Keywords

Introduction

This chapter approaches artistic critique on capitalism as a theoretical and practical problem by focusing on recent debates on capitalism, critique, and crisis, prompted mainly by the seminal work of Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello , The New Spirit of Capitalism, published in French in 1999 and then in English in 2005 with a new Preface. Two axioms of their general model of (normative) change state that critique is a catalyst in transforming the spirit of capitalism and, in certain conditions, a factor in changing capitalism itself. A more controversial conclusion at that time, highlighted on the cover of the French first edition, was that “the real crisis is not that of capitalism but of the critique of capitalism.” This contentious idea ensued from the diagnosis of “neutralization,” “silence,” and even the “end of critique,” both social and artistic; hence, the call for their necessary revival and redeployment (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005a , 324–27, 489–90). Drawing on subsequent interventions by Boltanski and other sociologists on this core issue, including its recent revisiting in the New Spirits of Capitalism? Crises, Justifications, and Dynamics (2013), edited by Paul Du Gay and Glenn Morgan , as well as on the notion of “critical attitude” supported by Michel Foucault , I will explore the interactions between the artistic critique on capitalism and its recent dynamics, by discussing the social role of artists in the context of globalized or “network capitalism ,” and the imperative toward creativity as a challenge of managerial discourse.

An important task is to clarify what is “critique” and how could it be exercised in its practical sense: which are the historical sources, forms, and manners for criticizing capitalism? Which are the conditions of possibility for contemporary artists to exercise a genuine critique of capitalist order? The main aim of this chapter is, in answering these questions, to disclose the paradoxical consequences prompted by artistic critique on capitalism and its spirit, in terms of the emergence of new norms of excellence and ways of life, those of artists as well as of other “creative” people engaged in capitalist order. It also aims at a reconsideration of the artistic critique on capitalism by taking into account recent developments and controversies about “crisis” and “critique.” Another question is whether a sustainable lifestyle can be formed by a generalization of the artistic model of creative life and excellence. The “creative ethos” has become pervasive since the rise of what Richard Florida hails as the “Creative Age” or “Age of Talent,” with the artists (along with scientists, engineers, designers, etc.) being thought of as an advanced social group, the supercore of a growing “creative class ” (Florida 2002, 21–22, 72–77). This imperative toward creativity leads to posing the artist as an exemplary figure of the “worker of the future,” for whom the distinctions between work and nonwork, between work and the person of those who perform it, have become obsolete or disappeared. Finally, there are the questions of whether this “creative lifestyle,” adaptable, mobile, and flexible, could be extended to the entire labor market and social body without costs in terms of insecurity and instability, and whether the artists can contribute to redevelop a particular sense of self-realization and self-fulfillment by their critical demands for creativity and authenticity.

Capitalism, the Spirit of Capitalism, and Critique

In order to accomplish these tasks, I will first draw on the “model of change” of contemporary capitalism proposed by Boltanski and Chiapello in The New Spirit of Capitalism (2005a), notably on the basis of the French example, yet with more of a general overview, which was briefly summarized in a homonymous article published in English in 2005 (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005b). The authors’ account of the classic question of the dynamics of capitalism contains three interrelated “actants”: capitalism, the spirit of capitalism, and critique. Following the Weberian tradition, they put the ideologies on which capitalism rests at the center of their analysis, because ideologies sit at the heart of this three-sided game. Yet, the notion of the spirit of capitalism is not employed in the canonical usages: it is detached from the Weberian substantial content, in terms of ethos, to be treated as a form that can be filled differently in different instants in the development of modes of organizing, and it is meant not only to furnish individual reasons but also justifications in terms of the common good (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005a , 10–11; see also, Du Gay and Morgan 2013a , 14). The authors’ key concept of the spirit of capitalism designates “the ideology that justifies people’s commitment to capitalism, and which renders this commitment attractive,”Footnote 1 while the concept of the “new spirit of capitalism” is used by them in order to give an account of the ideological changes that have accompanied transformation in capitalism over the last 30–40 years (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005a , 3, 8–11). Thus, this “spirit,” referring to a distinct set of norms or a legitimizing value system, is strongly related to certain forms of action and one’s lifestyle conducive to the capitalist order (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005a , 10).

It is also worth noting that Boltanski and Chiapello are mainly apprehending “capitalism” through its logic, the dynamics of capital accumulation , and the organization of labor (wage-earning). Therefore, they distinguish between it and the “market economy”: from the various characterizations of capitalism, they retain a minimal formula which stresses the “imperative to unlimited accumulation of capital by formally pacific means, competition and employment” (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005a , 4; 2005b, 162–63). The subsequent idea, imported from the regulationist account, is that capitalism is a blind force that does not find any principle of self-limitation and orientation within itself.

Capitalism’s lack of concern for norms means that its spirit cannot be generated exclusively out of its own resources; as a result, it need its enemies and critique to find the moral supports it lacks and to incorporate mechanisms of justice (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005a , 27–28; see also, Du Gay and Morgan 2013a , 15). The “very concept of critique,” according to Boltanski and Chiapello , “escapes theoretical polarization between interpretations in terms of relations of force and of legitimate relations,” and it “is meaningful only when there is a difference between a desirable and an actual state of affairs.” Thus, the critique the authors envisaged is a critique of capitalism as previously defined, that is, centered on economic mechanisms, forms of work organization, and profit extraction, not a critique of “imperialism,” as in some recent redeployments of the critique (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005a , xvii, 27).

There are certainly different conceptions of capitalism in use in social theory. For example, Nancy Fraser , in a recent Jan Patočka Memorial Lecture, entitled “Crisis, Critique, Capitalism – A Framework for the 21st Century” (2013), reexamines the basic theoretical question of how capitalism is best conceptualized, concluding that “an expanded conception of capitalism,” as an economic system, a form of ethical life, and an institutional order, would be “able better to accommodate the multiplicity of crisis tendencies and social struggles that characterize the 21st century” (Fraser 2013 ). Such a comprehensive analysis of capitalism after a period of neglect of this key concept would be, indeed, desirable. However, the minimalist way in which Boltanski and Chiapello conceptualize capitalism better fits within the limits and purpose of this chapter.

Forms and Manners of the Critique on Capitalism

Capitalism has always faced criticism in different forms and manners, which accompanied its development. Critique with social aims had been amply deployed from the outset, and also constituted a core issue of the social theory through many analyses that I cannot list here. There are also diverse and significant analyses of the critical side of the artistic activity, which has positioned itself in opposition to the bourgeois way of life associated with the rise of capitalism, and was labeled as “artistic critique” (Graña 1964; Bourdieu 1996 ; Chiapello 1998 ). The distinction between two forms of critique on capitalism, social and artistic, constitutes a leitmotiv of Boltanski and Chiapello’s The New Spirit of Capitalism, at the point that these coexistent forms of critique seem to be comparatively incompatible (2005a, xii).

A brief overview of the account given by Boltanski and Chiapello of “the historical forms of the critique of capitalism” shows that both were constituted in the nineteenth century but had different sources and levels of expression: the primary one is emotional, such as indignation—a bad experience prompting protest, and the secondary is ideological, that is, reflexive, theoretical, or argumentative. The work of the critique consists precisely in the translation of indignation into the framework of critical theories, and then the “voicing” of it (in the sense conceptualized by Hirschman 1970).

The social critique was inspired by socialists and, later, by Marxists, and is associated with the history of the working-class movement: it denounces capitalism as source of exploitation, poverty, and social inequalities, as well as of opportunism and egoism, demanding instead security, solidarity, and equality. It has a modernist side, when fighting against inequalities, and an antimodernist side, when it is constructed as a critique of individualism (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005a , 36–37; 2005b, 175–76).

