What do you think?
Rate this book
Le Travail fantôme
In five essays, Illich embarks on a major historical and sociological analysis of modern man's economic existence. He traces and analyzes options which surpass the conventional political "right-left" and the technological "soft-hard" alternatives and presents the concept of "vernacular" domain.
168 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1980
9 people are currently reading
366 people want to read
About the author
Ivan Illich
108 books448 followersIvan Illich was an Austrian philosopher, Roman Catholic priest and critic of the institutions of contemporary western culture and their effects of the provenance and practice of education, medicine, work, energy use, and economic development.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 21, 2022
I especially liked his discussion of the medieval view that dependence on wage labor for one's entire livelihood -- as opposed to having customary rights to subsistence on the land, or practicing a trade -- was the main criterion for destitution.
November 10, 2010
This collection of essays shows how the social conditions for living independently of the market were destroyed in order to make way for wage labor and shadow work.
The book calls for the recognition of shadow work - the unpaid complement to wage labor - as a key aspect of 'economic progress' (which is defined as the substitution of wage labor for other kinds of work, together with the rearranging of the environment and the redefinition of human needs to encourage consumption over subsistence). More profitable than wage labor and equally alienating, the ideal type of shadow work is housework (the 'organisation of compulsory consumption'). It also includes commuting to work, dealing with bureaucracies, doing homework for school, and all other standardised and managed aspects of our lives, which in effect tie us to the market by contributing nothing to our independence from it while sapping our time and energies. In the absence of any subsistence activities I expect even resting, as preparation for wage labor, could be called shadow work.
Illich describes how language was first colonised through the promotion of a standardised 'taught mother tongue' over the vernacular. He takes this to be the paradigm of human dependencies today, and so refers to the inverse of the shadow economy as the 'vernacular domain': 'So far, every single attempt to substitute a universal commodity for a vernacular value has led, not to equality, but to a hierarchical modernisation of poverty.' With this lens to look through, the book's given me a better appreciation of how interesting history can be. In one essay on the philosophy of science (relevant to the creation of tools for subsistence) he introduces us to the views of a little known 11th Century monk, and in another we learn how forced labor for the poor became the norm rather than the punishment (with beggars being rounded up for the workhouses). We also see how work was divided into 'productive' and 'non-productive' kinds for men and women respectively, through specious appeals to biology, anthropology and so on. This was the key to economic progress: disestablishing women and enclosing them in the home, paving the way for wage labor and shadow work to replace subsistence living.
A lot's changed since this was written 30 years ago, however these ideas still seem extremely relevant today.
The book calls for the recognition of shadow work - the unpaid complement to wage labor - as a key aspect of 'economic progress' (which is defined as the substitution of wage labor for other kinds of work, together with the rearranging of the environment and the redefinition of human needs to encourage consumption over subsistence). More profitable than wage labor and equally alienating, the ideal type of shadow work is housework (the 'organisation of compulsory consumption'). It also includes commuting to work, dealing with bureaucracies, doing homework for school, and all other standardised and managed aspects of our lives, which in effect tie us to the market by contributing nothing to our independence from it while sapping our time and energies. In the absence of any subsistence activities I expect even resting, as preparation for wage labor, could be called shadow work.
Illich describes how language was first colonised through the promotion of a standardised 'taught mother tongue' over the vernacular. He takes this to be the paradigm of human dependencies today, and so refers to the inverse of the shadow economy as the 'vernacular domain': 'So far, every single attempt to substitute a universal commodity for a vernacular value has led, not to equality, but to a hierarchical modernisation of poverty.' With this lens to look through, the book's given me a better appreciation of how interesting history can be. In one essay on the philosophy of science (relevant to the creation of tools for subsistence) he introduces us to the views of a little known 11th Century monk, and in another we learn how forced labor for the poor became the norm rather than the punishment (with beggars being rounded up for the workhouses). We also see how work was divided into 'productive' and 'non-productive' kinds for men and women respectively, through specious appeals to biology, anthropology and so on. This was the key to economic progress: disestablishing women and enclosing them in the home, paving the way for wage labor and shadow work to replace subsistence living.
A lot's changed since this was written 30 years ago, however these ideas still seem extremely relevant today.
September 23, 2020
A book containing 5 essays:
1) The Three Dimensions of Public Choice
2) Vernacular Values
3) The War Against Subsistence
4) Research by People
5) Shadow Work
While this book is not a substitution for his more complete works, it deals with a lot of practical information. If you can get your hands on anything by Ivan Illich, read it.
While I can't explore everything Illich gets into, I'll do my best to pull out a few valuable threads. Fundamentally, Illich challenges the Western idea of 'development'. He states:
"Up to now economic development has always meant that people, instead of doing something, are instead enabled to buy it."
