Keyword: sex work

Labor landscapes of post-Fordism are commonly characterized by fragmentation, fracture, and atomization, with platformization as the latest abstraction of a workplace that is everywhere and nowhere. The period following the 2008 financial crash has been posed as an interregnum where the exposed contradictions of neoliberalism have not yet ousted this order, while multiple actors jostle to grasp the reins. In this paper, I propose a focus on the cultural practices of place-making in theorizing contemporary class struggle with reference to two groups of digital laborers: tech workers and online sex workers. Taking the incubator—a place of pooled resources for companies in-the-making—as a jumping off point, I consider the interrelations, differentials, and potentials for class (re)composition when the distinction of work from life is as blurred as it is distinguishing. From an autonomist perspective and looking to collectives such as the Tech Workers Coalition and Hacking//Hustling, I unpick the “common sense” of a placeless platformed capital to explore the multiplicity of the “workplace,” what counts as “work,” and which places enable the imagination of otherwise. As visions of the “future of work” abound I ask, how can research under the umbrella of cultural studies support and co-create points of intervention—places of aggregation—in the interregnum?