Wednesday, June 08, 2005
(11:14 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Phenomenology of Unemployment
Unemployment appears fundamentally as exclusion, and not merely on the level of money. The monetary element is important -- it is what enables one to feel like a responsible adult, executing the duty of citizens (to pay one's bills on time); it is what enables the majority of social activities and significantly enhances one's chances of finding companionship, sexual and otherwise. But more fundamentally, when one is unemployed, one is excluded from the rhythms of normal social life. The balance between work and leisure is tilted too far toward work in the majority of situations in America, of course, but a balance entirely toward leisure is no more desirable.Some kind of ritualized and officially recognized contribution to the social body is necessary, and it enables other kinds of less widely recognized contributions -- in a situation of chronic unemployment, one's time is not "freed" for such contributions because those contributions are always tinged by a more or less conscious despair. "Why am I bothering with this? No one cares -- I am completely alone!" Just as money is representative of one's stake in and responsibility toward the social body, so work (the "job") is representative of one's participation in it. The chronically unemployed person is in an important respect very much alone. This can be illustrated when the unemployed person discusses her situation with someone else. In the majority of cases, the interlocutor is employed and therefore thinks she knows something about how to secure employment. So there comes a torrent of advice: Have you tried Craigslist? Are you getting up early every morning and calling the temp agency? Have you tried your friends who may have contacts? Are you e-mailing your resume or appearing in person? Every time the unemployed person has already fulfilled the employed person's advice, it is clear that that action was inadequate in some way; to the extent that the unemployed person has not done a particular action, it is clear that one's unemployed state is one's own fault.
"Work is always available if you look hard enough." How hard? Hard enough to get a job -- therefore, if one does not have a job, one has not yet looked hard enough, by definition. The failure to work hard is, on the official ideological level, the most serious moral failure in American society. Thus, once again, one is subtly excluded from the social body, moved toward the margins... In this situation, one's pride can combine with one's despair to make the final inclusion in the workplace sound almost like a punishment, the final insult. Obviously one's efforts, merits, skills, talents, have been inadequate thus far -- one is unworthy of a job, not a good fit within the set of normal people who participate in society by having a job. Having been granted a job must be an act of extraordinary grace, then, and one who has been unemployed has been rendered all the more conscious of the worker's utter dependance on the good favor of those who control capital. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me!
One does not want to be the recipient of mere charity; rather, one wants to feel a part of the social body by participating in its work. How perverse, then, that even receiving a job can feel like charity -- being granted permission to participate in the larger social body can feel like a miracle of grace. And it is clear how quickly one's fellow workers can come to feel like enemies -- the resentful glance at the person who is also here for an interview, or the faceless other people who sent in resumes, almost by definition more qualified, more fully integrated, more "together," since one begins to experience oneself as outcast, as the one and only outcast.
This is how unemployment appears to consciousness.
