Against Value in the Arts and Education

Against Value in the Arts and Education proposes that it is often the staunchest defenders of art who do it the most harm, by suppressing or mollifying its dissenting voice, by neutralizing its painful truths, and by instrumentalizing its ambivalence.The result is that rather than expanding the autonomy of thought and feeling of the artist and the audience, art�s defenders make art self-satisfied, or otherwise an echo-chamber for the limited and limiting self-description of people�s lives lived in an �audit culture�, a culture pervaded by the direct and indirect excrescence of practices of accountability. This book diagnoses the counter-intuitive effects of the rhetoric of value. It posits that the auditing of values pervades the fabric of people�s work-lives, their education, and increasingly their everyday experience. The book uncovers figures of resentment, disenchantment and alienation fostered by the dogma of value. It argues instead that value judgments can behave insidiously, and incorporate aesthetic, ethical or ideological values fundamentally opposed to the �value� they purportedly name and describe. The collection contains contributions from leading scholars in the UK and US with contributions from anthropology, the history of art, literature, education, musicology, political science, and philosophy. Additional ISBNs 1783484896, 9781783484898Against Value in the Arts and Education 1st Edition and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISBNs for Against Value in the Arts and Education are 9781783484911, 1783484918 and the print ISBNs are 9781783484904, 178348490X. Additional ISBNs include 1783484896, 9781783484898.