Book Review
by Frank Karioris, Regular Contributor
Work Want Work: Labour and desire at the end of capitalism
Mariele Pfannebecker & J.A. Smith
Zed Books, 2020. $24.99, 192 pages
I do not like work even when someone else does it. – Mark Twain
As the global pandemic of COVID-19 is shuttering and decimating economies and peoples, the release of a book titled Work Want Work could easily be dismissed as merely a coincidence. Yet the book is one that speaks to the import of timing in comedy as well as, even more so these days than ever, employment. Building on twenty-plus years of increasing underemployment, this pandemic has been a thunderclap in people’s ears about inequality and capitalism. This unexpected link further adds to the heft of what this book argues and puts forward for us to think about: which is what exactly it is that is hoped for in a “post-work” society or economy. This book, then, is an in-depth theoretical reflection upon some of the nuances and foibles of the anti-work theories, both those newer ones (Full Luxury Communism) and more historical antecedents.
Pfannebecker and Smith act as examiner and accompanist to the changes occurring in the relations between people – both as individuals and as communities – and the work that they find themselves endeavoring in. Here, they eloquently demonstrate that work is not simply a category of time, but has become an integral component of the identity and lives of each of us. This can be seen in the way that hobbies are second jobs, the ways that each of us mobilizing our social “network” to parlay into more economic interests – making relationships an economic rather than human process. This follows from thinkers like Jonathan Crary who theorize the ways that even sleep has become monetized and marketized. Work Want Work complicates and nuances these previous thinkers, elucidating unique and important questions about not just what a post-work life would look like, but the ways that technology is a double-edged sword in the moving towards and away from this post-work world.
While the book is theory heaven, and theoretically dense, it is written in a style and language that is meant to be legible – unlike the large percentage of similar books. Working through Jean-Luc Nancy, Derrida, and Lacan, the book does an admirable job of getting across the importance of how and where we locate desire as well as the ways that we interact with each other, as well as the times when we are isolated from each other. These components, shown out through the authors’ complicated argument, are interwoven with work and the definitions of work itself.
In no uncertain terms, this book will be helpful to all those who want to come to grips with the questions of how we live with each other, what we do when there isn’t work, and how we might go about redefining both of those answers. This book is a first chapter in what I could see as an extended set of readings on these topics. To put it differently, this is a key introduction to many of the most presenting matters of our age and should be seen as part of a broader conversation that is taking place – both within theory, and within living rooms, kitchens, bars, and on the street.
How does one go about putting a book on anti-work to work? That might be, somewhat humorously or jovially, the foundational question at the heart of this review. For all reviews, rather than simply describing something (a non-possible reality) are about taking a text and finding ways of making it workable for others; of making the book into a tool or an aesthetic object. Put in a slightly different way, this is a book of questions; of road-building projects; a speed dating session for polyamorous individuals; or what might constitute the antithesis of a manifesto, let us call it an unifesto. This lack of directed direction reminds us all that “there is no getting to this better way of organizing our politics, economy, and culture without a leap of faith” (146).
The work invoked twice in the title is doubly to be bereaved in the wake of a total of 16.8 million (or 10% of the workforce) filing for unemployment in three weeks at the end of March and beginning of April 2020. Questions asked now seem like they are less rhetorical or hypothetical, and now we may have to begin thinking through them sooner than expected. In this sense, this book is more timely than ever.
In a world too full of quick and easy answers, this book is a balm of the oddest sorts: complication. The authors never succumb to what would be most politically advantageous or even linguistically quickest, but drive their argument forward on the basis of sophisticated theoretical engagement, nuanced & interesting case studies, and sound critique. The book tackles some of the most critical issues of our time – work & technology – and does so in ways that are open-ended and accessible.
