Work Want Work

Mareile Pfannebecker is a writer and translator based in Manchester. She has published on Shakespeare, Renaissance travel writing and critical theory.James A. Smith is the author of Other People's Politics and Samuel Richardson and the Theory of Tragedy. He is a lecturer in the English department at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Work Want Work considers in captivating detail how a logic of work has become integral to everything we do, even as the place of formal work has become increasingly precarious. With reference to sociological data, philosophy, political theory, legislation, the testimonies of workers and an eclectic mix of cultural texts - from Lucian Freud to Google, Anthony Giddens to selfies, Jean-Luc Nancy to Amy Winehouse - Pfannebecker and Smith lay out how the capitalism of globalized technologies has put our time, our subjectivities, our experiences and our desires to work in unprecedented ways.As every part of life is colonized by work without securing our livelihoods, new questions need to be asked: whether a nostalgia for work can save us, how ideas of work change conceptions of political community, how employment and unemployment alike have become malemployment, and whether the work of our desire online can be disentangled from capitalist exploitation.The biggest question, at a time when the end of work and a fully automated future are proclaimed by Silicon Valley idealists as well as by social democratic politicians and left-wing theorists, is this: how can we propose a post-work society and culture that we will actually want?

An eclectic and accessible meeting of high theory, politics, pop and internet culture and philosophy

Preface: The Putting to Work of Everything We Do1. LifeworkOn Not Being a Baker - Nostalgia for Work - What Will We Do in the Post-Work Utopia? - Literary Communism2. Work ExpulsionsThe End of Unemployment - 'I Would Prefer Not To' - Malemployment and Disemployment3. We Young GirlsHistories of the Young Girl - Amy or Peaches? - The Hard Work of Being a Young Girl4. Three Ways to Want Things After CapitalismThe Jetsons Fallacy in Anti-Work Writing - What Does Silicon Valley Want? - Repurpose Your DesireEpilogue: Share Your Limit