Fake Work

How I Began to Suspect Capitalism is a Joke

Leigh Claire La Berge

$44.99

Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

Haymarket Books
24 September 2025

Autobiography: business & industry; Memoirs; Deconstructionism, Structuralism, Post-structuralism; Social & political philosophy; Consultancy & grants for businesses

""[A] memorable portrait of the mad hunger of corporate toil...superbly committed to its own beliefs - truthful, dryly funny and often subtly moving."" Charles Finch, The New York Times

Sorry to Bother You

While headlines blazed with doomsaying prophecies about the looming Y2K apocalypse, Leigh Claire was quickly introduced to the mysterious workings of The Process-a mythical and ever-changing corporate ethos The Andersen People (her fellow consultants) believed held world-saving powers. Her heroic task: printing physical copies of spreadsheets and sending them to a secure storage facility somewhere in the bowels of New Jersey.

After performing a series of equally mundane tasks, one well-timed deployment of an anecdote about a legendary quarterback catapulted her into the ranks of middle management. It wasn't long before she found herself jet-setting on the firm's dime to thirty-minute lunch meetings in Johannesburg, and giving impromptu lectures to Japanese executives about limiting liability at the end of the world.

blends memoir with post-facto theoretical interjections on the philosophical problems posed by contemporary corporate culture-from the inadequacy of poststructuralist inquiry to the alienation of office jobs-to tell the story of the techno-armageddon that wasn't.

By: Leigh Claire La Berge
Imprint: Haymarket Books
Country of Publication: United States [Currently unable to ship to USA: see Shipping Info]
Dimensions: Height: 190mm, Width: 133mm,
ISBN: 9798888903674
Pages: 180
Publication Date: 24 September 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Leigh Claire La Berge is Professor of English at Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, and author of Wages Against Artwork: Decommodified Labor and the Claims of Socially Engaged Art and Marx for Cats: A Radical Bestiary. Her writing has appeared in Texte zur Kunst, n+1, and The Los Angeles Review of Books.

Reviews for Fake Work: How I Began to Suspect Capitalism is a Joke

Praise for Marx for Cats “ Marx for Cats is an undomesticated and indefinable meow de coeur. You can open this book anywhere—it's a Marxist Choose Your Own Adventure—and come away as unsettled, possessed, and reflective as any transportative encounter with a cat might leave you.” ―Jordy Rosenberg, author of Confessions of the Fox “Who knew that following cats could open up history and enliven Marxism? This delightful archive of the feline in class struggle reminds us that cats are our comrades. Hand in paw, we have a world to win!” ―Jodi Dean, author of Comrade: An Essay on Political Belonging