The Anaesthetic Politics of Being Unaffected: Embodying Insecure Digital Platform Labour

Abstract

Building on critical geographic research on the embodied politics of labour that has explored how different forms of work transform bodily capacities for action, this paper argues that a body’s capacity to be affected is an overlooked aspect of a labouring body’s power. In response, the paper develops the concept of anaesthesia in relation to work by explaining how a reduced capacity to be affected can be both politically constraining and enabling for the bodies involved. Through qualitative fieldwork with digital platform workers, the paper presents three narratives that express the embodied complexities of this insecure work. Concealment, projection and resignation are explored as anaesthetic bodily tactics that constitute a refusal to inhabit certain depleting experiences. By drawing attention to such survival strategies, the paper highlights how workers’ changing capacities for feeling are just as significant for understanding worker agency as their changing capacities for action.