The artistic critique, instead, originated in intellectual and artistic circles and the invention of a bohemian lifestyle in nineteenth-century Paris, as pointed out by Jerrold Seigel (1986) , who underlines the importance attached to creativity , pleasure, imagination, and innovation. Boltanski and Chiapello observe that the artistic critique also foregrounds the loss of the sense of what is beautiful and valuable, which derives from standardization and generalized commodification, and it is based upon a contrast between attachment and stability on the one hand (the bourgeoisie), and detachment and mobility on the other (the intellectuals and artists). In the authors’ view, this opposition constitutes the core of the artistic critique and its paradigmatic formulation is found in Baudelaire (1863/1964 ). Therefore, the artistic critique denounces capitalism as a source of disenchantment and inauthenticity, as well as of oppression in as much as it is opposed to freedom, autonomy , and creativity of human beings. Along with the antimodernist side that denounces disenchantment, the artistic critique also has a modernist side, which develops demands for liberation , autonomy , and authenticity (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005a , 38–40).

There are also different manners of criticizing capitalism, notably its related tests (see below). The first is a critique with a corrective purpose, also called “reformist,” whose intent is to correct and improve established capitalist order (tests) to make it more just. The second manner of critique, which has historically proclaimed itself “revolutionary,” is dubbed radical by Boltanski and Chiapello (2005a, 32–33) , as it aims at suppressing the capitalist regime (or tests) and, ultimately, replacing it with a different regime (or tests). As the authors mention, the forms of critique indicated by their analysis are not “revolutionary” but those that might be dubbed as “reformist.” However, these do not exclude radical challenges to the basic values and options of capitalism, as did the artistic critique that shares its individualism with modernity (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005a , xiv, xvi, 39; see also Ratiu 2011, 30–31).

Hence, the distinction revolutionary versus reformist is not superimposable to those between artistic and social critique; neither is the distinction radical versus corrective. Yet, radical critique is often articulated through more creative media, such as art and literature, because “the experiences of injustice or humiliation that are often at the basis of radical critique are difficult to generalize, as existing narratives do not easily dispose of a language to recognize such experiences as unjust” (Blokker 2011, 255).

Finally, it is important to add that according to Boltanski and Chiapello (2005a, 40–41) , there is an “inherent ambiguity of critique: even in the case of the most radical movements, it shares ‘something’ with what it seeks to criticize.” Accordingly, “the dialectic of capitalism and its critiques proves interminable as long as we remain in the capitalist regime.” Despite this, the “voice” critique possesses a certain effectiveness in changing capitalism and its spirit.

Dynamics of Change: The Role of Critique

Two important items of the eight-point axiomatics of the model of change proposed by Boltanski and Chiapello in The New Spirit of Capitalism regard the central role of the critique as a catalyst for change in the spirit of capitalism and, possibly, of capitalism itself: “6: The principal operator of creation and transformation of the spirit of capitalism is critique (voice),” and “7: In certain conditions, critique can itself be one of the factors of a change in capitalism (and not merely in its spirit)” (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005a , 489–90).

There are some other key concepts to understanding the dynamics of change in capitalism and its spirit or value system: the “city” (cité in French) or “justificatory regime,” the “test” (épreuve) or “proof of worth,” and two modes of action: “categorization” (catégorisation) and “displacement” (déplacement). To put it briefly, “it is the effect of the critique which allows the spirit of capitalism to change … [by] finding justifications, which in turn are taken over by capitalism and absorbed by its spirit” (Boltanski, in Basaure 2011 , 368). These justifications appeal to the externally normative hold points of capitalism, which are, in essence, the “cities.” This theoretical construct refers to a model of “justificatory regimes” or “orders of worth,” each based upon a different principle of evaluation, and has been developed by Luc Boltanski , together with Laurent Thévenot, in an earlier publication, De la Justification. Les économies de la grandeur (1991), translated into English in 2006 (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005b , 167–69; see also, Basaure 2011, 373, 380).

Furthermore, changes are also changes in test systems. As Boltanski and Chiapello (2005a, 30–32) point out, critique and testing are closely interrelated: the impact of critique on capitalism operates by means of the effects that it has on the central tests of capitalism. These “tests,” upon which the legitimacy of the social order is based, are defined as “privileged moments of judgment, appreciation and thus of selection, remuneration, of positive and negative sanction”; in other words, more or less standardized procedures for confronting peoples’ claims with the real world. This notion allows one to address a key sociological question concerning “the selection process governing the differential distribution of persons between positions of unequal value, and the more or less just character of this distribution.” There are two different modes of testing: “tests of strength” and “legitimate tests.” However, these are not to be conceived in discrete oppositions, as there is a continuum between them: the test is always a test of strength but will be regarded as legitimate when the situation is subjected to justificatory constraints, which are judged as being genuinely respected (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005a, 30–32; b , 171–72).

The notion of a test is also meant to break with a narrowly determinist conception of the social, thus emphasizing, from the viewpoint of action, the various degrees of uncertainty haunting situations in social life. Each of these two types of tests correspond to a specific mode or regime of action, “categorization” and “displacement,” which describe how testing systems are being transformed (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005a , 30; 2005b, 173; see also, Blokker 2011, 255). To put it briefly, following Boltanski (in Basaure 2011, 376), “in the regime of action called ‘displacement’, the changes always have a local character in that they are situated in a ‘level of immanence’ and are merely objects of ‘limited reflexivity’ without a superior position” (this is mainly related to capitalism as a “blind force”). This is the reason why “the changes caused by the displacement do not immediately lead to a reconfiguration of the categories that structure the representation, especially the legal one, of the social world.” Instead, the “mode of categorization” refers to social conventions having a broad-based validity, as well as a certain type of externality, that is, a form of transcendence. For the most part, it is critique that categorizes, “when it interprets, totalizes, and questions the legitimacy of the changes set into motion by the displacements, that is, their claim to comply with the common good,” and, thus, implements the reconfiguration of categoriesFootnote 2 (Basaure 2011, 376; Boltanski and Chiapello 2005b , 172; see also, Du Gay and Morgan 2013a , 15).

The amplitude of changes set into motion by critique itself depends on the manner of criticism. If a reformist critique might result in the confirmation and strengthening of the existing order, the success of a radical critique, “pertaining to another city,” will involve a shift in dominant arrangements and their justifications (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005b, 162; see also, Blokker 2011 , 255). The study of changes in the spirit of capitalism in France between the 1960s and 1990s, through the analysis of management texts that provide moral education on business practices, has revealed a major reorganization in dominant value systems or sets of norms that are considered to be relevant and legitimate for the assessment of people, things, and situations. This change was described as a passage from the “second spirit” to a new, “third spirit” of capitalism. It is worth noting that the third spirit of capitalism is also a new normative world, a new universe of justification, epitomized by a new city, the so-called projective city or project-oriented city (cité par projet). In brief, this new city is organized by networks; it emphasizes activity, mobility, adaptability, flexibility, and autonomy (all contributing to the common good) as a “state of greatness” or worth, conceives life as a series of different short-lived projects, and poses the ability to move from one project to another as a standard test (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005b , 164–66, 169–71).

It is also worth adding that this new universe of justification, or the displacement of distinct orders of worth, is related to displacements of the third “actant,” capitalism itself: that is, the emergence of new capitalistic practices as well as new ways of living and working, in relation to justification of the capitalist economy. What Boltanski and Chiapello call the “third spirit” of capitalism is isomorphic with a third form of capitalism, a globalized, “connexionist” or “network capitalism ” that employs new technologies, which began to manifest itself during the 1980s (which others dub as “post-Fordism ” or “neoliberalism ”). This form of capitalism renounces the Fordist principle of the hierarchical organization of the work to develop instead a new network organization, founded on the initiative of the actors and the relative autonomy of their work (but at the cost of their material and psychological security). Most important, it is also related to the increase in and generalization of the new exigencies of the artistic–intellectual professions: singularity, flexibility, adaptability, self-expression, creativity , and inventiveness, which became new models of excellence (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005a , 18–19, 419–20).

