Replace Me

Ideas of replaceability have come to dominate the collective imaginary. In an increasingly precarious labour market, workers are constantly threatened with their own replaceability. Away from the world of work, dating apps present a double-edged promise of limitless choice. On social media white nationalists peddle conspiracies about nations' native inhabitants, so-called, being displaced by migrants. In our endless quest to make ourselves indispensable to the status quo, we make nothing new. In this wide-ranging and intellectually lively essay, Amber Husain asks if our obsession with replacement is the very thing that is keeping the world in stasis. And, if so, with what might we replace our obsession with replacement? With references spanning the avant-garde art tech-futurism, and Effective Altruism, and taking in writers from Aristotle to Anne Boyer, Replace Me is a celebration of the possibilities for political transformation inherent in the act of embracing one's own replaceability.