<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<address class="date-header"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://moretht.blogspot.com/2011/12/non-stop-inertia-interview-with-ivor.html">http://moretht.blogspot.com/2011/12/non-stop-inertia-interview-with-ivor.html</a><br>
<span></span></address>
<p class="date-header"><span>Saturday, 17 December 2011</span></p>
<a name="3622756087612753450"></a>
<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name"> Non-Stop
Inertia: An Interview with Ivor Southwood </h3>
<div class="post-header"> </div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>"There is a sense of overwhelming
precariousness, in work, in matters of money, and in culture
generally; a feeling of being kept in suspense which appears
like a law of nature, rather than something human-made." - Ivor
Southwood</b></span><br>
<br>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;">Here’s my interview with Ivor
Southwood about his book <i>Non-Stop Inertia</i> (Zero Books,
2011). </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;"><br>
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;">A PDF document of this interview can
be downloaded from <a
href="http://www.archive.org/details/Non-stopInertia-AnInterviewWithIvorSouthwood"
target="_blank">here</a> for free.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a
href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZqX7aPQbfkM/Tuy1PpEVZyI/AAAAAAAAABs/QePNI6eojJM/s1600/non-stop-inertia.jpg"
style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em;
margin-right: 1em;"><img
src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZqX7aPQbfkM/Tuy1PpEVZyI/AAAAAAAAABs/QePNI6eojJM/s320/non-stop-inertia.jpg"
width="211" height="320" border="0"></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i
style="font-family: Arial;"><br>
</i><br>
<i style="font-family: Arial;">Non-Stop Inertia </i><span
style="font-family: Arial;">argues that the appearance of
restless activity in our society conceals and maintains a deep
paralysis of thought and action.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;">Ivor Southwood has worked as a
mental health nurse and studied literature and media. He has
also done various temporary jobs and is interested in the
culture of precarious work.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">The address of Ivor
Southwood’s blog, 'Screened Out', is: <span style="color:
black;"><a href="http://screened-out.blogspot.com/">http://screened-out.blogspot.com/</a></span></span><br>
<br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;">A good review of <i>Non-Stop
Inertia</i> can be read <a
href="http://www.oxonianreview.org/wp/all-work-and-no-pay/"
target="_blank">here</a>.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><i><span
style="font-family: Arial;"><br>
</span></i></b><br>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><b><i><br>
</i></b></span><br>
<b><i><span style="font-family: Arial;">(1) What does the title of
your book, ‘Non-Stop Inertia’, refer to?</span></i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;">It represents a perpetual sort of
crisis that people seem to be in, in everyday life. There’s this
sense of always having to look for the next thing, having to
sort everything out – this sort of endless circulating,
networking, competing, and always passing through somewhere on
the way to somewhere else. It’s sort of a vicious circle. But
this is presented as ‘how it is’ or a self-imposed situation –
that’s quite important, I think. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;">The title draws attention to the
contradiction in that – in that we’re in a loop of anxiety and
we’re not really getting anywhere. There’s a sort of frenetic
activity and we’re not really achieving </span></div>
<a name="more"></a>anything at all. And there’s this sense of
freedom all the time, but is it really freedom? Has this sort of
mobility and availability and stuff – has it actually made us free
in the way that we’re told that it has?<br>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;">And I suppose I’m thinking as well,
in the title, that there’s the implication that if we were to
stop in some way, we could see the scenery clearly and see each
other clearly, and that the scenery wouldn’t be blurred. We
might be able to see an exit, or a way of improving things. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><i><span
style="font-family: Arial;">(2)</span></i></b><b><i><span
style="font-family: Arial;"> <span lang="EN-GB">In the book
you seem to suggest that our society of non-stop inertia
is reflected in 24 hours news channels.</span></span></i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">24 hour news is
extraordinary in that it sort of has to fill every possible
space, and there’s a sense that things aren’t given time to
develop. An event is reported on as it’s happening or even
before it’s happening. And there’s this sense that there isn’t
really room for any sort of critical space. It’s also in this
sort of strange, virtual area. A lot of the stuff is presented
in some of these graphics and some of these places which don’t
really exist. And again we’re always passing through on this
sort of narrative, and there’s this sense of ‘Is it really
getting anywhere?’ - a sort of futility, I suppose. Yes, I think
there is this sort of common thing there for someone to develop
further.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><i><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">(3) Why have people
accepted a society of non-stop inertia? Why aren’t they
