Becoming ‘culturpreneur’: How the ‘neoliberal regime of truth’ affects and redefines artistic subject positions

Abstract

In relating to the politico-economic concept of ‘creative industries’, the paper explores in what way the art field and its actors are discursively repositioned within ‘flexible cultural capitalism’. Through empirical material from the independent Austrian theatre scene, the paper, moreover, illustrates how the ‘culturpreneurial’ transformation of the field affects the specific artistic practices, forms of organizing and conduct. In this regard, it will be shown that the artists’ modes of conduct are, at least to some extent, precarious: due to their ascetic and disciplined self-concept, artists seem to contribute, in parts, to their own marginalization as well as to the strengthening of certain ‘neoliberal orders’ and ‘culturpreneurial subject ideals’ of flexible capitalism – even though they are actually keen to resist current governmental technologies like the promotion of competition and market-determined assessment.

Keywords:

• artistic self-concepts
• creative industries
• governmentality
• neoliberal subject ideals
• precarization
• theatre scene

Acknowledgements

The author extends special thanks to the two anonymous reviewers and the editor for their very valuable comments and feedback. The empirical research of this article was funded by a grant from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) as ‘Re-creating organization’, Project number P19026-G11.

Notes

‘Regime’ is in the current context used in order to delineate a more or less coherent rationality assemblage that encompasses, includes and excludes various power/knowledge discourses, practices and technologies (Foucault 1991). The phrase ‘regime of truth’ (Foucault 1994) more explicitly emphasizes that regimes structure and define ‘what is to be known’ (Foucault 1991, 75) and ‘what is to be done’ (Foucault 1991, 75) at a very particular historical and cultural time.

The term was introduced by Deleuze (1995), who argued that ‘disciplinary societies’ (Foucault 1994) have been modulated after 1950 and been transformed into what he calls post-disciplinary ‘societies of control’ (also Foucault 2008; Weiskopf and Loacker 2006).

Current flexible capitalism demonstrated its ‘creativity’, e.g. through the modes in which it absorbed criticism that was passed on the ‘disciplinary regime’ (of work organization). Both the left and the right criticized the disciplinary power programme for its rigidity, density of regulation, restrictions, etc. As is known, within the ‘post-disciplinary regime’ these objections were taken up and transformed into new norms and imperatives that are, again, in line with the governmental rationalities and intents of flexible capitalism (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005, 142–5).

As analytical category, the term ‘cultural industries’ was originally brought in by Adorno and Horkheimer (1977).

See Blair's speech in London's Tate Modern museum in March 2007: www.number10.gov.uk/Page11166.

The following European (however, mainly Austrian) CI policy documents were analysed for the study at hand: Erster Österreichischer Kreativwirtschaftsbericht (KMU) (2003); Goehler (2006); Greenbook Culture and Creativity from the London Department for CMS (2001); Kulturwirtschaftsbericht des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen (2001); Mapping Document of the London Department for CMS (1998); Schlussbericht der Enquete-Kommission ‘Kultur in Deutschland’ (EKKD) (2007) and Bericht zum ökonomischen Potential der Creative Industries in Wien (KMW) (2004). This review was, furthermore, supplemented by an analysis of management and governmentality studies texts that explicitly relate to the cultural field, its functions and logics (e.g. Caves 2000; Florida 2002; Gray 2002; Lange et al. 2009; Leadbeater 2007; Lotter 2007; O'Connor 2000; more critically e.g. Böhm and Land 2009; Boltanski and Chiapello 2005; Boon, Jones, and Curnow 2009; Hesmondhalgh 2007; McRobbie 2009; Menger 2006; Mörsch 2003).

The ‘creative-industries discourse’ that follows the key-note of exploitable individual creativity has to be seen as an ‘inter-discourse’ that is constituted, co-and re-produced through various agencies of government – from academics, to consultants, media agencies, political institutions, etc. (also Boon, Jones, and Curnow 2009).

The independent theatre, formally organized as a non-profit association receives a modicum of subsidies from the town, the state, as well as from some private sponsors. Still, for its viability, it cannot hand over responsibility to its promoters. Moreover, all but the theatre's management and the technicians are self-employed actors who usually work on project-based arrangements.

As analysed, the CI discourse produces a certain order of knowledge and truth in which the artistic subject is produced and positioned as autonomous ‘culturpreneur’ that strategically makes use of this ‘cultural, symbolic and social capital’. The culturpreneurial role model, thus, discursively re-defines the ideal self-concept, skills and performance, demanded from artists; by this means, it also affects the way artists have to see themselves as ‘professionals’. The fact that the model of the ‘culturpreneur’ produces such subjectifying effects does, again, not imply that the artists subject to the model's particular normative invocations (Foucault 1982, 221, 1994).