Replace Me

An essay on work, desire, and fear of being replaced From the workplace to our personal relationships, anxieties about being replaced have come to dominate the late-capitalist psyche. Tech and self-help industries have exploited these fears, selling gadgets and ideologies that offer a privatised vision of ‘progress’. How can we reclaim the desire for collective resistance? In this wide-ranging essay, critic Amber Husain asks if our obsession with replacement might in fact be at the heart of political stasis. Radical, clear-sighted, and moving, Replace Me is at once a repudiation of myths of replacement and a celebration of the political possibilities inherent in embracing our own replaceability. Praise ‘A close cousin to Franco Berardi, Amber Husain conducts one of the most sweeping assessments to date of neoliberalism’s psychic toll. Beginning with the sad fact of expendability in entry-level work, she expands on Lauren Berlant’s concept of cruel optimism, diving deep into