Futurelessness 

The short-termism of transnational finance - its general myopia and model of quarterly capitalism - is the focus on immediate gain to the detriment of sustainability and long-term development. Financiers and academics in places like the Harvard Business Review, Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and probably also the Harvard School for Being a Big-Ass Neoliberal hurry to disprove that this short-term focus might be detrimental, or while we’re at it, even real at all. They point to developments like increased corporate borrowing and more R&D investment to show that companies are indeed thinking long-term as well, not just buckling under investors’ pressures for instant profit. These insider trends are not wholly convincing as proof from inside of a finance world where the complete disregard for the collateral known as the future is an inherent pathology. The short-termism of finance ‘trickles down’ and is perversely reflected in the distorted Funhouse Mirror world of the Precarious, who equally cannot imagine any future horizon. The precariat, a socio-economic group / is-it-even-a-class? / class-in-the-making is defined by a lack of most forms of labour security (employment, job, work, income security, etc.) This position is equivalent with the impossibility to have faith in, imagine, construct and plan for the future. The research masters thesis I am working on at the moment argues that some forms of art strive to act as a palliative for this specific futurelessness. However, it is imperative to conceive of the art of getting our future back on a larger scale, outside of the subset of the precariat known as the creative class. 

Being at war 

The unemployed, ‘left-behind’ white working-class miner in Wales actually shares a condition with the digital nomad freelance graphic designer in Berlin doing unpaid internships, claims Sven Lütticken, even if they themselves hardly see it as such. This view regards precarity as endemic across different social groups, with widely different manifestations but sharing the same underlying causality. The enormous bridge between the miner and the designer here can only be built within a systemic understanding of the state of current neoliberal finance capitalism. The scale of this analysis is vast and vast are the differences between the members of the precariat, making solidarity an especially thorny project. This new class-in-the-making is, according to Guy Standing, at war with itself. The small-town redneck often overlooks their real enemy in order to paint the asylum seeker as their antagonist. Moreover, both might see the creative cosmopolitan lumpenfreelancer as a winner because the latter is rich in cultural capital, which tends to be superficially glossy even if it is a veneer painted on top of the same old insecurity. 

As more and more people are funneled head-first into precariousness, the term is becoming more popular overall, with many writers and cultural critics realising the urgency for solidarity within this group as well as offering various propositions. The need to turn this group into a self-conscious one, self-identified as such and fighting for its autonomy cannot be overstated. There are those of us who had the privilege to opt into a life of precarity in the Humanities, for instance, because we could not conceive another option. Those of us who fight breathlessly for our right to be exploited, racking up years and years of ridiculous experience working for free in a system that criminally undervalues all except for tech innovation. We do share a common enemy and a common futurelessness with the refugee who does not have the privilege to choose their unfreedom and oppression. It might seem out of line to equate asylum seekers with the plight of white art school kids, but equally it might well turn out to be a strong union, should it ever materialise. The framework that squashes these experiences together is dangerous if it threatens wholly to equate them. The trick is, then, to accept differences in privilege among the underprivileged and further build upon these in order to gather political momentum. 

The feminist curriculum 

The wisdom of Audre Lorde’s words from 1982 shimmers across time, offering one way forward for to the hopeless precarian: 

“You do not have to be me in order for us to fight alongside each other. 

I do not have to be you to recognise that our wars are the same.”

Perhaps this is one way in which we can start to imagine bridging the treacherous gap between all of us in this wannabe-class: with some lessons that the feminists had to learn the hard way themselves. The focus on making difference productive, turning it into a strength is one of the defining characteristics of the Second Wave. Their legacy cannot go unnoticed in a climate where ‘intersectional or not at all’ is, if not the norm for feminists today, then at least a frequent rallying cry. Obviously, as TERFs still wage their radically non-inclusive war, with Twitter and bathrooms as their battleground, the feminist work of instituting intersectionality is far from complete. but their ethos is shaping how we perceive difference and solidarity today. The point, then, is not the cultish flat world of sameness, but a shared commitment to justice that recognises and plays on differences. A meme blipped on my radar for a few seconds recently; it was paraphrasing Ferris Bueller’s Day off to say that Bernie Sanders “has the support of sportos, motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, waistoids, dweebies, dickheads.” The slut-to-geek broad coalition like the one rallied by Bernie is the kind of assemblage of precarians I am referring to. If even the waistods and the dweebies could shake hands across their particular aisle and agree on some programme points, then there is still hope. Even if the Bern threw in the towel for 2020, aided by the underhanded mafioso tactics of the DNC, the coalition that coalesced under him can live on. 

