Fake it until you make it: prefigurative practices and the extrospection of precarity

After twenty years of struggles around precarity, the question of whether this category can produce a collective subjectivity capable of political action remains open. This essay wants to propose a reflection around this apparent stalling in the processes of composition of a broad precarious political class, considering specifically the allure of finding individual satisfaction through work as one of the most pressing challenges in this respect. The imaginal politics of Underearners Anonymous is here examined as an example of the growing number of situations in which work is a symbolic performative spectacle of the self (such as practice firms, where people pretend to be working in fake offices), and contrasted with other 'confessional' tactics mobilised by autonomous groups such as the Radical Education Forum.

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