Japanese slackers

James Heartfield Jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk
Wed Apr 3 01:04:14 PST 2002


Doug : 'Reading all the press lately about "parasite teens" [in Japan] ... I was wondering: is this some version of the refusal of work so celebrated by autonomists?'

Maybe, in the sense that the autonomists were in the vanguard of laziness (cue Paul Lafargue, the Right to be Lazy). The 'Japanese' trend is universal. In the US I think you call them slackers. In the UK they are the foundation of our music, fashion and video games business. We call them students.

Doug: 'Is the long slump the country has been experiencing more the result of a breakdown of labor discipline than more conventional economic mechanisms?'

Or maybe the slackdom is the result of a breakdown of labour discipline in the absence of conventional mechanisms. More broadly these trends express the evacuation of historical subjectivity, I argue in my new book, The Death of the Subject Explained. -- James Heartfield The 'Death of the Subject' Explained is available at GBP11.00, plus GBP1.00 p&p from Publications, audacity.org, 8 College Close, Hackney, London, E9 6ER. Make cheques payable to 'Audacity Ltd'



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