The Current State of the Critique on Capitalism: Crisis, Controversies, and Redeployments

This section will closely examine the current state of artistic critique on capitalism and related controversies, and will open up a new question as to its possible redeployments. A thought-provoking, twofold lesson that Boltanski and Chiapello (2005a, xv, 324–27) draw from their analyses concerns capitalism’s ability to assimilate critique, and the openness of all critique to assimilation, which leads to the “neutralization,” “silence,” and even the “end of critique.” The latter lesson was also displayed in the French first edition of The New Spirit of Capitalism in the showy form of a covering thesis according to which the real crisis is that of the critique on capitalism, not of capitalism itself. This diagnosis seems surprising nowadays, as we experience the ongoing crisis (economic, social, etc.) after the financial collapse of 2007–08, and raises some questions. What is the actual meaning of these lessons or theses and their relevance today? What did “critique” and “crisis” entail, afterward?

Nonetheless, this diagnostic becomes understandable when specifying that, in Boltanski and Chiapello’s view, it does not refer to the primary level in the expression of any critique, the emotional one, which can never be silenced, but to the secondary level, the reflexive, theoretical, and argumentative one (i.e., ideological) that assumes a supply of concepts and schemes of analysis. According to the authors, the critique of capitalism is in crisis because it has placed itself in the alternative of being either ignored, and thus useless, or recuperated. On the one hand, the social critique related to the second form of capitalism and its spirit was made inadequate and neutralized (ideologically) by capitalism’s displacements: too often attached to old schemes of analysis, the social critique has led to methods of defense, henceforth inappropriate to the new forms of redeployed capitalism, the new organization in network, of a connexionist world organized around short-lived projects. On the other hand, the artistic critique, although relevant, has become a victim of its own success and was recuperated: its demands for autonomy , creativity , authenticity, and liberation were integrated into management rhetoric and utilized by the new spirit of capitalism to support and legitimize its displacements, at least in its historical formulations, which privilege liberation over authenticity (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005a , 36, 324–27, 505–06). In the Preface to the English edition, the authors also underline the changed context compared with the first half of the 1990s, especially concerning critique: ten years after, one could witness “a very rapid revival of critique of globalization ,” yet a “virtual stagnation when it comes to establishing mechanisms capable of controlling the new forms of capitalism and reducing their devastating effects.” Hence, the present situation is still paradoxical, being characterized by “an undeniable redeployment of critique and no less patent disarray of that critique” (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005a , xvi–xvii).

All these theses of The New Spirit of Capitalism have left this work open to all sorts of criticism and controversies. Here, I will address some of them by targeting Boltanski and Chiapello’s point of view on artistic critique and its relationships to capitalism’s order and normative system, as well as to the creative work and lifestyle.

The First Controversy: The Artistic Activity/Critique as a Model for a Neoliberal Economy

There is a controversy as to whether the artistic critique or professional practice is the model from which the third spirit and stage of capitalism (or neoliberal economy) draws inspiration. For example, Maurizio Lazzarato (2007) criticized the “ambiguous discourse” of The New Spirit of Capitalism according to which it is claimed that the model of contemporary economic activity is to be found among artists. In rejecting such “misconception,” he further uses Foucault’s work Naissance de la biopolitique (2004), namely the idea that neoliberalism does not seek its model of subjectivification in the artistic activity/creativity or critique since it already has its own model: the idea of the individual as “human capital,” as an entrepreneur of herself/himself. Hence, it is the figure of the entrepreneur that neoliberalism wants to extend across the board to everyone, artists included (Lazzarato 2007, 1, 4).

Indeed, Boltanski and Chiapello (2005a) state that the new, third spirit of capitalism has recuperated and appropriated many components of the artistic critique amply deployed at the end of the 1960s: the demands for liberation , individual autonomy , creativity , self-fulfillment, and authenticity, which nowadays seem to be not only widely acknowledged as essential values of modernity, but also integrated into management rhetoric and then extended to all kinds of employments. Hence, their thesis, according to which the artistic critique has, over the last 20–30 years, rather played into the hands of capitalism and was an instrument of its ability to last (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005a , 419–20). A proof would be, by example, the way in which managers made use of such demands in transforming organizational ethos and practices (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005a , 498).

Boltanski and Chiapello (2005a) and later Boltanski (2008) also emphasize the coupling of the reference to “authenticity” to that of “networks,” assembled in a new ideological figure, that of the project, flexible and transitory. This constitutes the core of a new conception of human excellence or value, in fact compatible or reconciliated with liberalism, a new societal project aimed at making the network a normative model. The artistic critique since Baudelaire promoted a “culture of uncertainty and creativity ,” and contemporary art has contributed to this new value system in its own wayFootnote 3 (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005a , xxii; Boltanski 2008 , 66–67).

Therefore, the authors refer to artistic critique, not to professional practice in general, as an inspiration for a new normative model. Still, this kind of analysis is not singular. Other analysts (Reich 1991; Florida 2002, 2005; Menger 2002 ) who were concerned with the interactions between the arts and other worlds of production have also pointed out that since the 1980s, the norms of work have changed following an internalization of the historical values of the avant-garde, autonomy , flexibility, nonhierarchical environment, continuous innovation, risk-taking, and so on, which are the epitome of artistic work, and led to posing the artist as a figure of the “exemplary worker of the future” (Menger 2002 , 6–7).

Hence, the framework setup in The New Spirit of Capitalism is helpful in theorizing the current normative changes in the art world and other worlds of (creative) production. It also provides a critical standpoint on these changes. In fact, Boltanski and Chiapello take care to report and criticize some paradoxical effects of the demands of liberation , autonomy , and authenticity, which have been formulated by the artistic critique and then incorporated into the new spirit of capitalism and its displacements. Among such paradoxical effects there are notably the “anxiety” (inquiétude) and the “uncertainty” (in a sense that contrasts it with calculable risk) related to the kind of liberation associated with the redeployment of capitalism. This affects all relationships linking a person to the world and to others, and closely linking autonomy to job insecurity or precariousness undoubtedly makes “projecting oneself into the future” more difficult. Additionally, a price for more autonomy and flexibility has been paid with an increase in “instability” and “insecurity.” Boltanski and Chiapello (2005a) , in the chapter “The Test of the Artistic Critique,” also call attention to the fact that the introduction into the capitalist universe of the arts’ operating modes has contributed to disrupting the reference points for ways of evaluating people, actions, or things. In particular, it is about the lack of any distinction between time at work and time outside work, between personal friendship and professional relationships, between work and the person who performs it—which, since the nineteenth century, had constituted typical characteristics of the artistic condition, particularly markers of an artist’s “authenticity” (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005a , 422–24).

Moreover, as the two French sociologists underscore in the Postscript of The New Siprit of Capitalism, entitled “Sociology Contra Fatalism,” in the third stage of capitalism, or post-Fordist condition, the new constraints are, in fact, accompanied by new liberties (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005a , 535–36; see, also, Graw 2008a , 11). As Isabelle Graw (2008b, 78) puts forward, it is a better solution to avoid the total “co-optation” scenario and to acknowledge the valuable accomplishments made by the artistic critique and emancipatory movements of the 1960s and 1970s in terms of “autonomy ” and “self-realization.”

