been increasingly arguing in the
1To the best of my knowledge there has not been done any research on the interrelationship
between (1) these contemporary conceptions of manageable creativity, (2) the profound economic
and political interests in creativity as a growth driver, and (3) the allocation of research funding; but
the conclusions seem rather obvious I would claim.
12Jan Løhmann Stephensen: “Inscribing Creativity Into Economics in a Somewhat Creative Fashion”.
Paper presented at Inventing Connentions-conference arranged by Danish Association for Science and Technology
Studies at Aarhus University, June 9-10 2011.
latter years – a whole new copyright legislation. This is suggested, not only to become a
free culture once again, but also in order to realize the performative potential promised by
the creativity discourse.
! The person-approach is also conjured within management and political discourses
(both on economy and education) when people are called upon, and reframed/
reconfigured as workers and citizens of a specific kind (the discursive act, Althusser once
called “interpellation” or “hailing,” I believe). This is what Ulrich Bröckling has labeled “the
creative imperative”, which is especially inherent in recent economic and management
literature. He writes:
Appeals (ʻbe creative!ʼ) and self-understanding (ʻIʼm myself to the extent Iʼm creativeʼ)
here come together. The unity of description and prescription corresponds to a
paradoxical temporal structure that fuses the ʻalways wasʼ with the ʻnot yetʼ: According
to this schema, creativity is firstly something everyone has – an anthropological
capacity; second, something one ought to have – a binding norm; third, something one
can never have enough of – a telos without closure; fourth, something that can be
intensified through methodological instruction and exercise – a learnable competence.
(Bröckling 2006: 516)
This normative anthropology is remarkable since it seems downright impossible to live up
to. Bröckling is obviously pushing the envelope here, but it is nonetheless a pretty good
summary of the creativity discourse at large. And assuming that the overall aim of this
massive discourse on creativity is to “reconfigure” workers and citizens as productive,
creative beings within an economic framework – and not just produce confused, frustrated
ones – it is also rather counterperformative.
! The best scrutiny of this “creativity arms race,” this compulsory normalization of
deviation, this demand that the unnormal should be the norm, where everyone tries to out-
excel everyone else – but how can anyone or anything excel, when everyone and
everything excels? – is, however, not best expressed in theory. It is in fact better illustrated
in Monty Pythonʼs classic scene from The Life of Brian, where the paradoxical claim
“Youʼre all individuals,” is preached by Brian Himself to a crowd of admiring followers. And
equally expressed with paradigmatic force in Ricky Gervaisʼ mock-management-lingo of
the hopeless middle manager-character David Brent: “Team playing – I call it team
individuality, it's a new, it's like a management style. Again guilty, unorthodox, sue me!”
13Jan Løhmann Stephensen: “Inscribing Creativity Into Economics in a Somewhat Creative Fashion”.
Paper presented at Inventing Connentions-conference arranged by Danish Association for Science and Technology
Studies at Aarhus University, June 9-10 2011.
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Barry, Andrew & Slater, Don (2002b): “Technology, politics and the market: an interview with Michel
Callon”, Economy & Society, vol. 31, nr. 2, pp. 285-306.
Baudrillard, Jean (1988): “Transpolitik, transseksuel, transæstetik”, in Else Marie Bukdahl &
Carsten Juhl (ed.), Kunstens og filosofiens værker efter emancipationen. Kbh.: Det Kgl.
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