When structures strategize to cultivate creativity, creativity emerges as/in resistance

The very nature of structures, as frameworks for organizing communicative opportunities, is antithetical to the creative expressions that emerge organically from communicative spaces in community life.

In other words, structures, with their rules and roles, forms and mechanics of control, impede the possibilities of expressions, especially expressions that emerge spontaneously from the everyday interactions and textures of community life.

With their monocultures, driven by homogeneous logics of control and profiteering, structures see creativity as opportunities for consolidating power and control. Creativity is the next buzz word for drawing in investments and for fashionable product positioning.

The scramble of authoritarian structures globally for the creative unique selling position is a good reflection of this drive for creativity as a profitable resource, commoditized into instruments that can draw in financial opportunities.

Creativity is targeted as a site of management, written into organizational logics of efficiency, turned into quantifiable metrics that structures can utilize to reproduce their power and control.

In contract, creativity in cultural contexts, as the everyday expressions of new ideas and thoughts, thrives in the fissures of such structures, not in manicured creative innovation hubs, but amid the resistance voiced in community contexts, amid the expressions of everyday life in community participation.

Structures form the constraints on which creativity works in order to foster spaces, sites, and opportunities for expression.

The very impetus of structures to cultivate creativity is resisted through the everyday expressions of creativity in community life.

The whiteness of binaries that erase the Global South: On Communicative Inversions and the invitation to Vijay Prashad in Aotearoa

When I learned through my activist networks that the public intellectual Vijay Prashad was coming to Aotearoa, I was filled with joy. In my early years in the U.S., when learning the basics of the struggle against the fascist forces of Hindutva, I came in conversation with Vijay's work. Two of his critical interventions, the book, The Karma of Brown Folk , and the journal article " The protean forms of Yankee Hindutva " co-authored with Biju Matthew and published in Ethnic and Racial Studies shaped my early activism. These pieces of work are core readings in understanding the workings of Hindutva fascism and how it mobilizes cultural tropes to serve fascist agendas. Much later, I felt overjoyed learning about his West Bengal roots and his actual commitment to the politics of the Left, reflected in the organising of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), a political register that shaped much of my earliest lessons around Global South resistance, collectivization, and orga...

Libertarianism, the Free Speech Union, and the Life of Disinformation

The rise of the far-right globally is intertwined with the globally networked power of libertarian think tanks, funded at the base by the global extractive industries . In this blog post, through an analysis of the disinformation-based campaign I have personally experienced since October 2023 mobilised by the communicative ecosystem of the Free Speech Union (FSU), I will attend to the lifecycle of disinformation in libertarian networks, arguing that the disinformation ecosystem is invested in upholding both white supremacy and extractive capital. The FSU’s investment in disinformation I argue that the FSU is invested in producing and circulating disinformation. In response to my analysis of the hypocrisy of the Free Speech Union (FSU) that positions itself as a champion of free speech in Aotearoa while one of its co-founders, council members and spokespersons David Cumin (who is also one of the key actors representing Israel Institute of New Zealand) actively targets the freedom of a...

Zionist hate mongering, the race/terror trope, and the Free Speech Union: Part 1

March 15, 2019. It was a day of terror. Unleashed by a white supremacist far-right terrorist. Driven by hate for brown people. Driven by Islamophobic hate. Earlier in the day, I had come across a hate-based hit piece targeting me, alongside other academics, the University of Auckland academic Professor Nicholas Rowe , Professor Richard Jackson at Otago University, Professor Kevin P Clements at Otago University, Dr. Rose Martin from University of Auckland and Dr. Nigel Parsons at Massey University. Titled, "More extremists in New Zealand Universities," the article threw in the labels "terror sympathisers" and "extremist views." Written by one David Cumin and hosted on the website of the Israel Institute of New Zealand, the article sought to create outrage that academics critical of Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid are actually employed by universities in New Zealand. Figure 1: The web post written by David Cumin on the site of Israel Institute ...

Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

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