[iDC] Hyperemployed or Feminized Labor?

[Radhika Gajjala]

Excellent exchanges - so much to say... but headed to NCA (where ASA is
also happening) and I hope to collect my thoughts and discomforts together
in response.

 I've been connecting this conversation about labor (and the excellent work
that many of you do) with the monetizing of particular kinds of emotional
work and its relationship to what Davin mentioned - the management of the
everyday DIY (care), the machinization of subaltern labor and the erasure
of bodies in the discussion of technologies (even when we keep mentioning
the word body over and over again) and so on.

I started to write a livejournal post in response based in my examinations
of women's work/labor,because it would be too long a response to post here
- its becoming a thought pce/essay but I wont be done just yet.

Still - because I've been a lurker for way too long I wanted to say thanks
for starting these recent threads and conversations, everyone.

Radhika

http://www.cyberdiva.org


On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 11:00 PM, Davin Heckman <davinheckman at gmail.com>wrote:

> To me, exploitation evokes taking something, while hyperemployment
> conjures up an ironic sense of 'making do' (great article, by the way). I
> tried very hard to dig into these concerns with my dissertation, which,
> among other things, deals at some point with the shift in home tech from
> labor-saving tools to consumer-oriented tech (which is also a shift in the
> gendering of household spaces) and a shift from an implicit recognition of
> the daily grind to a focus on managing the 'everyday'....
> Davin
>
> Monday, November 18, 2013, Ian Bogost <ian.bogost at lmc.gatech.edu> wrote:
>
> > On Nov 18, 2013, at 1:01 AM, Mark Andrejevic <markbandrejevic at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >> Having said that, I'd be interested in seeing more argument/evidence
> backing up the claim that the notion of hyperemployment might be more
> likely to gain critical purchase than that of exploitation (because the
> latter sounds so retro-Marxist?) or hyperexploitation
> (retro-Baudrillardian?). Is this because of the way the term fits into the
> chain of associations with "unemployment, underemployment and
> overemployment"? Because the notion of employment carries with it
> associations of "being used"? Because it taps into a sense of fatigue and
> overwork rather than with threateningly radical political claims?
> >
> > I don't know either, yet, but my short answer to your
> hopefully-not-rhetorical questions is "yes."
> >
> > That said, I've given some further thought to Karen and Trebor's shared
> comment:
>
> >
> >> What I am curious about, however, is the use of the term
> “hyperemployment.” As Trebor suggested, the term is contradictory for
> workers who are refused the designation of “employee.”
> >
> > … and I just don't see the problem. By this logic, "unemployment" is
> contradictory for workers who are not employed. Thus the modification
> offered by a prefix, which refers to the *domain* of employment.
>
> >
> > Ian
> >
> >
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