Abstract
The goal of this paper is to revisit the media theory-informed framework originally advanced by Debord’s Society of the Spectacle in order to acknowledge the changes implied by the shift to a post-fordist information and knowledge driven capitalism. We use the Debordian theory as a lens through which we critically explore both the subjective and objective conditions of precarious labor. More specifically, we will make reference to the concrete setting of informational/knowledge labor in Turin by reporting excerpts of interviews with professionals and their precarious conditions. That will provide an empirical engagement with the subjectivities inhabiting what we define as the Spectacle of precarization, a condition of labor mediated by current information and communication technologies that describes precarity as being characterized by the tensions between autonomy and exploitation, informality and stable structures of value creation. We claim that the notion of Spectacle contributes to explain how informational capitalism produces precarity by creating both a stable system of representation for collectively shared meanings and practices of knowledge working, at the same time, producing a scenario that systematically places its actors in a dependable condition of impermanence.
Research focus: Knowledge work, flexibility and precariousness.
Research focus: Critical Media Studies, Digital Labor.
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Notes
- 1.
If alienation in the Marxist literature mainly implies the loss of control over productive processes and, more generally, over free conscious activity, then the Spectacle appears as alienation par excellence because it mediates through signs the way we perceive reality, thus inevitably shaping it.
- 2.
We refer to the set autonomy versus heteronomy as two competing principles that help us discerning the difference in terms of disciplinization (i.e., externally controlled) and self-disciplinization (internally controlled) that characterize the shift from a heteronomic Fordist model of working and a more autonomic Post-Fordist one.
- 3.
We refer here to the overtly negative depiction of knowledge workers laboring conditions in the context of internet economy, that is meant to reject the glamorous world painted by few “net winners” of Sylicon Valley.
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Briziarelli, M., Armano, E. (2017). Spectacular Precarity the Condition of Knowledge Workers in the Context of Informational Capitalism. In: Heidkamp, B., Kergel, D. (eds) Precarity within the Digital Age. Prekarisierung und soziale Entkopplung – transdisziplinäre Studien. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-17678-5_5
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