The Second Controversy: The Role of Artistic Critique Versus Social Critique

Another controversy concerns the nature and role of artistic critique, compared with social critique, and focuses on the question of whether these forms of critique oppose each other and are incompatible. According to Lazzarato , “both the definition of what exactly the ‘artistic critique’ is and the role the authors assign to it in contemporary capitalism are puzzling in many respects”; therefore, their concept of “artistic critique” does not hold up for theoretical as well as political reasons (Lazzarato 2007, 1–2). He first disproves the thesis that runs throughout The New Spirit of Capitalism, that the artistic critique and the social critique “are most often developed and embodied by different groups, the ‘creatives’ at the ‘top of the sociocultural hierarchy’ vs. the workers, the ‘little people’, subordinates, those excluded by liberalism, and are ‘incompatible’” (Lazzarato 2007, 1). Then, he contends, quoting an interview by Boltanski and Chiapello (2000) , that the authors are neglecting the role of artistic critique versus social critique, by considering that “the artistic critique is ‘not in itself necessary to effectively challenge capitalism, a fact demonstrated by the earlier successes of the workers’ movement without the support of the artistic critique’” (Lazzarato 2007, 1). Furthermore, he criticizes the authors’ point of view according to which “artistic critique is not naturally egalitarian , always running the risk of being reinterpreted in an aristocratic sense,” and “untempered by considerations of equality and solidarity of the social critique, [it] can very quickly play into the hands of a particularly destructive form of liberalism, as we have seen in recent years (Boltanski and Chiapello 2000 )” (Lazzarato 2007, 2).

It is true that some of Boltanski and Chiapello’s conclusions “are found among others on studying the culture of business frameworks rather than the movements themselves, or rather studying the hegemonic culture from inside, instead of the resistance that opposes it,” as Paula Rebughini observes in an informed study, “Critique and Social Movements: Looking Beyond Contingency and Normativity” (2010, 471). However, as Rebughini confirms, the analysis of capitalism from the 1990s realized by Boltanski and Chiapello (2005a) offers a previously unseen vision of the social movements, although not a study of them specifically. This would first consist in pointing out the existence of a paradox in the relationships between social movements (from May 1968 to the “new social movements” of the 1970s) and the artistic or social critique: “The critical spirit driven by the mobilization mainly favoured artistic critique, centred around the question of authenticity, expressions of creativity and recognition, rather than social critique and its question of a just redistribution.” Second, in revealing a possible perverse effect of the success of the “new social movements”: “This allowed the individualizing and liberal culture of capitalism to absorb and domesticate creative and authentic critique, using it to weaken social critique and to justify the re-dimensioning of welfare or flexible working practices” (Rebughini 2010 , 471).

In this context, it is worth clearing up a misunderstanding, having both theoretical and practical implications. As Boltanski and Chiapello make clear in the Preface and Postscript of the English edition (2005a, xv–xvi), their aim “was never to help establish the ‘projective city’ or even […] to seek to offer ‘capitalism’ a new, immediately available ‘city,’” but to offer a descriptive analysis that prepares “a revival of critique.” Actually, they aimed at a reconsideration of the critique on capitalism by taking into account the specificity of its recent developments and the paradoxical effects of its demands incorporated into the new spirit of capitalism. It is true that the social form of critique is clearly assumed by them, as they closely examine the mechanisms that aim to introduce new forms of security and justice into a universe where flexibility, mobility, and a network form of organization had become basic reference points (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005a , xv). Meanwhile, the direction that the renewal of the artistic critic might take remains blurred (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005a , xvii).

Revival and Redeployment of the Artistic Critique: Against New Forms of Commodification

This new situation makes it necessary, according to Boltanski and Chiapello (2005a) , to renew and redeploy the critique on capitalism, not only in its content, but also in its forms and aims. Yet, this task should be accomplished without setting up the protest and the revolt into values in themselves, regardless of their relevance and acuity. It should also proceed from a different sociological standpoint: the two French sociologists aim to do this from their position as “critics” and not simply “analysts of critique.” In other words, from the standpoint not only of a “critical sociology,” which by its scientific aim could be indifferent to the values that actors claim to adhere to, but mainly of a “sociology of the critique,” which sought to render its foundations more solid (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005a , x–xii, xiv).

As the authors convincingly argued, on the one hand, artistic critique has to restart from different bases of critique: this critique “must constantly shift and forge new weapons,” and “must continually resume its analysis in order to stay as close as possible to the properties that characterize the capitalism of its time” (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005a , 39–41). Their analysis of “the test of the artistic critique” opened up the inescapable question of whether recent forms of capitalism have not emptied the demands of liberation and authenticity of what gave them substance, and anchored them in people’s everyday experience (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005a , 419–20.)

On the other hand, Boltanski and Chiapello emphasize the importance of a more effective critique, of finding new ways to formulate indignation, denunciation, and claims on the basis of new forms of oppression and commodification of productive labor, as well as of the construction of new mechanisms of justice, adjusted with the specificity of recent evolutions, the development of a new “connexionist logic” and a “network capitalism ,” having new modes of functioning, flexible, in network, in which relations and contacts are the new currency to form a world organized around short-lived projects (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005a , 466–68, 519–20). Therefore, artistic critique, in order to be better equipped to foil the recuperative traps that have hitherto been set for it, should take into account the interdependence of the different dimensions of the demands of liberation and authenticity, as well as capitalism’s vocation to merchandise desire, especially the desire for liberation , and hence to recuperate and supervise it (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005a , 438).

Unsurprisingly, the authors’ updated personal viewpoint on this issue, expressed in the Postscript “Sociology Contra Fatalism,” in some way corrects the descriptive analysis in the body of the text (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005a , xv). According to this “personal” standpoint, the themes of the artistic critique, such as the demands for liberation , autonomy , and authenticity, are essential and still topical, because it is on the basis of such themes that “we have most chance of mounting effective resistance to the establishment of a world where anything can find itself transformed into a commodity product,” and “where people would constantly be put to the test, subjected to an exigency of incessant change and deprived by this kind of organized insecurity of what ensures the permanency of their self.” Boltanski and Chiapello conclude their analysis of the new spirit of capitalism by stating that a revived artistic critique can accomplish this task only by undoing the link that has hitherto associated liberation with mobility, which has led to insecurity and precariousness (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005a , 535–36). The target of this warning is the culture of uncertainty and creativity that was promoted by that trend of artistic critique which has at its core the opposition between stability and mobility. This opposition emerges in Baudelaire’s work and particularly expands through Surrealism and, more recently, through movements that stem from it, such as Situationism (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005a , 38; Boltanski 2008, 56; Ratiu 2011 , 38–40).

This conclusion also implies a position against the radicalism and vast prophetic demands or totalizing designs of the so-called revolutionary critique: the “longing for total revolution.” In a further analysis of the fate of the left criticism in current capitalism, entitled “The Present Left and the Longing for Revolution” (2008), Boltanski notes its conflictive or paradoxical state: while the social critique that reappeared in France following 1995 is still anticapitalist but mainly concerned with democracy, rights, and citizenship, and seems to have abandoned the aspiration to total revolution, this longing becomes displaced from the domain of the production of material goods to that of the reproduction of human beings, which invests in questions connected to “biopolitics” (in terms of Foucault ). This is a much more radical critique because it involves a radical redefinition of anthropology: the separation between primary humanity, “biological,” and a second (future) humanity, “elective.” Yet, this new form of longing for total revolution is indifferent to the question of capitalism or is conjugated with it; that is, it is no longer anticapitalist (Boltanski 2008 , 64–65, 69–70; see also, Boltanski and Chiapello 2005a , xiv).

Further Controversies: The Concept of “Critique” in Sociology

These controversies and paradoxes also relate to different views on the concept of “critique” and types of critical approaches in sociology. “There is no shared vision regarding the content and the way in which critique may be conducted,” as Rebughini (2010) observes, and it is difficult to give an unequivocal answer to the questions “critique of what?” and “critique for whom?” The concept of critique in sociology “has usually referred to the ‘critique of domination’ or to the break of a cognitive and normative order structured within practices and routines.” Yet, Rebughini (2010) reports, on the one hand, the emergence in recent years of a redimensioned conception of critique, of a pragmatic, pluralistic, and contingent nature. On the other hand, she shows how the need for a strong and transcendental concept of critique that does not renounce the possibility of individual and collective emancipation is still present (Rebughini 2010 , 459).

