Radiation (Erasure -or- Elimination -or- Strike Out)

Recommended reading regarding relentless relegation of responsible renegades to remunerationless roles. (Or: workless woes wallowing in woeful work.)

Guy Tournaye: RADIATION [2007] , 128 pages, 140 x 205 mm. Collection L'Infini, Gallimard -rom. ISBN 9782070784806. Parution : 20-04-2007. 12,50 €

Here one short exemplary quote followed by my cursory translation:

Tout le monde s'accorde à dire que le chômage est un cancer et qu'il faut traquer sans relâche les faux malades. Mais personne ne se risque à remettre en cause la norme qui fonde un tel diagnostic. Les discours incantatoires sur la valeur travail traduisent au contraire une forme de fuite en avant et tendent à légitimer un modèle social de plus en plus coercitif, où chacun est sommé de brader ses désirs pour accepter n'importe quel poste, à n'importe quelle condition.

Everyone is in agreement in claiming that unemployment is a cancer and that fake patients must be relentlessly pursued. But no one dares to question the norm underlying such a diagnosis. On the contrary, the incantations about the value of labor reveal a form of hasty action and tend to legitimize a more and more coercive social model in which everyone is called upon to surrender his desires to accept any old job no matter what the conditions.

This is essential reading for everyone who can understand French and who is prepared to think about the condition of our world today. Hopefully it will also be translated into many other languages, English and German among them, as it portrays in a charmingly novelistic esayistic manner the malaise of our age in its inability to come to terms with work and distribution of funds for living.