‘We are All Human Resources’: The Weird as Neoliberal Critique in Thomas Ligotti’s “My Work is Not Yet Done”
‘We are All Human Resources’: The Weird as Neoliberal Critique in Thomas Ligotti’s “My Work is Not Yet Done”

Summary/Abstract: This article posits Thomas Ligotti’s weird novella, “My Work is Not Yet Done,” as an ideal site for interrogating the malicious effects of the neoliberal project. Neoliberalism, namely the depoliticization of economies and privatisation of state apparatus, has developed unevenly across the globe since the 1980s. Though ostensibly promoting freedom and prosperity, this socioeconomic framework has contributed to widespread financial inequalities, exacerbated global climate crises and, during the COVID-19 lockdown, endangered countless lives for the sake of economic progress. Corroborating Mark Fisher’s conceptualisation of ‘capitalist realism’, proponents of neoliberalism have normalised its principles by maintaining the illusion that there are no alternatives to them. Weird fiction is therefore uniquely positioned to depict the impacts of neoliberal dogma, based, as it is, around granting an outside perspective on presumed epistemological structures. Thomas Ligotti is one of the most celebrated writers of weird fiction in the last thirty years. This article will console his definition of the weird with Fisher’s own in order to demonstrate that Ligotti uses a sense of ‘real externality’ to critique neoliberalism’s profit-driven individualism. While being a self-proclaimed socialist himself, Ligotti states that “My Work is Not Yet Done” uses the corporate world to depict his own pessimistic philosophy. But by analogising the metaphysics of pessimism through an archetypical corporation, Ligotti simultaneously reveals the inhumanity of neoliberalism itself. As such, this article argues, Ligotti’s novella represents a timely critique of the neoliberal project and evidence that weird fiction is uniquely positioned to repudiate the value of unjust hegemonies.

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