
From Printing to Streaming
Cultural Production under Capitalism
Michael Chanan(Author)
Pluto Press
Published on 20. October 2022
Book
Paperback/Softback
272 pages
978-0-7453-4096-8 (ISBN)
Description
**Shortlisted for the Deutscher Memorial Prize 2023**
For mainstream economics, cultural production raises no special questions: creative expression is to be harvested for wealth creation like any other form of labour. As Karl Marx saw it, however, capital is hostile to the arts because it cannot fully control the process of creativity. But while he saw the arts as marginal to capital accumulation, that was before the birth of the mass media.
Engaging with the major issues in Marxist theory around art and capitalism, From Printing to Streaming traces how the logic of cultural capitalism evolved from the print age to digital times, tracking the development of printing, photography, sound recording, newsprint, advertising, film and broadcasting, exploring the peculiarities of each as commodities, and their recent transformation by digital technology, where everything melts into computer code.
Showing how these developments have had profound implications for both cultural creation and consumption, Chanan offers a radical and comprehensive analysis of the commodification of artistic creation and the struggle to realise its potential in the digital age.
For mainstream economics, cultural production raises no special questions: creative expression is to be harvested for wealth creation like any other form of labour. As Karl Marx saw it, however, capital is hostile to the arts because it cannot fully control the process of creativity. But while he saw the arts as marginal to capital accumulation, that was before the birth of the mass media.
Engaging with the major issues in Marxist theory around art and capitalism, From Printing to Streaming traces how the logic of cultural capitalism evolved from the print age to digital times, tracking the development of printing, photography, sound recording, newsprint, advertising, film and broadcasting, exploring the peculiarities of each as commodities, and their recent transformation by digital technology, where everything melts into computer code.
Showing how these developments have had profound implications for both cultural creation and consumption, Chanan offers a radical and comprehensive analysis of the commodification of artistic creation and the struggle to realise its potential in the digital age.
Reviews / Votes
'Chanan's rich historical investigations of the evolving technologies of artistic production provide a fascinating new basis for a politics of culture' -- Michael Hardt, author of 'The Subversive 70s' 'Drawing on nearly fifty years of writing and teaching about the media and making films, Michael Chanan presents us with a series overlapping histories of different media technologies, which is both authoritative and original' -- Julian Petley, Honorary and Emeritus Professor of Journalism at Brunel University, London 'Michael Chanan's brilliant synthesis, replete with fascinating detail, both boggles the mind and deeply educates' -- Claudia Gorbman, Professor Emerita of Film Studies at the University of Washington TacomaMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (UK-trade)
Dimensions
Height: 215 mm
Width: 138 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
338 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-7453-4096-8 (9780745340968)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
10/2022
1st Edition
Pluto Press
€26.49
Available for download
Person
Michael Chanan is a documentary filmmaker, writer and Professor Emeritus at the University of Roehampton. He has written extensively on film and video in Latin America and has filmed in most of the countries in the continent at intervals since the early 1980s, as well as writing on other film history topics and the social history of music, and making several films on capitalism in crisis. His latest film is Cuba: Living Between Hurricanes.
Content
Series Preface
Preface
1. Autonomy of the Aesthetic
2. The Changing Logic of Artistic Production
3. Cultural Commodification
4. Countercurrents
5. From Analog to Digital
6. Creativity Reconsidered
Bibliography
Notes
Preface
1. Autonomy of the Aesthetic
2. The Changing Logic of Artistic Production
3. Cultural Commodification
4. Countercurrents
5. From Analog to Digital
6. Creativity Reconsidered
Bibliography
Notes