He argues that this has led to an unprecedented situation. Instead of being primarily occupied with subsistence, individuals are primarily occupied with wage earning and it's inescapable complement, shadow work. Shadow work "comprises most housework women do in their homes and apartments, the activities connected with shopping, most of the homework of students cramming for exams, the toil expended commuting to and from the job. It includes the stress of forced consumption, the tedious and regimented surrender to therapists, compliance with bureaucrats, the preparation for work to which one is compelled, and many of the activities usually labeled 'family life'."
As I understand it, shadow work is everything we must do to maintain social standing in a wage oriented society. Crucially, shadow work is not optional, it is compulsory, and it is un-paid. However, not all un-paid work is compulsory shadow work. Subsistence is the opposite of wage/shadow labor.
Furthermore, we may even pay to do our own shadow work. This is most obvious in the case of university education. As Illich points out: "Modern enclosure, apartheid, is never just cruel or just degrading, it has always a demonic dimension. Prose cannot do justice to a social organization set up to enlist people in their own destruction."
Indeed, "The creation of professionally supervised shadow work has become society's major business."
If you want more of this, Illich expands on specific sectors of this 'professional supervisor' economy in Deschooling Society and Limits to Medicine.
This wage/shadow labor situation sets up a society of scarcity, where: "...people who live on wages have no subsistent households, are deprived of the means to provide for their subsistence and feel impotent to offer any subsistence to others."
I can think of no better description of the feeling of scarcity among 'plenty' in modern consumerist society. There is indeed plenty, but our ability to reach it as wage-earners is always precarious.
How did this wage/shadow labor come about? Illich traces it back to a push to control vernacular speech. As he puts it: "The switch from the vernacular to an officially taught mother tongue is perhaps the most significant - and therefore, least researched - event in the coming of a commodity-intensive society."
In medieval Spain, the Queen was advised by a certain Nebrija to control the language of her subjects, or else be consigned to the historical dust-bin. He envisioned a society where state control was extended to the realm of speech. It's difficult for me now to grasp the significance of this idea, as it was for the Queen, who rejected his proposal as an over-extension of her queenly powers. It took another 150 years to catch on. What does Illich mean, though, by vernacular vs. taught speech?
"Vernacular [speech] spreads by practical use; it is learned from people who mean what they say and who say what they mean to the person they address in the context of everyday life (...) Taught colloquial is the dead, impersonal rhetoric of people paid to declaim with phony conviction texts composed by others, who themselves are usually paid only for designing the text."
Ultimately, this represents a medieval attempt to control the population, which has only flowered in recent times: "From a science with attempts to control external nature, the new R&D has shifted toward the search for means which permit the subtle but effective imposition of self-control on people."
Instead of forcing people to do their employer's bidding, it's cheaper to train them to do it without coercion. For more on this, see the 'burnout subject' of Byung-Chul Han.
Finally, there are some useful concepts in here for anyone hoping to create a future without wage/shadow exploitation.
First, Illich draws attention to a useful definition of science: "Hugh [of St. Victor] defined mechanical science as that part of philosophy which studies remedies for bodily weakness, when such weakness derives from humanly-caused disruptions in the environment - science, then, is a corrective for an ecological disorder."
We are certainly living in vast ecological disorder.
Next, Illich briefly mentions that: "Bicycle traffic in cities permits one to move four times as fast as on foot for one-fourth of the energy expended - while cars, for the same progress, need 150 times as many calories per passenger mile."
This is the only argument for bicycles supplanting cars that I need to hear.
And finally, Illich makes it clear that subsistence today does not necessarily mean the grinding subsistence of previous centuries:
"...modern tools make it possible to subsist on activities which permit a variety of evolving life styles, and relieve much of the drudgery of old time subsistence."
There's a lot to unpack here, but it is worth the trouble to dwell on and mentally compost these ideas. There's a lot of useful insights to be had.
1) The Three Dimensions of Public Choice
2) Vernacular Values
3) The War Against Subsistence
4) Research by People
5) Shadow Work
While this book is not a substitution for his more complete works, it deals with a lot of practical information. If you can get your hands on anything by Ivan Illich, read it.
While I can't explore everything Illich gets into, I'll do my best to pull out a few valuable threads. Fundamentally, Illich challenges the Western idea of 'development'. He states:
"Up to now economic development has always meant that people, instead of doing something, are instead enabled to buy it."
