Managerialism and Aesthetics

Abstract

This article argues that ‘managerialism’ and ‘aesthetics’ stand in stark opposition to each other in the field of media studies: managerialism is increasingly aligned with a market ideology, with the consequence that aesthetics, as a practice of active reflection on the creative process and the production of the imagination, is impaired and distorted. Without advocating the separation of an artistic domain from the broader processes of cultural communication (a dissociation which cultural and media studies have been devoted to overcoming), what is required is an ‘aesthetics from below’, an aesthetics in which theoretical concepts will be constantly informed and tested by practice. As educational institutions seek to respond to the new ecology of broadcast production, the important questions centre on who determines the orientation of media practice education, the space it affords to the imagination, and whether it can resist managerialism in favour of aesthetics.