Plague Journal, That Strange Elongated Crisis
I finished the essay by Maxwell Hyett of Western University. The essay is entitled Amateur Mortality. It was forwarded to me by a friend. Hyett treats Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi’s three short meditations on the meanings, the possible outcomes of the covid pandemic, the quarantine, the masking up in public places, the social isolation which we’ve experienced over the past sixteen months.
Hyett promotes a concept of work as an activity driven by passion, by desire for incremental learning through practice: an alternative to the professionalized, individualistic, market driven, financially compensated work which has been valorized for the past seventy years or so since WWII. The author advances the older concept of “amateur,” a person motivated by care and affection, rather than by profit and selfish, narrow specialization.
Central to the author’s thesis, the proximity of death, a reference to the spread of covid 19, — functions as the backdrop to the passion, the lover’s commitment to his/her practice, that is, a desire to be changed, and to leave behind a durable mark on the community of our fellows. That we are mortal gives a particular urgency to our tenure here, to the opportunities which are ours to explore, to be in love with.
All of this is revolutionary thinking, potential for upending the status quo from many angles of attack. Passionate engagement, a personal love for what I do, day-to-day would a radical departure for the precarious existence which I and everyone else is has become accustomed to.
Hyett finished with an observation that the elongated crisis (a reference to the Delta variant), is the effect of capitalism’s “artificial continuity of life in the marketplace.” He concludes: this elongated crisis, which lacks an acute threat, is unlikely to achieve enough pressure to make substantial change in the status quo.
Certainly that is no concluding note of optimism.
If you’d like a copy of Berardi’s short essay, Beyond the Breakdown: Three Meditations on a Possible Aftermath, CLICK HERE.
2 thoughts on “Plague Journal, That Strange Elongated Crisis”
Reading your second paragraph, I tried to imagine cleaning hotel rooms, or assembling toasters, or writing insurance policies as ever being the sort of passionate activities you say Mr. Hyatt promotes as work. It is even more ridiculous to frame them as “professionalized, individualistic, market driven, financially compensated work […] motivated […] by profit and selfish, narrow specialization.”
Voluntary passion projects are swell, but they never can be the sum of all labor. “Work” is an activity undertaken because one values its end result, whether or not the activity itself is intrinsically satisfying. No one ever is going to change diapers for the pleasure of the experience; they do it because it needs doing, and the alternative is worse than the activity — or else because they get paid.
There are many forms of “essential worker” types of work that could be transformed by a straightforward and dramatic improvement in compensation. The increase in pay for this necessary, hourly paid work, would demonstrate respect for the worker. Such “labor” as cleaning hotel rooms could be transformed into work-as-an-opportunity for showing care, a recognition of the indirect relationship with the hotel guest who benefits from a well cleaned room. I doubt that it is possible to take pride in one’s work, if one feels that one is being exploited, with slim opportunity for relief.
As to your second criticism, the work that is currently highlighted as desirable, to be sought after — is manifestly “professionalized, individualistic, market driven, financially compensated work […] motivated […] by profit and selfish, narrow specialization.”
Granted it may cause discomfort to recognize that work at it’s best is voluntary, projects with ties to the heart. I agree that can never be the sum of all labor. There is always hot, dirty, scut-work that must be done. Even this activity can be experienced as meaningful, as important, repetitious though it many be. One can take pleasure in doing what needs to be done, and receive a goodly compensation for such work, done well.
Of course to say such out loud, is to advocate a society that is radically different from the one we now have.
Should we not press in that direction?
I think that you’d enjoy reading Berardi’s essay