Fighting futility
NZ theorist takes aim at the linking of wealth accumulation with human progress.
The proletariat and the precariat are now joined by the futilitariat, the wretched foot soldiers of an ambitious new theory outlined by University of Otago social theorist Neil Vallelly. Even at first glance, the futilitariat appear, at least financially, better off than the other “iats”. If the proletariat of Marxist theory own nothing but their labour, and the precariat suffer from their lack of rights in a gig economy, the futilitariat, as Vallelly explains, “feel trapped in a job that pays well but feels pointless”.
Many of us will surely identify with his “Homo futilitus”.
“We get into debt in order to gain qualifications, only to discover that employment is increasingly sparse, casualised and precarious; we wash out our plastic jam pots for recycling as fossil fuel companies destroy our seas and corporations raid rainforests at unprecedented rates …”
If this sounds more cri de coeur than objective definition of a new social class, the rest of the book settles into a comfortably academic tone – sample quote: “Semio-futility creates a non-linear and emergent communicative environment” – quoting theorists from Michel Foucault to the American political thinker Wendy Brown. Jeremy Bentham’s views on utilitarianism are explained at length.
Vallelly is also energised by the sociologist Richard Sennett’s vision of a “spectre of uselessness”, a fear that automation and shifts in life expectancy and labour supply will lead to trauma. “My approach,” writes Vallelly, “is much more critical of capitalism and is drawn from critical and political theory rather than sociology and ethnography.”
Neoliberal capitalism, he argues, is responsible for everything that assails Homo futilitus, from the housing crisis to dysfunctional universities. “Futility masked as utility is the essence of neoliberalism’s transformation of everyday life.”
Vallelly takes aim at Steven Pinker, a scientist who, he says, provides the “capitalist elite” with “a pseudo-intellectual justification to link individual wealth
Neoliberal capitalism, he argues, is to blame for everything that assails Homo futilitus.
accumulation to human progress”. But if we are going to take a swing at a data geek such as Pinker, a small amount of real-world evidence might have been nice; it would have given Vallelly’s declarations more focus, and the need to collect it might have forced him to ask the kind of questions that could be answered, a task at which Pinker is no slouch.
Neoliberalism and writers such as Pinker are worthy targets – and Vallelly’s pain is shared by many. But too often the reader bounces from subatomic theoretical nuance to propositions like this one: “A lot of bullshit jobs are just manufactured middle-management positions with no real utility in the world, but they exist anyway in order to justify the careers of the people performing them. But if they went away tomorrow, it would make no difference at all.”
By the end of his book, I am still not sure who the futilitariat are, or even what the author means by “futile”. A parent who doesn’t have the luxury of a job that “pays well but feels pointless” might even feel like telling him to get a grip, especially after sentences like this: “If you suspect that your zero-waste and organic lifestyle is minuscule in the face of climate change, then you have something in common with the climate refugee … These are not relationships of equivalence, but they do attest to a social relationality.”
And in a small but constant irritant, as Vallelly excoriates what he thinks is a “bloated media market”, he cites the Guardian 20 times throughout his book and many other mainstream outlets, too, from the New York Times to TVNZ and RNZ.
The best journalists, including those whose work he leans on, know how to write clearly; quote those directly affected; interpret statistical evidence; and draw readers in, letting them care about stuff – like climate change – that they might otherwise not have cared about. And that is the opposite of futility. ▮
FUTILITARIANISM: Neoliberalism and the production of uselessness, by Neil Vallelly (MIT Press, $55 hb)