Envisioning a Post-capitalist Society through Gig Economy Subjects of Disablement’s Critiques of Productivity and Disablement

• In Event: Disability Policy in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

This talk explores the critiques and vantage points of twenty-seven UK-based gig economy workers subjected to disablement oppression and exploitation, in relation to what it means to be a ‘productive member of society’. It also presents participants’ critiques of the principle of ‘productivity’, what they would replace this principle with, and what they would do if money were no object. The reflections shared by participants as co-visionaries in this project offer insight into how to struggle collectively (through trade unions, Disabled People’s Organisations, and other collectives) towards the new horizons of a transformed society. The horizons are based, concretely, on alternative social relations prefigured against and beyond the capitalist wage system and its productivist and disabling dogma of work. Centring participants’ political aspirations in the way adopted in this project (through the ethico-political praxis of seeking and amplifying under-represented vantage points) goes against the mainstream individual model of disability’s narrow search for the subjects of disablement’s pathologised ‘needs’ that ignores questions of their desires and collective struggles for flourishing. Indeed, as hooks put it, ‘imagination is one of the most powerful modes of resistance that oppressed and exploited folks can do and use’ – and put into practice (2010:61). Rather than seek to reveal deeper meanings behind participants’ perspectives or selectively rescue the limited usefulness of work undertaken for a wage, this talk points to the contradictions that the participants have faced in their everyday lives and what they regard as the way out of such contradictions.

Author

• Ioana Cerasella Chis, University of Glasgow