ABSTRACT
This chapter explores characterizations of the creative person. It focuses on creative work as a contemporary phenomenon, locating people like our participants within the contexts of late modernity, late capitalism, global industry and liberal or neo-liberal democracies. The theory of the Culture Industry also implies a contrasting characterization of the creative worker outside capitalism which is close to the Romantic image of the artist. The process and the contemporary project to create an identity are part of a continuous reflexive interaction with the wider social environment, driven by the need to resolve fundamental existential issues, about self-identity and the continuity of the self. The argument of these theories, largely associated with the work of Nikolas Rose, following Michel Foucault, is that constructing an identity is not the activity of a free agent but a requirement or onus to invent the self. Stuart Hall has presented a similar argument for considering a 'subject-in-progress'.
