Dirty Work

Is engagement a dirty word? It’s one of the dirtiest words I know. Like many words that have come before it (synergy, impact, interaction), it has been taken up as a buzzword, stretched to such levels of generalised abstraction it can stand for almost anything. As scholars such as Bishop (2012), Harvie (2013), and Alston (2016) have argued, the neoliberal turn in arts policy has sought to instrumentalise aesthetic and cultural projects toward the provision of social welfare and cultivation of more individualistic, entrepreneurial spectatorship.