Reworlding Antiwork Politics

Antiwork praxis has experienced something of a resurgence in the wake of the global financial crisis and COVID-19 pandemic. Yet the radical potential of antiwork theory and politics is currently limited by its centring of the histories and subjectivities of (post-)Fordist wage workers in the Global North. In response, this article argues that a project of “reworlding” antiwork politics is necessary both to extend the antiwork critique by tracing work's association with other processes of dehumanisation, and to expand the postwork imaginary through an engagement with diverse and divergent ways of living otherwise. Following a sympathetic critique of the existing antiwork scholarship, it introduces three strategies for reworlding antiwork politics inspired by the postcolonial and Black radical traditions: provincialising the wage; reckoning with living alternatives; and nurturing divergent forms of organisation.