For a better clarification of this tension, I will briefly compare four major readings of the concept of critique, drawing on Rebughini (2010): transcendent (critical theory), epistemic (critical sociology: Bourdieu ), contingent (Foucault ), and pragmatic (Boltanski and Thévenot). The “transcendent critique,” born from the Kantian critique and passing through Hegel and Marx , developed by the Frankfurt School and successively revised by Habermas , presents a certain continuity in the concept of critique as “transcendent to the context” (Rebughini 2010 , 461). Bourdieu’s critical sociology can be defined as an “epistemic critique” of domination, where sociological knowledge plays a central role as a point of view able to maintain its distance from the doxa , demonstrating how power is instilled in bodies and cognitive processes (as he posits in Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action, 1998). However, the possibility of emancipation is problematical: Bourdieu refuses to recognize any ontological or existential valence for a resistant subject, favoring the genealogical study of the relationships between social positions, including dispositions and practices, over research into hidden determinants of phenomenal reality (Rebughini 2010 , 465). The approaches by the “contingent critique” and “pragmatic critique” appear, instead, as a sociology of critical capacity: an immanent critique based on the present and on everyday life practices. Unlike critical theory, these approaches “consider critique as a capacity and opportunity born in the world of daily life, from exemplary actions, from ‘moments of crisis’, or from apparently banal actions that in truth insert a fundamental moment of break into routine” (Rebughini 2010 , 461–62).

These latter approaches are nonetheless distinct. Foucault’s “contingent critique” claims that to be free, the individual must show pure spontaneity and improvisation separated from social and historical conditions: as Rebughini (2010, 467) suggests, “his position is an ‘ontology of the present’ that is opposed to the ‘analysis of truth’ of Habermas : one bases critique upon the search for autonomy, the other on the search for justice.” Boltanski and Chiapello’s The New Spirit of Capitalism could be included in the area of “pragmatic critique,” a type of interpretation developed principally by Boltanski and Thévenot in On Justification (1991/2006). In spite of its multiple sources, the entire project of French pragmatic sociology as a whole is the level on which Boltanski and Chiapello (1999/2005a) can be understood, as contended in the editors’ introduction to New Spirits of Capitalism?: Crisis, Justifications, and Dynamics (Du Gay and Morgan 2013b , chap. 1; see also, Taupin 2013, 509). Hence, the concept of critique (on capitalism) in that book must be connected to the wider project of French pragmatic sociology, first, to its precedents, then to further developments—including the exploration of possibility for sociology itself to provide a critical stance.

The “social theory of critical practice” proposed by Boltanski and Thévenot in On Justification (1991/2006) tries to understand how what the authors call “critical capacity” is formed, starting from the resources, capacities, and competences that people possess. People, involved in ordinary everyday actions, can find themselves faced by a “test of strength,” and experience a sense of injustice that pushes them into mobilization. The reflexivity of critique is made possible by some conditions and context, called moments critiques, in which a moment of crisis of common sense and routine is produced, which then produces the need to elaborate a justification of the final critical action (Rebughini 2010 , 470). Therefore, instead of looking for a universal, unitary, or metaphysical content of critique, as the critique on capitalism once did, Boltanski and Thévenot (1991/2006) observe a plurality of registers of critique that refers to different contexts and normatives, or even to different frameworks of justice, which each help critique to emerge because they allow people to make comparisons and valuations (Rebughini 2010 , 471).

Revival of the Social Critique: The Sociology of Emancipation (Boltanski) as a New Form of Social Critique

The New Spirit of Capitalism was also an attempt by Boltanski and Chiapello to reintroduce a sociological critique into the agenda of the sociology of critical practices. This attempt did not, as such, respect its own founding principles, contradicting the initial theoretical formulation of the “pragmatic sociology of critique” presented in On Justification, for example, by describing the logic of displacement as diametrically opposed to the logic of categorization and considering it as a break with that framework, and defining central theoretical concepts such as the test of strength without referring to principles of justice Footnote 4 (Taupin 2013, 509). The new attempt by Boltanski to revive a critical form of sociology resulted in another book, De la critique. Précis de sociologie de l’émancipation (2009), translated into English in 2011. The chapter by Boltanski in New Spirits of Capitalism? Crises, Justifications, and Dynamics (2013), entitled “A Journey Through French-Style Critique,” offers a summary of the perspective provided by On Critique: A Sociology of Emancipation (2011), outlining the program of a sociology of critical practice which seeks to incorporate a renewed social critique.

The effort to renew the contribution of sociology to social critique first consists (in chaps. 1 and 2 of On Critique) of reconsidering the relationship between the “pragmatic sociology of critique” and Bourdieu’s “critical sociology,” on the one hand, by reducing the tension between them, and, on the other hand, by distinguishing them through the emphasis, against the analysis of “agents” within the theory of domination, on the role of “actors” as always active, openly critical, and condemning injustices (Boltanski 2011, x–xi, 18–19, 43–44). From the standpoint of the sociology of critical practice, “the social world is no longer seen as a place of passively accepted domination, or even of domination suffered unconsciously, but instead as a site full of disputes, critiques, disagreements, and attempts to restore local, always contestable, harmony” (Boltanski 2013). Second, it consists (in chaps. 3 “The Power of Institutions” and 4 “The Necessity of Critique”) in formulating afresh the question of critique in everyday reality, by relying directly upon the criticism formulated by the actors themselves in particular situations. Boltanski (2013) further argues that this way of renewal “has, however, had only modest success because it does not permit mounting a wider critique that encompasses social reality regarded in its totality, with different components systematically linked to one another, a critique that would consequently advocate for a drastic change of the political order.” He also argues that “this reflects not a failing of the theory but a realistic understanding by actors of the nature of the situation in which they find themselves.” According to Boltanski, the possibility of critique is derived from a contradiction, lodged at the heart of institutions, which can be described as “hermeneutic contradiction”: “[I]t is institutions that have the task of maintaining in working order the current formats and rules and, hence, the task of confirmation of the reality of the reality; however, institutions are always precarious in the sense that they claim to be timeless, disembodied and eternal but their rules etc. can only ever be articulated by embodied actors” (Boltanski 2013). Therefore, critique is considered in its dialogical relationship with the institutions it is arrayed against:

It can be expressed either by showing that the tests as conducted do not conform to their format; or by drawing from the world examples and cases that do not accord with reality as it is established, making it possible to challenge the reality of reality and, thereby, change its contours. (Boltanski 2011, xi, 74–75, 78–80)

It is precisely this “hermeneutical contradiction” that opens a breach within which critique can develop and the issue of emancipation can arise (Boltanski 2013). A third step in renewing the contribution of sociology to social critique consists in sketching (in chaps. 5 and 6) some of the paths critique might take today in order to proceed in the direction of “emancipation in the pragmatic sense” (Boltanski 2011, 84–88, 97–99). In chap. 5, describing different “political regimes of domination,” Boltanski brings to light a new formatting of domination, about which, drawing on his earlier work, he shows that it has been developed in the forge of management: a complex “managerial mode/effect of domination,” “apparently less central, more reticulate, looking much friendlier but in its proposals certainly much more demanding for workers; the new rule presupposes the intensification of links between its main actors and increasingly complex forms of coordination” (Boltanski 2011, 127–29, 136–38; see also, Fabiani 2011, 406). Confronted with a regime of this type, critique, when not simply disarmed, finds itself profoundly altered, and the way in which it exploits hermeneutic contradiction will take a new direction: “the eternal road of revolt” (Boltanski 2011, 158). This would be also a new direction for sociology itself: by engaging the issue of resource inequalities in social space and the availability of effective forms of domination, sociology finds again an active function, the research of emancipation (Fabiani 2011, 406).

