Timothy Speed (2025)
This paper proposes a new ontology of labour that defines work not as the production of marketable output but as relational agency: embodied, self-determined interaction that generates social and ecological reality through resonance. The core thesis is that capitalist economies do not merely neglect non-market forms of labour—such as artistic practice, care work, activism, and deep autistic focus—but structurally attack them, because relational labour destabilises the value regime on which capitalist legitimacy depends. Drawing on methodologies of Artistic Research and neurodivergent cognition, the paper conceptualises autistic, embodied work as a high-resolution mode of system analysis, in which sensing, thinking and acting remain inseparable. Under this model, lived cognition functions as a measurement device rather than a source of bias. The analysis combines philosophical argument with empirical evidence derived from ten years of autoethnographic field research inside German state institutions and corporate environments. These encounters—which resulted in escalating administrative sanctions, bureaucratic harassment, and legal repression—demonstrate that punishment did not follow refusal to work, but followed precisely when the author’s self-determined labour exposed institutional dysfunction. Rather than representing personal misfortune, these events constitute a dataset revealing a general mechanism: the more a form of labour produces social complexity through resonance rather than through commodifiable output, the more hostile the system response becomes. The paper argues that the rise of AI and automation amplifies this conflict: since AI can simulate output but not resonance, contemporary labour policy rewards simulation and suppresses relational agency. As a result, societies risk destroying precisely the capacities they require for resilience and democratic self-correction. The paper concludes that a Universal Care Income is not a moral or humanitarian proposal but an epistemic infrastructure that enables relational labour to function as a stabilising intelligence within complex societies. This paper functions as an interface text within a larger operator-based research corpus. Core concepts are applied here, not re-derived. The underlying research operates in a non-linear, rhythmically recursive epistemic mode grounded in an autistic form of structural perception; the present text provides an interface translation for academic contexts.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17816066
Keywords: Ontological Coexistence, Neurodivergence, Autism, ADHD, Structural Violence, Human Rights, Legal Theory, Masking, Ontological Pluralism, State Obligations
Download full paper (PDF, Zenodo)
This page provides a static landing page for an academic paper archived on Zenodo. No cookies, tracking, analytics, or user interaction are used. The content is provided for scholarly documentation purposes only. Author identification and contact context are available via the linked DOI and ORCID records.