Deskilling in reading can figure nonalienated labor and a Utopian society

Evidence

The economists tell us that automation goes hand in hand with deskilling, so here too that prodigious differential specialization of what used to be called the reading process, and of which we have spoken above, goes hand in hand with new and more rudimentary, plebeian, forms of labor that anyone can do: for under certain conditions β€” social conditions or, indeed, conditions of socialism! β€” deskilling also goes hand in hand with democratization (or plebeianization, as I prefer to call it). Is it possible, then, that the reading of so specialized and highly technical an elite literary artifact as Les corps conducteurs might offer a figure or analogon for nonalienated labor and for the Utopian experience of a radically different, alternate society? β€” Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 351

Categorization

  • QUESTION: The irony that an elite, specialized artifact models democratization and nonalienated labor deserves pushing on β€” is this really a contradiction or the point?
  • XREF: connects to: Bloch finds Utopian content in humble rest after labor