Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 22:00:48 -0500
From: Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1-AT-osu.edu>
Subject: Contingency and Irony


Spencer E. Ante writes on the increased use of contingent workers in _Wired
News_ <http://www.hotwired.com/webmonkey/news/story1.html?tw=news>:
>The growing need for such "free agents" to have specially tailored
>representation is clear. In 1986, the number of temps employed
>each day was 800,000, but the number had more than tripled by last year,
>according to the National Association of Temporary and Staffing
>Services. A recent study by the Economic Policy Institute
>determined that self-employed and temporary workers now make up 30 percent of
>the American workforce.
>
>Increasingly, these workers are hired as so-called long-term
>temps: employees who work at a company for at least one year, have
>flexible hours and high take-home pay, but no benefits or job security.
>High-tech firms, such as Microsoft, AT&T, Intel, Hewlett-Packard,
>and Boeing are particularly avid employers of long-term temps.

How do Foucauldians theorize the relationship (or lack thereof) between
postmodern emphasis on 'contingency' and capital's thirst for increasing
use of contingent workers (temps, 'independent contractors,' 'free agents,'
or however you call us) with no job security, no benefits, etc.? Is the
relationship merely contingent? Or does postmodernism serve as a
disciplinary discursive formation that works on the bodies of temps perdu,
by producing the minds that enjoy the symptoms of late capitalism,
including our own downward mobility?

Considering that many Foucauldians are located in academy, what do you guys
think of a very high proportion of contingent workers in academic labor (40
% and upwards, without counting grad assistants) in the USA?

Irony of postmodernism?

Yoshie Furuhashi