today it is necessary to develop a kind of 'zerowork training,' to learn how to not labor, rather than to fall back on previous assumptions about refusing work.
- Stevphen Shukaitis, "Learning Not to Labor"
Abstract:
In autonomist history and theory, the refusal of work is frequently invoked but seldom expanded upon in a significant manner. From the celebration of laziness to mass industrial strikes, work refusal takes many forms. This essay develops an expanded autonomist conception of work refusal, understanding work refusal as a compositional practice and arguing for analyzing it through the forms of collectivity and social relations that it creates. Based on this analysis, a form of “zerowork training,” or a pedagogy of learning not to labor, is proposed as a process through which antagonism and refusal can be further socialized. Learning not to labor sits at the junction of the refusal of work and the re-fusing of the social energies of such refusal back into supporting the continued affective existence and capacities of other forms of life and ways of being together, as practice and as a form of embodied critique.
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