My academic research focuses primarily on work, play, and economic democracy.

 

Economic Democracy and the Future of Work

A majority of my work focuses on questions of workplace democracy, economic democracy, labor justice, and post-work futures. Broadly speaking, I am interested in critiques of capitalist relations as sites of domination and alienation as well as how we can creatively imagine post-capitalist alternatives. Most recently, I have written about these questions in relation to digital labor and post-work.

 

I am also interested in prefigurative politics, or the creation of desired future social relations and economic alternatives in the here-and-now. In essence, prefigurative politics is about "building the new world in the shell of the old". Prefiguration requires us to think about political resistance in terms of a moral coherence between means and ends. Most recently, I have discussed prefiguration in relation to economic democracy and the possibility of a post-work future.

 

Work, Play, and Meaning in Life

In response to the domination and alienation in capitalist work, I am currently exploring the importance and value of play. While the concept of play is often associated with childhood, play is an important component of meaningful living in all stages of life. I suggest that play is not an activity but rather a way of being in the world that, among other things, privileges the pursuit of intrinsic value of activities over mere instrumentality. In relation to work, I argue that for work to be unalienated it must be playful. This has important implications for the distinction that Marx draws between the realm of necessity and the realm of freedom - between the time spent producing our basic needs and the time for free, creative activity beyond our needs. I therefore believe that play ought to be asserted as one the key components of a post-capitalist vision of the good life.

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Finally, I am interested in how absurdity and playfulness are important for thinking about the search for meaning in our lives.

 

Here, I am currently working on a paper that argues for the existential value of play - that it gives us the experience of immanent meaning and what I call "existential sovereignty", which is to be understood as the freedom to be unburdened (even momentarily) from the question of meaning.

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I am also working on a paper that suggests bathetic experiences - moments of unintentional anticlimax, or the fall from the grandiose to the mundane or crude - are a key component of our experience of the absurd.