Saturday, November 12, 2005
(9:07 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
More on Unemployment
k-punk, whose blog I don't read often enough, has a good post on unemployment:Lack of work amplified a feeling that I imagine many people have, but which was particularly pronounced in my own case: a sense that I was not quite real. There was no point getting a job interview, because, along with my 'incompetence', my fundamental fraudulence would be immediately evident to the panel. A magic circle was in place, a familiar closed loop: I would never work because of my inauthenticity; my inauthenticity would only be cured by working. I went to job interviews hoping that the interviewers would persuade ME that I could do the job, which isn't quite the right way round.(There's some good stuff on Kafka and Deleuze in the part of the post after what I quoted.) He's exactly right about the language of job ads. I browse through Craigslist and see things like:
The great benefit of eventually getting a long-term job is that it demystified and desublimated Work. Once inside the magic circle, the discrepancy between the language of job ads (which make it seem like only the most hyper-competent, self-motivated careerist automaton could hold down the most modest of positions) and the reality (of poor organization, routine incompetence) became apparent.
Good applicants will have outstanding interpersonal skills, ability to multitask, twenty years of experience in international diplomacy, and a Nobel Prize in literature. Hours: 20 hours per week. Compensation: $9-$11/hr. depending on qualifications.For me the problem is pride. I don't want a fulfilling job, because I'm quite fulfilled by the academic work that my hypothetical job would support. I want something simple and mindless that I can leave at the office -- I'll go as low as $10 an hour for a job with actual work, or $9 an hour for a job where they let me sit and read. Everyone can see that that's a pretty shitty job -- yet I feel like I would have to fellate twelve different temp coordinators and twenty HR people, in the hopes that one would consider thinking about hiring me. Have I mastered the art of the cover letter, a friend asks? Am I persistent? No, I'm not persistent -- I'm telling people, "Yes, I will answer your phones or enter your data for a paltry amount of money that I can only live off of because I'm a cheapskate who lives in a cruddy neighborhood." I don't feel I should have to say much more -- if some pathetic go-getter wants to "go get" $10 an hour for 20 hours a week, they can have it.
With this, I see that I have come to a position similar to that of k-punk's follow-up post:
Nothing defines the Right so thoroughly as their detestation of welfare. The spurious economic rationale for this denigration does little to conceal its real libidinal basis: namely, the sense that They - the scroungers, the 'bogus asylum seekers', the immigrants - have stolen 'our' enjoyment. Work is deemed to have an absolute value: routinized exertion of whatever kind, no matter how useless, demeaning or even malevolent, must be thought of intrinsically good (this superstition, sadly, is widespread in the working class, as it would have to be). In this respect, it is interesting to reflect that part of the back story of Blunkett's second 'resignation' is the Labour Party's plans to 'reform' incapacity benefit, memorably described by the Independent last week as akin to the ravings of a demented Emperor. Blair wants to cut benefit by twenty pounds a week and, ludicrously, 'name and shame' doctors who write sick notes.Isn't this why we blog? So that some stranger an ocean away will theorize our experience for us?
Weber famously speculated on the links between the Protestant work ethic and the spirit of capitalism. Whatever the causal linkage, capitalism clearly cannot operate without an 'ethic' of quantitative increase that is literally pointless.
