“I appreciate it fine here.”
“I wouldn’t have thought you’d like modern art.”
“Technically, Twombly straddles the line between modern and contemporary art.”
“Only in the temporal sense.”
“And here I thought you were studying economics.”
Lili sighs, settling her head against his shoulder. “Don’t remind me. My draft is a mess.”
“Tell me about your thesis,” he says.
“Are you sure your capitalist heart can take it?”
His smile, caught in the morning light: She doesn’t want to like it.
“Try me,” he says.
She traces a line down his chest. “I’m exploring how the Protestant work ethic underpins late capitalism. How the doctrine of predestination soothed their religious anxieties about salvation, made work a way of securing certainty of that salvation, but then gets secularized. Responsibilization of self, conflation of individualism and liberation, neoliberalism, all of that.”
“A lot of Weber, I assume.”
“I have a trauma response to that name.”
“Noted. Religious roots aside, is it not a positive thing to have a strong work ethic, to find some meaning in your career?”
“It’s a capitalist sham. The idea that through labor you’ll attain meaning? Just the entire presupposition that waged labor is inherently a social and political good.”
“What’s the alternative, then? Regulated, forced labor?”
“There’s actually a lot of great Marxist, feminist critiques about a postwork society. The concept of work today isn’t just about productivity and economics, it’s about power and domination—making people internalize neoliberalism as their value system.”
He rolls his eyes. “You Americans have such a fascination with Marx. He’s both your monster and messiah.”
“Marx is turning over in his grave, hearing you call him a messiah.”
“Regardless, it’s ridiculous. It’s a failed vision of history, communism.”
“It isnotridiculous! Yes, Marxism isn’t the be-all and end-all, but Marxist theorists have moved beyond Marx.”
“I think I preferred it when you were an anarchist.”
“Hilarious. This exaltation—sanctification—of work, it’s what leads to people like you: worshipped in our society, enacting capitalist violence in three-piece suits, and venerated as leaders for it.”
“I haven’t willingly worn a three-piece suit since the late nineties, at least.”
“Great, so about the time I stopped wearing onesies.”
“Hopefully also the time you started working your first job, like a good young capitalist?”
“Amazing. You support child labor, too. I can’t believe I just slept with you.”
His eyes grow warm, then—almost fond. The brush of his fingers is lazy against her bare skin.
Something in her chest stutters. Lili bites her lip, willing it back, and his gaze falls to the motion.
“Let me take you on a date,” he says, voice softer.
