‘Above and Beyond the Market’: The Family, Social Reproduction and Conservatism in Bernard Stiegler’s Politics of Work

Assessments of the political impact of automation often emphasize the need to ‘denaturalize’ work. To what extent is this strategy of denaturalization successful in separating new proposals regarding the nature of work from existing normative assumptions about its value? This article will answer this question through a critique of Bernard Stiegler’s account of work. It will read his politics of work in the context of his understanding of the family in order to demonstrate that while he denaturalizes work he naturalizes background assumptions regarding its relationship to social reproductive labor. In particular, that social reproductive labor is a realm beyond work that is ‘above and beyond the market.’ Following an overview of how Stiegler’s philosophy of technics underpins his account of work and the family it will be claimed that this gesture reproduces gendered assumptions about the nature of work and fails to provide a critical account of the changing relationship between work, the family and economic responsibility under neoliberalism. It will be concluded that Stiegler adopts a conservative approach to the relationship between work and the family and that the challenge of avoiding the naturalization of existing assumptions regarding work is a central problem for post-work critics.