Timothy Speed (2019)
Contextual Research Note (Author Accepted Manuscript) Contextual Research Note Radical Worker occupies a central position within the author’s long-term research program on work, value, neurodivergent epistemology, and systemic violence in contemporary capitalism. While earlier works such as Society Without Trust focus on societal structure and system creativity, this volume constitutes the first comprehensive articulation of the author’s theory of self-determined work as a distinct socio-economic and epistemic category. The book integrates artistic research, autoethnographic fieldwork, and theoretical analysis to examine how dominant labor systems systematically exclude neurodivergent modes of perception, cognition, and contribution. Concepts that later become structurally formalized—such as the MNO model, value thresholds, diversity thresholds, submergence/indimergence/emergence cycles, and the notion of work as relational agency—are developed here in applied and experiential form. Radical Worker functions as a bridge between empirical intervention and theoretical consolidation. It documents long-term real-world experiments within corporations, welfare institutions, and media systems, treating these interventions not as illustrations but as epistemic instruments. In this sense, the work contributes simultaneously to Artistic Research, Critical Autism Studies, political economy, and labor theory. This Author Accepted Manuscript version is provided for scholarly and research purposes. It differs from the published book edition in layout and format and should be read as part of a larger, non-linear research corpus developed across subsequent books and papers, rather than as a standalone manifesto. About: Timothy Speed – neurodivergent artist, poverty theorist, and relentless disruptor – throws himself between assembly line, boardroom, and bureaucratic frontline. As a Radical Worker, he refuses the paycheck as measure of worth, working instead by moral coherence, ecological resonance, and existential sense. Whether infiltrating corporations undercover or applying to run Germany’s state TV, Speed exposes the deep protocols of a system that converts dignity into obedience and creativity into currency. For the Artistic Research movement, this book proves that art isn't commentary – it's infrastructure. Research happens in real-time, in real life. For Critical Autism Studies, it’s a rare inside-out account: autistic intensity, rule clarity and focused resistance sharpen into a tool that cuts through institutional myth. For anyone forced to work – or forced not to – this is a living roadmap: self-determined labour, basic income, and the politics of commoning are not just imagined here – they’re practiced, tested, lived. Speed flips the script: poverty is not a lack, but a refusal to play by a broken game. Forced labour is social exclusion. And the true metric of wealth? The time left untouched by the system’s noise. Radical Worker is manifesto, fieldwork, and survival guide – a call not to adapt, but to remake the world from the bottom up.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18145937
Keywords: Labour Theory, Self-Determined Work, Autistic Labour, Neurodivergent Work, Political Economy, Embodied Cognition, Enactive Agency, Autistic Epistemology, Artistic Research, Epistemic Injustice, Institutional Exclusion, Post-Meritocracy, Degrowth Economics, Relational Agency, Non-Market Contribution, Enactive Research, Embodied Research, Methods Aesthetic, Epistemology Embodied Knowledge Production, CAS (Critical Autism Studies), Embodied Cognition, Autistic Embodiment, Enactive Agency, Non-Representational Cognition
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