resisting it? </span></i></b><b><span style="font-family:
Arial;" lang="EN-GB"></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">It’s clear that certain
factors have been put together to stop people resisting it. You
sort of feel helpless, that you can’t resist, that you have to
go along, that you have to go with the flow. There’s a lot
behind that. As an individual – in the face of the dismantling
of unions, insecurity, the wage gap, etc. – you’ve got few
resources to draw on. I think that all contributes to it. Now,
obviously, with mobile devices and stuff like that people are
encouraged to exist in their own little bubble and connections
are very difficult to establish. But that push towards
individualisation and insecurity has a lot to do with it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><i><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">(4) Towards the end
of the first chapter, you refer to Marcuse’s book
‘One-Dimensional Man’. Do you agree with his thesis that
we’re living in a one-dimensional society?</span></i></b><b><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB"></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">Marcuse’s book was
written, I think, in the early 60s. I was reading it at the same
time I was beginning to formulate some of the ideas in ‘Non-stop
Inertia’ and I just thought, ‘God, we’re in this now!’ </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">Party politics has a
lot to do with what might be perceived as a one-dimensional
society. I think there’s a lot to say about the sort of almost
interchangeability of the way that Labour and the Conservatives
and the Liberal Democrats are all basically on the same page -
that lack of an alternative. Mark Fisher talks about ‘capitalist
realism’ – that sense that there’s only one way to go. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">I’ve been thinking
lately that it’s quite useful to think of the Labour party as
actually being part of the Coalition. And that feeds into this
idea of our society being one-dimensional. It’s another way of
thinking they’re performing an act of being the opposition, but
in fact they’re really not proposing to undo anything that’s
been done. And they’d quite happily come in and use it in the
same way that New Labour used Thatcherism as a sort of
foundation for the next stage. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><i><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">(5) In order to
demonstrate your argument that we’re living in a society of
non-stop inertia, you explore the contemporary workplace and
its related settings and introduce the reader to the term
‘precarity’. Could you tell us what this term means?</span></i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">My understanding of
‘precarity’ is that it came out of the transition to
post-Fordist ways of working – out of the period of Fordism and
stability. People were sold an idea that they were being
unchained from industry and having a boring job for life, and
that they would be endlessly mobile, aspiring characters. But it
seems to me that the price for all of that is a constant nagging
insecurity. The idea of precarity is this sort of machinery of
anxiety. It’s a sort of a technology in the workplace and in
culture, which has been introduced and extended, and allows us
to keep on functioning. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">That’s not to say that
we should be striving to return to how it was before - we
couldn’t anyway because the world’s changed. But we have to
break free from this new form of imprisonment or subjugation
that precarity represents. We have to not believe the myths that
we are these free subjects anymore. If we’re moving towards
something else, maybe it would be autonomy rather than
precarity.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">So, precarity is
insecurity and being in a precarious economic state, and, in
practical terms, things like agency work, endlessly re-applying
for jobs and stuff like that. And all of that is being sold as a
positive thing by people who are basically using it as a way of
cutting down on labour costs.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><i><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">(6) There’s also a
psychological dimension to the term ‘precarity’ as well,
isn’t there? In the book you say that it describes a fear of
losing one’s job (because one needs the money from it) and a
simultaneous desire to see one’s job end (because one’s job
is boring).</span></i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">Yes. Again, going back
to what I was saying before about why resistance is difficult:
You need the job to carry on and you also don’t want it to carry
on. It’s having to carry that sort of contradiction around in
your head in whatever tasks you’re doing at work. There’s that
fear and all other stuff as well - like housing, the welfare
system, etc. – which feeds into that fear. Yes, definitely,
there’s a psychological element going on there.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><i><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">(7) Is it only
people in short-term employment that exist in a state of
precariousness?</span></i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">I think it’s becoming
much more widespread. There is an argument that I feel there is
something in: That certain parts of society have always been
precarious, and have always felt precarity, but that now a lot
of people who under Fordism might have been protected to some
extent, and people in public sector work, are now experiencing
