Simone Weil's Analogical Philosophy of Labor for the Automated Workplace

What is the future of human labor in an increasingly digital workplace? The data make abundantly clear that if we continue measuring our work chiefly in terms of efficiency, then we will begin displacing ourselves in the workforce. In response to this crisis, this paper attempts a renewed vision and corresponding criteria for measuring the value of human labor by turning to Simone Weil. Weil critiqued Taylorism for divorcing thought and action in factory labor, but her solution is somewhat obscure. I argue that, by reading it alongside her theological-mystical writings, her analysis of liberated labor emerges as fundamentally analogical, imitative. I apply this theological reading of Weil’s philosophy of labor to today’s “Digital Taylorism,” arguing that, to respond to the labor crisis posed by AI, we must reckon with the fact that labor is imitative and thereby, above all else, valuable as a kind of identity formation.