Passionate Work

In Passionate Work, Renyi Hong examines the idea of being "passionate about your work." Hong treats it as an affective project, one that encourages people to put up with economically difficult circumstances such as unemployment, changing jobs, repetitive and menial labor, and freelancing. Passion is more than an aspiration. It has also been used to build resilience and to soothe disappointment with how work actually feels.

The book traces passion from nineteenth-century management thinking through to present-day trends including gamification, coworking and unemployment insurance. Hong shows that passion can emerge in situations that would not normally be called passionate. Gamification dulls the pain of boredom for call center workers, keeping them in an unthinking, suspended state as they chase even the most mundane tasks in the hope of advancement. Coworking spaces aimed at freelancers address loneliness and disconnection just as middle-class security is badly threatened.

Hong's conclusion is that the ideal of passionate work sustains a condition of cruel optimism, in which passion is offered as the answer to the injustices of contemporary capitalism.