it for the first time. This sense of everything being on the
point of being rearranged seems to be becoming the norm.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><i><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">(8) Why does there
seem to be no discussion of precarity in mainstream
politics?</span></i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">It doesn’t seem to be
in any of the main party’s interest to discuss it. It’s tied to
aspiration and individualistic consumerism. As I got home today,
I was reading about the Natcen report that came out, about
social attitudes today. There was a statement from David Cameron
on it, and it’s kind of terrifying. He turned this thing about
how people should look after themselves and that poverty is your
own fault into a positive thing to try to promote his so-called
‘Big Society’. He says, ‘These are the values that I’ve been
talking about for years.’ And there’s this sense that this
government wants to take advantage of this – regardless of
whether this survey is actually representative of British
people’s views or not – and get behind it and push it. And they
say it’s a way of helping to build a bigger, stronger society.
When you’re up against that I suppose it’s no wonder that things
like precarity aren’t really widely discussed.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">I think also there’s
the issue that precarity probably unites lots of disparate
groups. And I think those groups have a lot of different
interest and different standards of living and different ways of
living. It’s probably difficult - and it’s probably something to
aim for - to make links between these groups, which include
agency workers, freelance creative workers, and casualised
public sector workers - from immaterial labour through to manual
labour. Maybe part of the reason precarity isn’t discussed is
that it doesn’t represent one coherent group. It’s lots of
groups. Perhaps now is the time that some of those groups can
communicate and find some common ground.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">I’ve said several times
as well that I would also like a kind of psychological discourse
to surround precarity or the anxiety of insecurity. Instead of
the kind of bland, Alain de Botton type stuff about work and how
we feel about it, it would be good to have some sort of
analytical interpretation of it from a psychotherapeutic
perspective. It might be that I’ve just not seen it, but I’ve
not come across anything from that direction so far.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><b><i><span style="font-family: Arial;"
lang="EN-GB">(9) Why do you think there seems to be little
discussion of precarity in the media?</span></i></b><b><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB"></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">Well, it obviously runs
in the face of aspirational, distracting culture of the
mainstream media, and also the superficial positivity that is
pumped through things like BBC Radio One, reality TV and talent
shows, etc. I suppose the only possible way of discussing it is
to try to use one of those kinds of shows or texts and sort of
turn it around in order to look at precarity. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><i><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">(10) Another
theoretical term you discuss in your exploration of the
contemporary workplace is ‘emotional labour’. Could you
explain what this is?</span></i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">It’s an idea that Arlie
Russell Hochschild was exploring in the 1970s. She introduced
this phrase relating to the work involved in producing the
product of yourself as a commodity - the smile and the
appearance of customer service and all that sort of stuff. Also
involved in emotional labour is the working up of a sort of
synthetic enthusiasm for something, such as a product, which
feeds into sales and jobs like that. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">In the book, I look at
how the term is applicable now, and, as with precarity, I think
it seems to have spread a lot. In one sense there’s what I call
remote emotional labour, which is virtual media work,
advertising, marketing, etc., and call centres. I’m also
thinking about – again from a personal point of view - how
Hochschild’s traditional ideas of emotional labour – of selling
yourself and of selling an experience to the customer – could be
extended to the “jobseeker” and worker as well. You’re selling
yourself to your manager and your boss through a performance of
enthusiasm and immersion in whatever tasks you’re doing –
looking as if you’re giving 110% and all that crap. That applies
whether you’re in immaterial labour or in what would be
old-fashioned manual labour: in a warehouse or something. It’s
still there. It’s still a background to it – this sense that you
have to appear to not just be doing what you’re paid for, but
enjoying it and feeling that it’s the right thing for you.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">As Hochschild also
mentions, the effects of selling yourself starts to affect
yourself and your identity. The commodified self starts to
re-shape the real self. You come to believe your cover story, so
to speak. Again, going back to what I was saying earlier about
resistance – having to sell yourself has a huge impact on
people, especially when you add a sense of self-failure and
self-blame onto it, which helps people get into the part that
they are playing.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><i><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">(11) Do you think
