The “all must have prizes” culture refuses to die
With the announcement of who had won the Turner prize, I experienced a distinct sense of déjà vu. The four nominees asked the judges to make the award collectively to all of them, “in the name of commonality, multiplicity and solidarity”. This was widely scorned as a ludicrous prizes-for-all approach, as if this was a new phenomenon. But in 1996 I published a book entitled All Must Have Prizes, which was about precisely this attitude. Far from being a new development, it was an important contributor to the progressive destruction…
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