Reading the Creative Industries With Deleuze: How Creative Are the Creative Industries?

Abstract

This article develops a definition of creativity that is informed by the work of Gilles Deleuze, Dan Harris, Susan Luckman, and others. We explore its application in the context of the creative industries in Australia. Through our empirical interviews conducted as part of an Australian Research Council–funded project called Vital Arts, we delve into the multifaceted nature of creativity, which we argue is not always accounted for in the bureaucratic organization, categorization, and funding of the creative industries. We outline the measurements used by key governmental, nongovernmental, and policymaking bodies in Australia to categorize and fund the creative industries. These metrics reveal blind spots in how the creative industries are institutionally organized and treated when considering the Deleuzian ontology of creativity that actually motors creative work. We argue that many creative jobs and industries exist outside traditional bureaucratic definitions and categories, and through the concepts of affect, becoming, the major and the minor, as well as fabulation, from Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy, we explore these dynamics further.