A question arises whether this new radical form of social critique, whose dialectical frame includes the triple sequence “critique”–“critique of the critique”–“sociology of emancipation”, is also an improved one, in the sense of offering us an effective set of theoretical tools able to produce innovative political action. According to some commentators, such as Fabiani, the answer is no, because this radical form is inhabited by an ambiguity, the instrumentalization of theory by revolutionary practice: “The concept of revolt is explicitly associated with the notion of communism [Boltanski 2011, 159], undoubtedly stained by the failures of existing socialism, but which could become a new idea. One would certainly not insult Boltanski if one said that the final political recommendation stands well below the author’s theoretical efforts and the conceptual rewards they provide” (Fabiani 2011, 405).

Ève Chiapello’s chapter in New Spirits of Capitalism? Crises, Justifications, and Dynamics (2013), entitled “Capitalism and Its Criticisms,” which provides a detailed review of the history and propositions of the different criticisms of capitalism, ends instead by identifying the “third ways” currently under discussion to reform capitalism. She develops the idea that a “new cycle of recuperation” is underway within capitalism, suggesting that new forms of criticism, ecological and conservative criticism, have now become a central element in the recuperation and restructuring of capitalism. Ecological criticism supports production and consumption on a local scale, while conservative criticism advocates solidarity-based capitalism with a human face. The framework offered by Chiapello provides an interpretation of corporate social responsibility as an answer to these new forms of criticism of the capitalist model (Chiapello 2013; see, also, Taupin 2013, 506).

Critique, Creativity, and Creative Lifestyles

Following the previous analysis, the question rises of how artistic critique could be exercised in its practical sense in order to avoid the alternative of being either ignored, and thus perceived as useless, or recuperated? Which are the conditions of possibility for contemporary art to exercise a genuine critique of capitalist order?

One possible answer could emerge by employing the concept of critique in the tradition of practical critique, whose origin can be found, according to Michel Foucault , in Immanuel Kant’s work. Yet, not in the first Critique, which posed the question of the conditions of possibility of true knowledge, but in his texts on Aufklärung or on the Revolution. This different understanding of critique involves what Foucault calls “an ontology of present reality, an ontology of modernity, an ontology of ourselves,” that is, a critique challenging the present on the basis of the diagnosis of “what we are,” and which he has also defined as a “critical attitude” (Foucault 2010 , 20–21, 378–79; 2007, 42).

The practical dimension of the critique is manifest in that Foucault , in the famous conference “What Is Critique?” given in 1978 at the Société Française de Philosophie, qualifies the critical attitude as both political and moral, and defines it as “a certain way of thinking, speaking and acting,” exercised in multiple relationships “to what exists, to what one knows,” “to society, to culture,” and also “to others” (Foucault 2007 , 42, 44). As the origin of critical attitude, specific to modern civilization, is located in the opposition to the growing movement of governmentalization of both society and individuals, critique is first defined as “the art of not being governed quite so much,” at least “not like that and at that cost” (Foucault 2007 , 44, 45). Critique is opposed to the governing of the subject; therefore, it develops in a reactive way. In this sense, critique “only exists in relation to something other than itself,” and should not be a form of judgment but a way of existing and describing reality in an alternative way (Foucault 2007 , 42; see also, Rebughini 2010 , 468).

Second, critique is approached by Foucault in relation to power and truth. In the context of “politics of truth,” critique is defined as “the movement by which the subject gives himself the right to question truth on its effect on power and question power on its discourses of truth,” which equates with “the art of voluntary insubordination” and “the desubjugation of the subject,” in the sense that critique relies on the existing normative and institutional system while seeking to expose the limits of that system in order to explore ways to transform it (Foucault 2007 , 47; see, also, Lemke 2011, 33). Although this dimension of critique is akin to the historical practice of revolt, this does not refer to a fundamental anarchism or an originary freedom (Foucault 2007, 75). In “The Subject and Power” (1983), Foucault also affirms that critique can only be exercised through “techniques of the self” that resist the self-reproduction of power through discourses and their truth values (Foucault 1983 , 212–14). Critique characterizes the ethical autonomy of every individual and, thus, concerns self-analysis that involves the entire existence (Rebughini 2010 , 467–68).

The question of whether critical attitude might be both an individual and a collective experience is left open by Foucault in “What Is Critique?” (2007, 76). However, Rebughini (2010, 468) claims that for Foucault , “critique tends to express itself as an exit strategy, evasion (dérive) and eccentric behaviour”: “Autonomy therefore corresponds to a contingency and not to a historical process, because one can only temporarily free oneself from domination in the present.” Along with the disbelief in the utopian possibility of collective redemption, another limit of Foucault’s proposals would be that critique remains purely individual and contingent: “The practice of freedom only remains subjective and intelligible to the subject that practises it, without any real possibility of a passage towards collective action with the necessary power to attempt to modify the structural conditions in which it finds itself” (Rebughini 2010 , 468).

Against this reading of Foucault’s idea of critique in individualist and solipsist terms, Thomas Lemke (2011) emphasizes the relational and collective dimension of critique, as well as its local and experimental character, indicated by the notion of “experience.” According to him, Foucault’s notion of critique as an ethical–political attitude is linked to a specific reading of the “experience”: this is conceived as “a dominant structure and transformative force, as existing background of practices and transcending event, as the object of theoretical inquiry and the objective moving beyond historical limits” (Lemke 2011, 26, 30). The definition of experience, by Foucault , as a dynamic interplay between games of truth, forms of power, and relations to the self, is confirmed by his article “What Is Enlightenment?” (1984), where the term experience “points to the local and ‘experimental’ character of critique,” and also “refers to a ‘critical ontology of ourselves’ that seeks to make new historical experiences possible by moving beyond the limits of the present” (Foucault 1984 , 46–47; see also, Lemke 32). In this sense, critique, as a core “attitude of modentity”, is also a mode of relationship of oneself to oneself and to the present (Foucault 1984, 39–41).Thus, Foucault’s idea of critique cannot be reduced to a passive, theoretical concern, and it is not limited to taking a position on an already existing “chess-board”: critique means altering the “rules of the game” while paying the game (Lemke 2011, 35). Within the Foucauldian “ontology of ourselves,” to criticize means to expose one’s own ontological status, that is, to engage in a process of self-questionning, to make visible the limits of “what we are” in order to transgress them, which involves the danger of falling outside the established norms of recognition. Critical activity performs as a way of ethical self-formation, which is also a “desubjectivation” of subject: although this self-formation operates in a specific normative horizon, it extends and transforms the existing norms. Within the framework of such “transformative,” “experimental” critique, as Lemke dubs it, autonomy and self-formation contribute to the constitution of new subjectivities and alternative norms (Lemke 2011, 36, 38–39).

