The Art of Being Ungovernable

This article examines ways that political struggles are being waged over the arts in the United States in the contemporary conjuncture, as well as the ways that this struggle is obscured by discourses that treat the arts as useless, removed from other social spheres, or necessarily beneficent. It addresses the invisibilization and channeling of artistic labor by culture industries, investment in the arts by the ruling class and state, the ideological centrality of novelty in arts discourse, and ways that hierarchies of cultural value intersect with criminalization and policing.