ABSTRACT
In the governmental alignment of experience and economy, of education and employability, any artistic question of chance – as that of failure – is held to be unnecessary. The Orwellian doublethink manifested in the policies can be seen, in a speech by a former United Kingdom Education Secretary, Nicky Morgan, when talking about 'social justice' and advocating 'all children's access to the arts'. The pseudo-rationality of reducing any reflexive learning about social relations – from participation in them — to questions of economic calculation is now encoded in policy making. The question as to what rights are remembered in the possibilities claimed for failure by arts practices – as creative and transformational – is repressed by a conception of economic 'value' wherein the potential for learning is conceived of in terms of its marketability. Offering simply a monetary return on public investment becomes a political sacrifice made on the altar of 'reality', in obeisance to the basilisk of 'economic necessity.
