# Take This Hammer: Work, Song, Crisis - Hardcover

by **Paul Rekret** (Author)

**A study of contemporary music in light of transformations to work and social life.**

The emergence of the popular music industry in the early twentieth century not only drove a wedge between music production and consumption, it also underscored a wider separation of labor from leisure and of the workplace from the domestic sphere. These were changes characteristic of an industrial society where pleasure was to be sought outside of work, but these categories have grown increasingly porous today. As the working day extends into the home or becomes indistinguishable from leisure time, so the role and meaning of music in everyday life changes too. In arguing that the experience of popular music is partly conditioned by its segregation from work and its restriction to the time and space of leisure--the evening, the weekend, the dancehall--_Take This Hammer_ shows how changes to work as it grows increasingly precarious, part-time, and temporary in recent decades, are related to transformations in popular music.

Connecting contemporary changes in work and the economy to tendencies in popular music, _Take This Hammer_ shows how song-form has both reflected developments in contemporary capitalism while also intimating a horizon beyond it. From online streaming and the extension of the working day to gentrification, unemployment and the emergence of trap rap, from ecological crisis and field recording to automation and trends in dance music, by exploring the intersections of work and song in the current era, not only do we gain a new understanding of contemporary musical culture, we also see how music might gesture towards a horizon beyond the alienating experience of work in capitalism itself.

### Author Biography

Paul Rekret is the author of three books: _Down With Childhood: Pop Music and the Crisis of Innocence_ (2017); _Derrida and Foucault: Philosophy, Politics, Polemics_ (2018); _Monopolated Light and Power_ (with Edward George, Louis Moreno, Ashwani Sharma (forthcoming)), and editor of George Caffentzis's _Clipped Coins, Abused Words & Civil Government_ (2021). He has published on political and cultural theory in journals such as _Theory, Culture & Society_, _Constellations_, _South Atlantic Quarterly_ and his writing has appeared in _Frieze_, _The Wire_, _Art Monthly_, _The New Inquiry_, and elsewhere. He is a member of Le Mardi Gras Listening Collective and works on sound and ecological crisis as part of Amplification/Annihilation. He is a Lecturer in the School of Media and Communications at the University of Westminster.

**Number of Pages:** 200

**Dimensions:** 1 x 9.1 x 6.2 IN

**Publication Date:** May 21, 2024

## Details

- **Price:** 39.95 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
- **Tags:** Books by splitShops, Shopify Collective

## Variants

| Variant | Price | Available |
|---------|-------|-----------|
| Default Title | 39.95 USD | In stock |

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- Take This Hammer: Work, Song, Crisis - Hardcover

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