Against Creativity by Oli Mould review – the dullest of jobs is now ‘creative’

A stimulating study argues that the language of creativity in government and business is all too often a cover for austerity and corporate intrusion into our daily lives

Are you a member of the "creative classes"? You might be if you do something that vaguely involves ideas or images, and aspire to live in a warehouse-style apartment next to an artisan coffee shop and pop-up gallery. But what's so wrong with that? Reader, I sat in a hipster cafe in London's East End and prepared to find out.

The book's beginning is wobbly, as it tries to show that the very idea of creativity was invented by modern capitalism. In his day, Shakespeare would not have been thought a genius but a mere "craftsman" or "wordsmith", Oli Mould claims. This would have come as a surprise to Shakespeare's friend Ben Jonson, who called him "the star of poets", and one who was "not of an age but for all time". Meanwhile, the Enlightenment is blamed for colonialism (which came first), and for "the privatisation of creativity" by wealthy people commissioning art, although patronage has supported artists at least since Roman times.

Creativity, Mould insists, is never allowed to be apolitical

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