Intersectional economics 

*deep breath before this last paragraph because I crammed too much in it* Reconciling differences within a class project: aye there’s the rub. 20th century class-based politics made way for the single-issue approach of identity politics; these are the two ends of Nancy Fraser’s redistribution-recognition spectrum. She claims that groups arguing for socio-economic redistribution like the proletariat have as a goal the self-effacement of their group, self-abolishment of itself as a class in meeting their aim. On the other hand, those campaigning for cultural recognition have to insist on and perform the specificity of their group in order to fight in its name. Fraser’s task is the one we face today as well: a critical theory of recognition where we see a “cultural politics of difference that can be coherently combined with the social politics of equality.” Standing’s politics of paradise for the precarious also have a place for identity: accepting multiplicity of identities while building the infrastructure that would recognise and defend them. The two camps of class-first (or class-only?) left versus identity left have been at it for a while but precariousness seems like a good ground on which they can start to breed commonness.

Various authors are already working on the task to include an intersectional perspective in economics and support the thesis that not only class has bearing on economic interests, but that identity markers can also become relevant. Adam Aboobaker notes how “an intersectional political-economic theory has great potential to provide a working basis for social movements that draw strength from powerful alliances of oppressed groups.” One of the tasks for the precarious is to make space for a discourse that can hold the two economic and identitarian poles together. It is one of the possible paths that can lead to the creation of self-awareness and solidarity. 

1.Know thy ally and also Don’t be a dick online 

To embrace difference, we have to overcome the often-touted cancel culture; specifically the moralising righteous left tendencies inside of all of us. Online corners of ‘identity-first’ must be widened to include material perspectives. Cutting moralising asshole tendencies is one way in which we carve space towards wider, intersectional concepts of identity and economics. Case in point, in February 2020 famous irreverent online art critics White Pube went on a rampage-meltdown about racism in the Tate. It was crowned by the widely-liked comment “White people thinking of commenting: the absolute state of some of youse here is absolutely disgusting. Ur opinion on this doesn’t matter. We are not going to answer your dickhead questions.” While this also touches on the debate around the emotional labour done by POC to educate white people, it is a classique example of Mark Fisher’s Vampire Castle. Calling it out would most certainly make the White Pube call me a racist and a racism-apologist, however it is important not to do the enemy’s work by tearing each other down 

2.Make symbols

Like Guy Standing says, “Symbols matter. They help unite groups into something more than a multitude of strangers.” We need a new aesthetic to cover ourselves in, post-hammer and sickle constructivist realism. Maybe it’s memes. Who cares what it is, we have to make art and symbols and pictures for this particular struggle. 

3.Demand it all 

In her book Cruel Optimism, Lauren Berlant seems to reprimand these pesky entitled millennials for having their precarious cake and wanting to eat it too: “wanting

the state to guarantee basic conditions of flourishing—food, clothing, shelter, jobs—without anyone having to give up the flexible, wandering way of living they have carved out.” Yes, Lauren, that is correct. I want basic dignity AS WELL AS a shot at self-actualisation. Don’t be afraid to be so radical as to demand both in this grand re-structuring of life and work that we are living through. Don’t be afraid of the politics of paradise. 

4.Tap into your radical vulnerability 

In the Netherlands, like in countless other places, income is a subject to be generally avoided in polite society. You must, however, tell everyone you meet that, despite a law explicitly mandating it, you do not get any breaks at your zero-hour flex-contract work. Tell them that you are not allowed to have any food, even after 8, 9, 10 hours on your feet. Tell them you go to therapy cuz the precariousness is really getting to you. Not to victimise ourselves, but to find ways in which our experiences connect. 

5.Reach out and branch out

Building solidarity amongst precarians is the work of finding, treasuring, instrumentalising and building upon differences we have while recognising we both suffer from a shared condition. I’m not sure how to reach out to people who are very different from me, because they sure ain’t at the gallery opening. I signed up to volunteer at a community garden near me. I try to chat about the Kurdish cause in broken Dutch with the man behind the counter of the shop next to me. I’m not sure how to reach out effectively but trying your best to connect to other precarians’ experiences can’t go amiss. 

6.Radical no-workism

Enjoy inertia, enjoy doing nothing, decolonise your mind, delink self-worth from productivity, fight those internalised demons.