the cultural pressure to continually sell oneself is partly
responsible for the popularity of social networking sites
like Facebook?</span></i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">Yes, unfortunately. I
think with all of these things it’s not the technology itself;
it’s how it is used. With social networking sites there’s a sort
of commodification and branding of oneself. One of the themes of
my book is the internalised colonisation by Capital and by the
commodifying of everything, including relationships. There’s a
risk of social networking becoming like that and becoming a sort
of self-marketing duty.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><i><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">(12) In the second
section of the book you argue that almost all workplaces now
resemble ‘non-places’. What exactly do you mean by this?</span></i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">Non-places is a term I
cam across in a book by the anthropologist Mark Augé. He was
talking about transitional places, in particular places like
airports, supermarkets, and motorways, etc. These, I suppose,
are part of the architecture of neoliberal capitalism, in that
they seem frictionless although, of course, they aren’t. People
with long commutes to work, for example, are always coming
across glitches. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">We’re spending more and
more time in ‘non-places’. People are commuting for longer and
longer times. What kind of time is that? It’s sort of non-time,
in a way. It’s time in a non-place. What can you actually do?
Who are you with? You’re not with your colleagues or with your
friends. You’re on your own with passengers who are not talking
to each other. Non-places are places of solitude and also places
where your identity is suspended. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;"
lang="EN-GB">Another aspect of non-places is amnesia. They kind
of resist remembering. That possibly applies to a lot of work
now. You finish one assignment and then you erase it and go on
to the next one. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><i><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">(13) Would you say
the purpose of having workplaces resemble non-places is to
disempower people by making them feel that they can’t get a
grip on the world around them?</span></i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">Yes. As I said before,
we can’t go back to a Fordist world, but it has to be born in
mind that the vast majority of people aren’t looking for a new,
dynamic challenge every month or something. Most people want
stability. They want security and a decent standard of living,
and time to look after their kids, and to know that they can
live somewhere and pay all of their bills. You’ve got to have a
certain kind of rootedness for that. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><i><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">(14) In the third
section of the book you look at how the boundaries that used
to exist between work and non-work have become blurred and
begin with a discussion of the term ‘jobseeking’. Could you
tell us why you don’t like this term?</span></i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">It turns a negative
thing into a positive thing. You’re not unemployed; you’re
seeking a job. There’s also a pseudo-spiritual side to it – ‘If
you seek hard enough for work, you’ll find it.’ It’s also
individualising. It’s denying a social, structural reason for
why you are looking for a job. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><i><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">(15) In the book
you discuss your own experience of being unemployed and
looking for work. Could you tell us a little about this?</span></i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">In the book I mention
how there’s a deep acting – in terms of emotional labour – in
trying to whore yourself to work agencies and a surface acting
in visits to the job centre. With the job centre, you’re going
there to get your benefits – you need it. It’s not really about
any “opportunities” that they may want to make you aware of. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">I’m aware that a lot of
people who work in jobcentres – it must be a much worse place to
work in now than it used to be. You hear this stuff about
people, for instance, having to meet targets and being told to
put people on to courses – that must be very depressing. You’re
met with a person you’ve got to try to force those courses on to
– it’s just mutually awful, I think. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">Going back to
non-places: Jobcentres are a bit like banks – they have a sort
of oppressive, cheerful imagery that goes along with them, which
is like someone shining a bright light into your face. There are
all these images of happy people, smiling, holding hands, etc.,
which you know doesn’t relate to reality – and the person seeing
you, the jobcentre worker, knows that as well.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><i><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">(16) While we’re on
the subject of unemployment – what do you think of the </span></i></b><b><i><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">UK</span></i></b><b><i><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB"> Coalition
government’s “Work Programme”?</span></i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">The “Work Programme”
basically involves people who have been unemployed for a certain
length of time and – I haven’t got the information to hand, but
it depends on what age you are, however many months you’ve been
employed, etc. – being handed over to a company that aims to
help them get a job. Probably the most well-known companies
would be A4E. There’s also G4S as well – a security company,
which says something, doesn’t it? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">The “Work Programme”,
like the individualisation of employment, is marketed in this
way as if it frees people - you need to just train them,
rehabilitate them, give them the skills they need, etc., then
they’ll get a job. It’s a combination of putting people in a
room and holding them there while they look in newspapers and
stuff for jobs and also putting them onto this thing called
‘work-related activity’ – which is unpaid work for periods of
time, where an employer gets free labour. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">For me, at a time when
unemployment is going up and up, the “Work Programme” is like
criminalising people. It’s like teaching people a lesson for
being unemployed. People need to organise against it. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><i><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">(17) Towards the
end of your examination of unemployment you say that
“jobseeking” has become a career. Could you explain how?</span></i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">It’s taken the place of
occupation, in the traditional sense – the part of people’s
minds to do with what they give is now to do with what they are
seeking to do or what they want to do. And it’s become a career.
Apart from what we’ve already discussed with being a “jobseeker”
and the duties involved in that in order to get your welfare
benefit, there’s also the job of “jobseeking” while you are
working, especially with short-term contracts. There’s this
thing of having to always look busy and impress the boss in
order to carry on in your job, which is a kind of career in
itself – it becomes more important than whatever the nominal
duties of your job are. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><i><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">(18) In the final
chapter of your book, you look at possible means of
resisting our culture of non-stop inertia. Could you tell us
about one of these?</span></i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">As most people are
looking for stability, revolutionary acts or sudden upheavals
are unfortunately off the table. We need to try to find other
ways of making progress. One way I talk about in the book is
this idea of estrangement – trying to distance yourself from
what you’re having to do, withholding your emotional labour or
that enthusiasm that’s become a kind of standard requirement. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">To extend the idea of
occupation – I suggest it’s important to try to re-occupy
yourself and your own thoughts and mind, and to try to evict the
language of aspiration and fun that attaches itself to most
work.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><i><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">(19) Most work
already estranges people from themselves, doesn’t it? Isn’t
there a danger that if people estrange themselves further
they might perhaps lose themselves completely?</span></i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">I agree that most work
is already alienating. But I think there is a sense of what I
would call immersion as well as alienation. A lot of things
we’ve been discussing have come along recently, and the
internalisation of this stuff, and the reliance on technology,
etc., means that we are immersed in this environment and we need
to somehow unplug it or get our heads out of it slightly. That’s
what I’m thinking about with estrangement or distancing. It’s
become so familiar that one way out is to try to make it strange
again. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><i><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">(20) In his 1932
essay ‘In Praise of Idleness’, Bertrand Russell says: “I
think there is far too much work done in the world, [and]
that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is
virtuous”. Do you agree with him?</span></i></b><b><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB"></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">Yes, absolutely -
especially at the moment. The harder you work the more work
you’re making for somebody else, or the more harm you’re doing
to the environment. There’s nothing virtuous about that, is
there?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">‘Non-Stop Inertia’ is
published by Zero Books: <a href="http://www.zero-books.net/"><span
style="color: black;">http://www.zero-books.net/</span></a></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">This interview took
place on </span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial;"
lang="EN-GB">the 7th December 2011</span></i><i><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB"> and was conducted by
</span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">Richard</span></i><i><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></i><i><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">Capes</span></i><i><span
style="font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB"> for the site ‘More
Thought’ (<a href="http://www.moretht.blogspot.com/"><span
style="color: black;">www.moretht.blogspot.com</span></a>).</span></i></div>
</body>
</html>