WORK / LABOUR
Thinking about practice:
In her 1964 talk entitled Labour, Work, Action Hannah Arendt states that “the blessing of life as a whole, inherent in labour, can never be found in work and should not be mistaken for the inevitably brief spell of joy that follows accomplishment and attends achievement.” Arendt is careful to separate the concept of work from the concept of labour indicating that although they have very different entomological origins our cultural usage has mistakenly made them synonymous. To simplify, work is what humans do to make the “artifice” in which we live in and labour is what we do to survive day to day. Labour is what we do when we give birth, feed, care, and eventually, labour is complete upon death. Work, on the other hand makes things outside ourselves that are meant to last like shoes, buildings, temples, and artwork.
Labour through collaboration might produce works that are secondary to the labour but serve as objects that can reciprocate affects and lend to positive feedback loops. These works are not to stand in for some emptiness or attempt to fill a void, nor are they a result of the process of commodification. They are not how what Heidegger describes as “producing” when he writes that “Man sets up the world toward himself, and delivers Nature over to himself. We must think of this placing-here, this producing in its broad and multifarious nature. Where Nature is not satisfactory to man’s representation, he reframes or redisposes it.(…) Man exposes things when he boosts them for sale and use.” The works that are a secondary product of labour are those things that come as a result of a practice based in relation as opposed to a practice that originates from the individual’s attempt to (re)present nature.
Writer and thinker Sophie Lewis makes the case in her 2022 short book entitled Abolish the Family, A Manifesto of Care and Liberation that the nuclear family should be considered a source of harm in our society and that it is within the family where the most danger lies. She sees the family as a colonial construct that exist to uphold capitalism and targets patriarchy as the root of the problem, not merely a male figure or presence but an ideology that insidiously pervades our entire culture. The book is provocative and challenges notions of kinship and care. Within the opening pages she “hazards a definition of love”, she writes, “to love a person is to struggle for their autonomy as well as for their immersion in care, insofar such abundance is possible in a world chocked by capital.” Here is one of those rare, in my opinion, perfectly written sentences. Later in the book she writes that, “we have to accept that human beings are actualized neither in work nor in reproduction.” This hearkens back to Arendt which is what so many progressive thinkers throughout the ages have been trying to tell us.
We are born into this world in a particular place and time. Weather we can control our manifestation within this cyclical existence remains a mystery. Sara Ahmed discusses in her book Queer Phenomonolgy, Orientations, Objects, Others the notion of “compulsory heterosexuality” in which the overarching orientation demands that heterosexuality be the norm in order for a straight forward lineage to occur. Among other things this orientation provides a method or structure for inheritance, be it things or beliefs, that can be easily passed down from one generation to the next all within the confines of a reproductive family. Ahmed seems to indicate that we can make an effort to re-orient ourselves- an act of queering. I see this effort is a form of labor that our body undertakes in order to find a new line of habits and action. It is one that deviates from the constructed norm and opens up new horizons. This laboring is a practice that can’t help but form one’s belief.
Practice in the form of labor is both reflective and prescriptive when it comes to orientation. Orientation is one’s developed, be it nurtured or somehow intrinsic, direction. The way one looks and points. So, a practice in the form of labor is reflective in that it demonstrates an orientation. I hesitate to use the word “fruit” as it relates too much to the notion of work and speaks about the fruit of ones labor instead, I like the notion of the flower of ones labor. Although both fruit and flower have their uses as they are also a visible reminder of what the tree or plant is. No analogy is perfect. And prescriptive in that as one labors, the effort to do so is a positive feedback loop which adds to the strength of one’s orientation. Ahmed refers to this as being “effortless” though still taking much work. She writes, “We could say that history “happens” in the very repetition of gestures, which is what gives bodies their tendencies. We might note here that the labor of such repetition disappears through labor: if we work hard at something then it seems “effortless.” She states, “with effort it becomes effortless”. Repetition or a developed habit can and maybe always is intuitive with varying degrees of intentionality. Labor is the thing that creates us and by creating us we direct ourselves to others. Work on the other hand only creates things that, although sometimes necessary, can prevent our access to others. A shelter for example is at times useful in that it allows us to survive the elements but it also sets up walls that separates us from others.
Many differing religious practices teach in some way or another a form of presentism were one is encouraged to exist in a state of mindfulness which seeks to consider all that is present. Even spiritual practices that have evolved and that have been appropriated by the “west” emphasize some sort of nowness. The Christian tradition speaks of the Kingdom of Heaven being “at hand” as opposed to some future goal or place. Whether this is actually practiced by adherents is another question. In her book, Democracy in the Political Present, Isabell Lorey looks to Walter Benjamin’s “now-time” when considering what the present means. She writes that presentist democracy “can be understood as an infinitive and expanded present. Now-time is a historical materialist time, in which present-day struggles are related to those of the past. These struggles actualize minor fragments of history, tear them from oblivion and created connections with those silenced by conditions of violence – fabrics of relations that might again generate, together, the force to shatter conditions of domination such as sexism, classism, racism, and colonialism.” Isabell envisions action that originate out of one’s immersion into the present. I read this as being an immersion into time that is no longer linear. The lineage where patriarchal rule exists by way of inheritance and family lines. By destroying this linearity a practice then becomes extensive and unbounded. It isn’t bound by family lines or private spaces. The immersion in a “now-time” asks those who dwell in it to know the affects of history and use them to form the political present. With current education’s obsession with STEM we are loosing an appreciation and consideration of our present because of our increasingly ignorance of the past. Immersion in the present with connections to the past is analogous to how we listen deeply to music. Though one is able to approach music intellectually it isn’t until one intuitively feels the flow and is caught up in that flow that the listening becomes profound. Listening is about a knowingness or remembrance of the previous notes and the past bits of the song and where we can feel the present notes through a constant intuitive comparing and contrast. One isn’t dwelling on the past notes but instead immerses themselves in the continual nowness of the music. Some spiritual practices speaks of untethered thoughts, in that nothing in the past is actually attached to the present mind yet these memories of the past are manifested in the mind which informs the present in some deep way. This helps remove the illusion of linearity. So, although “now-time” is related to struggles of the past, those struggles are not tethered allowing us to act freely. Any sort of tethering is a limitation, a weight, a burden that prevents un-impinged movement. It is no wonder that one of the central goals of meditation is to overcome fear. Fear is a giant chain, acting as an inhibiting tether to one’s present practice. I believe fear destroys the potentiality of “now-time”. Knowledge of the past is not fear of the past- and knowledge does not originate from fear. So, “to shatter conditions of domination such as sexism, classism, racism, and colonialism” a “fabric of relation” must be established which is the antithesis of fear. Sexism, classism, racism, and colonialism is built upon fear- fear is the glue that holds them together, and of course, a fabric of relationship, in the queerest sense of the word, is one of alley-ship and generosity and certainly not dominance and power.