The right to be weary?: Endurance and exhaustion in austere times

Abstract

This paper contributes to an emerging body of work that is trying to trace and make sense of the everyday affects of austerity by examining some of the ways in which neoliberal welfare retrenchment is lived, experienced & resisted. In this paper we draw upon interview data exploring the impact of welfare reform on the lives of young people in housing need, showing how the day-to-day existence of coping with welfare reform can lead to a state of fatigue, a gradual slow wearing out that comes with having to endure everyday hardship. The focus is on forms of suffering and violence that are felt as a kind of steady ongoing form of endurance, rather than as a sudden eruption. We turn our attention to affective moments that are neither passionate nor intense, but instead listless and still, generating feelings of inertia, flatness, impasse. We propose that weariness is an integral part of understanding the everyday affects of austerity. Yet despite the seeming centrality of weariness to issues such as precarity, poverty and austerity, there has yet to be a sustained discussion into weariness itself. A common conceptualization of weariness is that it is the antithesis of political action, as individuals are slowly worn down until they no longer have the strength or capacity to resist. However, in this paper we offer a more reparative reading of weariness, one that does not narrowly conceptualise weariness as simply a closing down. Instead we seek to question whether weariness should necessarily always be equated with inaction. The paper concludes with some reflections on what we term ‘the right to be weary’, examining how weariness might be understood as a potential retreat from the relentless drive to move forwards, a form of passive dissent.

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