The power to imagine: art, culture and work in the economy of abundant goods

Abstract

This paper has as its starting point some of the utterances that focuses on artistic activities, especially those proposals about creative economy, arts economy or culture economy. They are, in general, based on the possibility of extracting richness of thought, of networks and of affect. The growing request for creativity, which elapses from these discourses, leads to criticisms about creative labour’s exploitation and its insertion into capitalistic processes. All these movements can be read from biopolitics point of view, a sort of power extended throughout all the domains of life. This dynamic is also what turns artistic creation into a eld of resistance and of political struggle in which different voices compete from different areas of the society.