Post-work and ecology

The case for post-work is not new but has been recently gaining momentum, in coincidence with a growing hypostatisation and precarisation of work. It comprises claims about less work, more pleasurable work and a withdrawal from unjust work relations, often intertwining arguments about the overcoming of alienated work and of necessitated work. Though addressing the link between ecological damage and capitalist exploitation of labour, debates over post-work have largely left unquestioned the modern notion of work as limitless instrumentalization of a passive, valueless materiality, nature and human flourishing resulting in this way in competition. Yet, today global capitalism is increasingly indifferent to distinguishing between labour and biophysical dynamics, technology and nature, profit and rent. This indicates how seriously should be taken Benjamin’s and Adorno’s claim that human and non-human exploitation presuppose one another and can be overcome only together – as some emergent social experiences are ostensibly doing.