Attentive Waiting in an Uprooted Age: Simone Weil's Response in an Age of Precarity

Abstract

Andrew Ross has emphasized the importance of the precariat—the marginalized and constantly growing underclass of contemporary society—in understanding the communicative challenges of the 21st century. This essay explores how the work of the French spiritual philosopher, Simone Weil, can inform a constructive communicative response in an age of economic and social precarity. Intriguingly, Weil's notions of roots and rootedness suggest that the foremost challenge the precariat faces is not economic, social, or political but spiritual and ethical in nature. Using Weil's work as an inspiration and guide, this essay grounds a rhetorical response to precarity in what it calls attentive waiting, which provides an interpretive framework to help the precariat make sense of their lives and helps them to recover their rhetorical agency through practices of invitation and transformative resistance.