To further explore this issue, one could look not only at the body politic but also at a different zone, the artistic work, and for a different target, which in the tradition of German philosophy is called the “affective labor” and “subject formation,” as nonmarketized aspects of human existence, distinct from the commodified “productive labor” (for this distinction, see Fraser 2013 ; Majewska 2014, 11). The artist and artistic work are the body and process where production, self-expression, and way of life meet. It is true that “art’s undeniable advantage is that artists also keep producing works that exist separately from what they do and what they live,” and thus “can be disconnected from them” (Graw 2008a, 12). But it is from the vantage point of the “production of subjectivity” that the interactions between artistic creativity and normative change become a major issue. Hence, there is a need to explore the role of the artists in relation to the “imperative to creativity,” which currently leads to a figure of the artist, not exempt from controversy (yet less problematic than the Nietzschean model), other than the artist as the exemplary “worker of the future”: the artist as a model of existence or way of life. Footnote 5

The actual significance of this model is less related to the figure of artiste engagé and more to that figure originating in Baudelaire’s dandy , who made of his body, his behavior, his feelings and passions, thus his very existence, a “work of art.” As Foucault maintains in “What Is Enlightenment?” (1984) when reflecting on Baudelaire’s idea of “modernity,” this “is not simply a form of relationship to the present; it is also a mode of relationship that has to be established with oneself.” Modernity does not “liberate man in his own being”; it compels him to face the task of producing himself as a kind of transgression of the historical limits and situation. Moreover, this complex and difficult “elaboration of the self” did not take place in society itself, or in the body politic, but can only be produced in another, different place, which Baudelaire calls art (Foucault 1984 , 41–42).

Thus, another question arises: could this critical attitude or art (“of not being governed quite so much” or “of voluntary insubordination,” according to Foucault ) be molded by the model of the artist free of all attachments, the dandy (Baudelaire 1964 ), which, as noted by Boltanski and Chiapello (2005a, 38) , made not only the absence of production, unless it was “production of the self,” but also the culture of uncertainty into untranscendable ideals?

The positive idea of work as a condition or vector of individual self-fulfillment and having high expressive potential, as against its negative characterization as a simple means, a cost, an expense or sacrifice, has its importance for redefining the normative and social roles of artists through their creativity. Pierre-Michel Menger (2005) observes that it is related to the expressive model of praxis which dates back to Aristotle and was later re-elaborated upon by Herder and influenced by the romanticist philosophies of the nineteenth century (Hegel, Schelling) and by Marx , until a double contemporary posterity: the constructivist sociology of Husserlian inspiration (Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann ) on the one side, and the critical philosophy of Marxist inspiration, from the School of Frankfurt to Hannah Arendt , on the other side. Work as achievement, self-expression, praxis, means the way for humanity to realize its essence, not in passive leisure, but in the movement of an action that produces something durable and not readily programmable (Menger 2005 , 91; Ratiu 2011, 44–45).

A step further was made by Daniel Bell in The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976), which followed his other seminal book The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1973), where he formulated the idea that the expression and remaking of the “self” in order to achieve self-realization and self-fulfillment is the axial principle of modern culture. In addition, he observed that since the beginning of the twentieth century, it was culture that has taken the initiative in promoting change; consequently, its hedonistic–narcissistic principles, the idea of pleasure as a way of life and of self-expression, were transposed in the sphere of an economy that has been geared to meet these new wants. Thus, culture and the arts have had a dissolving power over capitalism, because, in this way, the capitalist system has lost its transcendental (Protestant) ethic, which affects the principle of the efficiency of the economic sphere (Bell 1976 , xxiv–xxv, 13, 21–22). Hence, he follows a line of thinking that persists in seeing work and life, or the economy and the culture, as separate spheres with distinct principles or value systems, and that criticizes the bohemian(ism) because of its principles and consequences.

On the contrary, Richard Florida (who is quoting Bell’s critique), in The Rise of the Creative Class , admits the possibility of synthesis between the hedonist ethic and the Protestant ethic, between bohemian and bourgeois, or of actually moving beyond these old categories that no longer apply at all. According to him, “creativity is not the province of a few selected geniuses who can get away with breaking the mould because they possess superhuman talents. It is a capacity inherent to varying degrees in virtually all people” (Florida 2002 , 32). Thus, creativity appears as an ontological capacity at least for a new class, the “creative class ,” even though it is not completely democratized or socially generalized. For Florida , the nowadays’ “creative people,” with creative values, working in creative workplaces, and living essentially creative lifestyles, certainly are not Baudelaire ; still, “they represent a new mainstream setting the norms and pace for much of society” (Florida 2002 , 196–97, 211). Yet, these creative lifestyles, because of their characteristics such as flexibility and hyper-mobility, are unsustainable (Kirchberg 2008). As already mentioned, Boltanski and Chiapello (2005a) have called attention to the costs, in terms of material and psychological security, associated with these lifestyles adjusted to the recent development of “network capitalism ,” driven by “connexionist logic” and organized around short-lived projects: increased anxiety, instability, insecurity, and precariousness (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005a , 16–18, 466–68; see also, Ratiu 2011, 43–44).

For Florida , the “creative ethos” is “the fundamental spirit or character of [today] culture,” which offers an (alternative) ontology of present reality and of ourselves: “the creative ethos pervades everything from our workplace culture to our values and communities, reshaping the way we see ourselves as economic and social actors – our very identities” (Florida 2002 , 21–22). The creative ethos is also defined as the overall commitment to creativity in its varied dimensions. In Florida’s view, the rise of the “creative economy ” in the “Creative Age” is not only drawing the spheres of innovation, business/entrepreneurship, and culture into one another, in intimate combinations, but is also blending the varied forms of creativity, technological, economic, artistic, and cultural, which according to him are deeply interrelated: “Not only do they share a common thought process, they reinforce each other through cross-fertilization and mutual stimulation” (Florida 2002 , 33, 201). This playful form of creative ethos or attitude that celebrates contingencies for the making and unmaking of the social fabric, at a distance from Foucault’s concept of “critical attitude” or ethos, can also be found in contemporary management discourse that demands innovation, flexibility, mobility, and an ability to adapt to rapidly changing situations (Lemke 2011, 39).

Without neglecting the similarities between the creative talents or activities, scientific, entrepreneurial, and artistic, I would add that there still are some specific differences that should be considered. First, while scientific creativity is commonly an ability to accelerate an accumulation of knowledge within a given conceptual order or paradigm, as “normal science” in T.S. Kuhn’s (1962) theory, which certainly does not exclude rare moments of “revolutions,” artistic creativity is typically a “rules-breaking process” against a given practice or order (Cliche et al. 2002, 28–29). This view of the specificity of artistic creativity, which intrinsically involves critique, is essential when thinking about the role of the artists and the manner in which they can play in social change (Ratiu 2011, 46–47), as well as in normative change.

Roles of Artistic Creativity and Critique in the Normative Change

This section is a revised version of the section “Roles of Artists and the Arts in Achieving Urban Creativity and Sustainable Development,” originally published in Ratiu , Dan Eugen 2013: “Creative Cities and/or Sustainable Cities: Discourses and Practices.” City, Culture and Society (Special Issue “The Sustainable City and the Arts”) 4:3, pp. 125–35.

According to this viewpoint, artistic creativity plays, by its very nature, as a rules-breaking process, disrupting existing patterns of thought and life, questioning and challenging existing practices and norms, including the “rules of the game” of the current society. Thus, artists can contribute to opening up new possibilities either for the quality of affective or emotional life, for sustainable lifestyle, or for other (noncommodified) worlds of production.

One could ask whether this creative contribution would not be just another form of participation in the endless capitalist process and its new imperative to unlimited accumulation of “creative capital.” It is worth mentioning that the idea of artistic creativity–and–critique is distinct from the so-called creative destruction, Joseph Schumpeter’s (1942/2003) argument about the disruption inherent in economic progress. This illustrates the incessant technological–entrepreneurial innovation and the evolutionary character of the capitalist process (Schumpeter 2003 , 81–86). One might argue that such a process of innovation is a double-edged sword with unsustainable effects, instability, insecurity, and crisis, as David Harvey has contended in The Condition of Postmodernity : An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (1989/2005, 105–106).

