Milena Dragićević Šešić: Imagining post-capitalist cultural policy futures

Abstract

ABSTRACT In today’s integrated global capitalism and its neoliberal cosmovision, contemporary cultural policies have increasingly been mirroring this dominant way of global governing. Discourses and practices of economic impact measurements, precarity and austerity measures in the cultural sector, the push for profit-friendly creative industries, privatisation of public resources and increased commodification of cultural experiences have all normalised capitalist logic within dominant cultural policies. Despite increasing literature on post-capitalism and a sense that capitalism is experiencing a new wave of limitations and frontiers, cultural policy hasn’t been actively dealing with post-capitalist imaginings. In this conversation with Milena Dragićević Šešić, we discuss the tenets of capitalist cultural policies today and wonder about alternatives to them – about possibilities for different, post-capitalist futures for cultural policies and ideas that are maybe on the margins today.