Neoliberalism and the Construction of the Creative Subject

Abstract

This article aims to problematize the position of the “creative subject” category in contemporary times, as well as its relations with the standards established by market practices. Two media discourses were analyzed, one uttered in the Saia Justa (GNT) TV show and the other in a commercial from the Shark Tank (ABC) TV show, both of them focused on creativity and entrepreneurship in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis methodology was based on the French approach of Discourse Analysis. The results show a creative subject built from a neoliberal mechanism that (a) discursively silences the inequality-universality contradiction; (b) assigns value to creativity (and to the creative subject) based on the market logic (expenditure and competition); and (c) through the process of interpellation, induces the subject to identify him/herself with this neoliberal Other and regulate his/her creative volitions based on it.