A
timely manifesto for a feminist post-work politics
Does
it ever feel like you have no free time? You come home after work and
instead of finding a space of rest and relaxation, you’re
confronted by a pile of new tasks to complete – cooking, cleaning,
looking after the kids, and so on.
In
this ground-breaking book, Helen Hester and Nick Srnicek lay out how
unpaid work in our homes has come to take up an ever-increasing
portion of our lives – how the vacuum of free time has been taken
up by vacuuming. Examining the history of the home over the past
century – from running water to white goods to smart homes – they
show how repeated efforts to reduce the burden of this work have
faced a variety of barriers, challenges, and reversals.
Charting
the trajectory of our domestic spaces over the past century, Hester
and Srnicek consider new possibilities for the future, uncovering the
abandoned ideas of anti-housework visionaries and sketching out a
path towards real free time for all, where everyone is at liberty to
pursue their passions, or do nothing at all. It will require
rethinking our living arrangements, our expectations and our cities.
