As Boltanski and Chiapello (2005, 167–225; Rolnik 2011) point out, over the 1970s and 1980s these ironically became the watchwords for the reorganization of capitalism itself, as it incorporated both its “social” and “artistic” critique in order to shrug off the imposition of Keynesian regulations (themselves the residual compromise of pre-war anti-capitalist struggles). … Under the banner of liberating individuals from the shackles of “big government” and paternalistic corporations, a new paradigm of neoliberal privatization was implemented. … In this period, as Angela McRobbie (2001; 2011) notes, the artist was held up as the “pioneer of the new economy,” their contract-based employment and seamless integration of work life with social life with home life with a passionate dream life having been positioned as a beacon to those “uncreative” souls struggling to make ends meet through the drudgery of multiple part-time, temporary jobs. … To be clear, we need to make a distinction between the actual sociological trends towards “creative” work and the function of the celebratory rhetoric as a means to discipline and shape the subjectivities of workers more broadly.

Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, loc. 439