"Steen sees the need to redefine creativity as more than style: creativity should embrace social/communal practices rather than toxic individualistic works in which gig economies and marketplaces "reduce the arts to a symbolic role."
--CHOICE— CHOICE
“What has made creativity a ‘seductive idea’ for decades, if not centuries? The Creativity Complex demonstrates that the history of creativity is just as fascinating as its future. Steen’s writing does justice to the complexity of both creativity and its evolution and will be a key resource for anyone interested in art, tech, education, and the creativity of tomorrow.”
— Vlad Glaveanu, Dublin City University
“A wonderfully damning study of the ways discourses of creativity have supported neoliberal policy formations that have decimated many of the institutions in which art is taught and made. The aspiration to a creative life has been used against people, Steen argues. What would it mean to really honor it? Steen’s answers are indispensable.”
— Sarah Brouillette, Carleton University
"The Creativity Complex: Art, Tech, and the Seduction of an Idea is a seminal and ground-breaking work of meticulous scholarship and of immense and particular value to readers with an interest in the social aspects of technology, ethics/morality, and performing arts history/criticism."
--Midwest Book Review— Midwest Book Review
“Provides a much-needed and unprecedented overview of how ‘creativity’ has been defined and deployed beyond the arts, revealing the cluster of institutions, ideologies, and practices that now center around the word. People in technology studies and across the arts have been waiting for a book that does what this one does. They will shove it into the hands of their colleagues, higher-ed administrators, economic or political theorists, and other people who have the power to shape what ‘creativity’ means and how it is institutionalized. Steen tracks the ‘creativity complex’ across industries, across centuries, and across continents.”
— Christopher Grobe, Amherst College
“An essential intervention. Steen argues that the idea of creativity sustains ideologies that justify the structural inequalities, economic injustice and environmental degradation that characterize contemporary capitalism in the USA. Deeply researched, persuasively argued and elegantly written, The Creativity Complex is a crucial contribution to critical scholarship on cultural production today.”
— Nicholas Ridout, Queen Mary, University of London