It is true that some authors look at the individual creative artists as dispensable tools of urban economic growth and regeneration, such as Florida (2002, 2005) did. Another assumption of Florida’s theory of creativity is that the values, beliefs, and attitudes that are closely associated with the global talent attraction are shared by all creative cities and communities. Supposedly, these “creative communities” are defined by impermanent relationships, loose ties, quasi-anonymous lives, and shared values such as individuality, meritocracy, diversity, and openness (Florida 2002 , 15, 77–80). He considers this “creative capital” to be a highly mobile factor, like technology; both are “not fixed stocks, but transient flows,” “flowing into and out of places” (2005, 7). This flow or mobility could be a forced one: the increasing wealth for a city and property development also entail increasing gentrification, which triggers an outmigration of artists or bohemians (Florida 2005 , 24–25). Thus, the creative class /capital theory implicitly endorses the gentrification of urban centers and its social consequences (O’Connor and Kong 2009, 3), posits an instrumental view on artists, and overlooks the human and symbolic dimensions of places or creative cities or creative societies.

What then could be a true sustainable role of artists and the arts in normative and social change? The cultural strategies of development have identified some roles that artists played in fostering cultural consumption (in the 1970s and 1980s), as well as within and around cultural production and the symbolic economy (in the 1990s): “Visual artists play a key productive role in creating and processing images for the urban economy” (Zukin 2001, 260). More recently, the urban culturalist perspective (Borer 2006), the cognitive–cultural perspective (Scott 2006, 2007), and the new paradigm of sustainable development (Kagan and Kirchberg 2008; Kagan and Verstraete 2011) hold instead the notion that individual and collective expressions of creativity, including the artistic ones, could be channeled to address not only urban renewal but also environmentally sustainable economic regeneration, social justice, and community building. Thus, the arts and artistic creativity could play a significant role in both material and immaterial processes: constructing social identity and contributing to social belonging; creating city image and urban identity; creating culturally meaningful places—place-based myths, narratives, and collective memories; contributing to participative processes from the ground; thus, fostering a wider and sustainable sense of place and of community, improving the quality of emotional life, and promoting changes toward sustainable lifestyles (see Ratiu 2013, 133).

Another question then could emerge as to whether this proposition would be just another “sustainable” form of instrumentalization of arts and culture. The issue of cultural instrumentality, that is, regarding the arts as a means to an end rather than an end in itself, has been extensively addressed by many authors. A detailed discussion of this topic is beyond this chapter’s scope. Here, I only draw attention to connections between “instrumental cultural policies” and managerial discourses, which were disclosed by Eleonora Belfiore (2004) and Andrew Brighton (2006, 2007) .

As Belfiore has observed, the emphasis placed on the role of the cultural sector in place marketing and local economic development is an example of the increasing tendency to justify public spending on the arts on the basis of instrumental notions of the arts and culture. This instrumental emphasis in cultural policy is closely linked to the changes in the style of public administration that have given rise to the New Public Management as well as to certain developments in postmodern cultural theory: notably, the concept of cultural relativism that “undermined – at the theoretical level – the possibility to justify any longer cultural policy decisions grounded on uncontroversial principles of ‘excellence’, ‘quality’ and ‘artistic value’” (Belfiore 2004 , 183–85, 189). Against the damaging effects that such developments may ultimately have on the arts themselves, Belfiore concludes that “an altogether healthier exercise for the arts sector would probably have been the attempt to elaborate a definition of what makes the arts intrinsically valuable to society” (Belfiore 2004 , 200).

Brighton (2006) has also argued against the politicization of the arts, yet without denying their political importance, as they can offer experience, values, and ideas other than those possible in political discourse. A further article by Brighton , entitled “Should Art Change the World?” (2007), detects in the reading of the question “should art improve society?” a symptom of the managerial discourse and its utilitarian rationality that fails to acknowledge the “multiple ecologies of reason” and “different ideas of the good life.” A certain role is nonetheless recognized in art: this is praised as an “antibody” to utilitarian rationality “because it changes the world in ways other than those prescribed by the managerial state” (Brighton 2007 ).

These accounts are valuable in rethinking any attempt to value art solely on its instrumental values and so-called measurable criteria or rituals of verification. Indeed, the notion of development based on cultural sustainability would be improved by considering art not as another instrument (such as technology) and envisaging its role without subjecting it to a calculation in terms of outcomes, efficiency, and control. Instead, one can make a stand for its intrinsic value and autonomy from any political constraint.

Conclusion

To conclude, two remarks might be made on how artists have and still can play a role in the normative change through artistic critique and creativity . The first remark drawn from the analysis of the dynamics of capitalism in relation to critique and its “new spirit” (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005a ) is that capitalism and critique are not in opposition to each other but require each other: this dialectic proves interminable within the capitalist regime. Artistic critique had a paradoxical effect: victim of its own success, it was recuperated and integrated into managerial rhetoric and the new set of norms or legitimizing value system of capitalism. Boltanski and Chiapello (2005a) have shown that the increasing generalization of the new exigencies of the artistic–intellectual professions, singularity, flexibility, adaptability, creativity , inventiveness, and self-expression, as new norms of excellence is strongly related to “the new spirit of capitalism,” isomorphic with a globalized, “connexionist” or “network capitalism,” implementing new technologies and modes of organization. The wide distribution of this model or “imperative for creativity ,” also through the managerial discourse, does not only shift our understanding of the arts, but also significantly changes ideological, technological, and organizational structures of the worlds of production, as well as certain ways of life as “creative lifestyles” (Florida 2002 ), autonomous, adaptable, flexible, mobile. Yet, this model of artistic creativity or “creative lifestyle” could not be generalized to the entire social body or other worlds of production without costs in terms of instability, insecurity, and precariousness. The aim of the analysis by Boltanski and Chiapello (2005a) was not celebratory but preparatory for a revival of the critique on capitalism, and its redeployment with new contents, forms, and aims: an artistic critique of new forms of commodification, and mainly a social critique through a new form of the pragmatic sociology of critique as “sociology of emancipation” (Boltanski 2011). However, further developments have suggested the radical solution of the “eternal road of revolt” (Boltanski 2011, 2013 ) or reported the entrapment of new forms of critique into a “new cycle of recuperation” within capitalism (Chiapello 2013 ).

The question is still open if we could consider artistic critique without offering it to instrumental recuperation and subjecting art to calculation in terms of efficiency and control or, on the contrary, blending it into a social critique that borders on radical utopianism. The second remark is that the possibility for artists to exercise a genuine critique of capitalist order is not jammed. This could emerge by a different understanding of critique, practical, involving what Foucault (1978/2007) calls an “ontology of present reality,” an “ontology of ourselves,” and a “critical attitude,” defined as “the art of not being governed quite so much,” as well as “the art of voluntary insubordination” and “the desubjugation of the subject.” This critical way of thinking, speaking, and acting does not refer to a fundamental anarchism or an originary freedom; nevertheless, it is not reduced to a theoretical concern and is not limited to taking a position on an already existing “chess-board”—it means altering the “rules of the game” (Lemke 2011). Thus, in the zone of artistic work, critique could look for different ends, the “affective labor” and “subject formation,” as nonmarketized aspects of human existence (Fraser 2013 ). Within the framework of such “transformative critique,” autonomy and self-formation could contribute to the constitution of new subjectivities and alternative norms, which could escape instrumental recuperation.

Therefore, the critical function of the art is related to the cardinal values of the artistic competence, imagination, play, originality, even behavioral atypicality and creative anarchy, which society itself needs. Yet, artistic creativity does not play as a cumulative development, but, by its very nature, as a “rules-breaking process,” by questioning and challenging existing practices and norms, including the “rules of the game” of the current society, and by disrupting existing patterns of thought and life: artists can freely and autonomously play a key role in opening up new possibilities either for the quality of affective or of emotional life, by redeveloping a particular sense of self-realization and self-fulfillment, for a sustainable lifestyle, or for other worlds of production.