The Cult of Creativity

Download or read book The Cult of Creativity written by Samuel W. Franklin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2023-04-18 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Samuel Weil Franklin shows that in postwar America, the newfangled term "creativity" was the product of campaigns to harness the power of the individual to the demands of capitalist production and global hegemony. Franklin reveals that the champions of creativity were psychologists, educators, and management consultants who benefited from postwar technological progress yet worried that the resulting society might promote conformity and stifle ingenuity. Against increasingly reified institutions and systems, the "creative individual" took on a wealth of romantic, generative, and democratic associations. Creativity was the motive force behind the postwar individual, the literal spark-and cannon fodder-of progress"--