“Labour as dressage”

Several commenters have pointed recently to a “quickening” that seems to aptly describe the tone of recent weeks. I was reminded of this today reading an article entitled “labour as dressage” which provocatively suggests “there is work that needs to be done, and work that does not need to be done, in terms of production…anything which falls in the later is an obvious form of labour as dressage” (Jackson, N,. Carter, P. 1998) (dressage = control).

I got to wondering whether the dislocation inherent in the recent year and the promise (some may say threat) of a different future, have dismantled the traditional apparatus that maintained labour as dressage.

Could it be that this quickening and the prevalence of work without productive ends is a way of reasserting a control that some fear lost and if so are we good with that?