Désoeuvrement variously translated as unworking or inoperativity is a notion that haunts
contemporary political theory and practice. Unworking overturns the typical valuation of work
and action and opens an avenue to think radical passivity and inactivity as aesthetic and
political practices that question the modernist mantra of purposeful production and ceaseless
activity. At its most basic unworking is the critique of work in all its variations: Not only
wage labour as Marxism would have it but also the work of art the work of community-building
and even psychoanalysis imagined as 'working through'. This collection of essays is dedicated
to unworking in its various political aesthetic and philosophical guises - exploring its
potentiality as well as its dead ends and dangers. It unites a range of contemporary thinkers
that embrace negation negativity and withdrawal as political strategies turning unworking
into a paradigm of the coming politics. (Giorgio Agamben)