He argues that this has led to an unprecedented situation. Instead of being primarily occupied with subsistence, individuals are primarily occupied with wage earning and it's inescapable complement, shadow work. Shadow work "comprises most housework women do in their homes and apartments, the activities connected with shopping, most of the homework of students cramming for exams, the toil expended commuting to and from the job. It includes the stress of forced consumption, the tedious and regimented surrender to therapists, compliance with bureaucrats, the preparation for work to which one is compelled, and many of the activities usually labeled 'family life'."
As I understand it, shadow work is everything we must do to maintain social standing in a wage oriented society. Crucially, shadow work is not optional, it is compulsory, and it is un-paid. However, not all un-paid work is compulsory shadow work. Subsistence is the opposite of wage/shadow labor.
Furthermore, we may even pay to do our own shadow work. This is most obvious in the case of university education. As Illich points out: "Modern enclosure, apartheid, is never just cruel or just degrading, it has always a demonic dimension. Prose cannot do justice to a social organization set up to enlist people in their own destruction."
Indeed, "The creation of professionally supervised shadow work has become society's major business."
If you want more of this, Illich expands on specific sectors of this 'professional supervisor' economy in Deschooling Society and Limits to Medicine.
This wage/shadow labor situation sets up a society of scarcity, where: "...people who live on wages have no subsistent households, are deprived of the means to provide for their subsistence and feel impotent to offer any subsistence to others."
I can think of no better description of the feeling of scarcity among 'plenty' in modern consumerist society. There is indeed plenty, but our ability to reach it as wage-earners is always precarious.
How did this wage/shadow labor come about? Illich traces it back to a push to control vernacular speech. As he puts it: "The switch from the vernacular to an officially taught mother tongue is perhaps the most significant - and therefore, least researched - event in the coming of a commodity-intensive society."
In medieval Spain, the Queen was advised by a certain Nebrija to control the language of her subjects, or else be consigned to the historical dust-bin. He envisioned a society where state control was extended to the realm of speech. It's difficult for me now to grasp the significance of this idea, as it was for the Queen, who rejected his proposal as an over-extension of her queenly powers. It took another 150 years to catch on. What does Illich mean, though, by vernacular vs. taught speech?
"Vernacular [speech] spreads by practical use; it is learned from people who mean what they say and who say what they mean to the person they address in the context of everyday life (...) Taught colloquial is the dead, impersonal rhetoric of people paid to declaim with phony conviction texts composed by others, who themselves are usually paid only for designing the text."
Ultimately, this represents a medieval attempt to control the population, which has only flowered in recent times: "From a science with attempts to control external nature, the new R&D has shifted toward the search for means which permit the subtle but effective imposition of self-control on people."
Instead of forcing people to do their employer's bidding, it's cheaper to train them to do it without coercion. For more on this, see the 'burnout subject' of Byung-Chul Han.
Finally, there are some useful concepts in here for anyone hoping to create a future without wage/shadow exploitation.
First, Illich draws attention to a useful definition of science: "Hugh [of St. Victor] defined mechanical science as that part of philosophy which studies remedies for bodily weakness, when such weakness derives from humanly-caused disruptions in the environment - science, then, is a corrective for an ecological disorder."
We are certainly living in vast ecological disorder.
Next, Illich briefly mentions that: "Bicycle traffic in cities permits one to move four times as fast as on foot for one-fourth of the energy expended - while cars, for the same progress, need 150 times as many calories per passenger mile."
This is the only argument for bicycles supplanting cars that I need to hear.
And finally, Illich makes it clear that subsistence today does not necessarily mean the grinding subsistence of previous centuries:
"...modern tools make it possible to subsist on activities which permit a variety of evolving life styles, and relieve much of the drudgery of old time subsistence."
There's a lot to unpack here, but it is worth the trouble to dwell on and mentally compost these ideas. There's a lot of useful insights to be had.
January 18, 2025
illich nous presente , dans ce recueil de 5 essais, sa théorie du travail fantôme. Le travail fantôme est un travail gratuit et non-remunérés effectués majoritairement par les femmes. Il est essentiel à la production industrielle de marchandise mais ne participe pas à la subsistance. Donc l’économie de marché s’ent nourrit mais pas celle de l’autonomie de la maisonnée. Donc la division sexuelle du travail entre celui qui est productif de valeur et ce qui est du ressort de la femme au foyer est impérativement encrée et historiquement déterminé par la modernité. Le chapitre 1 et le chapitre 5 en sont les plus pertinents.
Want to read
March 30, 2013recommended by منير فاشة
http://almoultaqa.com/Thoughts1.aspx
http://altaghieer.com/node/94305
http://almoultaqa.com/Thoughts1.aspx
http://altaghieer.com/node/94305
Read
October 11, 2014I want to read
Read
January 3, 2016Brilliant book and excellent idea that is more relevant today than ever before!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews