[iDC] Re: The Ethics of (Productive) Leisure

[Jean Burgess]

Michel and list,

> I think many of us have experience with 1) the classic work/ 
> employee paradigm (which is both alienating but can be interesting/ 
> passionate as well); 2) being independent entrepreneurs (being  
> slave to the market, while attempting to follow's one purpose/ 
> passion; 3) having sabbaticals, which is both leisure and related  
> to 'future work'.
>
> In that context, 'just reading a book', and this is why I like  
> Hardt/Negri's take on this, are in fact also 'immediately  
> productive', again a point that points towards the dissolution of  
> the work/leisure boundary in our times,
>
> While I find the distinction of interest, I think it is also part  
> and parcel of the alienating industrial/capitalist mode, and  
> therefore problematic in its usage,

Problematic, yes, but when I mentioned:
> the tension between the idea of participation as agency or
> enfranchisement, and participation as a form of free labour that is
> required before we even appear to _exist_. An opposition that is
> probably too stark in the face of real experience, but some of the
> debates around this stuff at least tend to assume it exists,

I was pointing out two of the most obvious dynamics in debates around  
'participation' in relation to self-representation, visibility and  
'voice' (whether in 'democracy' or in new media networks) in the  
domain of what used to be called leisure. But the second of those  
dynamics hardly figures in mainstream discourse, even as it is  
recognised that the play-work contributions of the swarm are central  
to emerging markets.

So as has been made clear by this whole discussion, a really rigorous  
critique of the politics of cultural participation as (what counts  
as) *productive* has never been more important, especially in the  
light of the long history of invisible labour, as Judith so  
perceptively points us to.

But what I was also getting at (maybe too archly) with the idea of  
'unproductive' participation was not so much the valorisation of  
resistance to or refusal of 'productive' participation, as it was the  
need to re-evaluate the quiet, thoughtful practices of readers and  
audiences, surfers and lurkers as forms of participation.

Trebor's statement that:
"There are varying intensities of participation and degrees of  
belonging-- from reading, and forwarding, to bookmarking (as in:  
"digging it") on to more intensive and time consuming activities like  
writing and moderating"  reminds me of Ross Mayfield's 'Power Law of  
Participation' graph which reflects the assumption that [crudely]  
writing is more important and takes more investment than reading.  
Some time ago I commented on this and even made a new graph to see  
what the hierarchy would look like inverted.

It's all here if anyone's interested:
http://creativitymachine.net/2006/05/19/the-uses-of-participation/

I love Frazer's idea of "slow participation" in relation to all of that!

Jean
>
>
> But again, I'm not at all sure that 'casual', ephemeral forms of
> participation, especially en masse, aren't even _more_ important (or
> perhaps should be, especially from an 'ethical' perspective) than the
> 'serious' or 'proam' ones.
>
> And, as others have suggested, probably one of the most pressing
> issues is the tension between the idea of participation as agency or
> enfranchisement, and participation as a form of free labour that is
> required before we even appear to _exist_.  An opposition that is
> probably too stark in the face of real experience, but some of the
> debates around this stuff at least tend to assume it exists.  So,
> inspired by the recent holidays, what about the right to 'useless
> unemployment' - forms of leisure that require an investment in time
> but leave no commodities behind - time spent reading books, say?
>
> Cheers
> Jean
>
>
>