Vocateur
Ha @ Jo Walton describing herself as a vocateur reader on the Ex Urbe Ad Astra podcast! Totally fits because as much as I love her as an author (lent! Among Others!), I always say Jo is my favorite reader.
I was trying to find out if Ada Palmer coined vocateur in the Terra Ignota series, and just a cursory google search all give her credit for the term. The only early citation I could find is a JSTOR article from 1983 which, from the preview, seems to be discussing Arno Schmidt’s Leviathan. So maybe an obscure term (possibly in translation?) that Ada popularized, at least?
Anyway. Vocateur (“voker” for short) is basically someone intensely devoted to their chosen vocation. I like the connotation with amateur too, which in French, means “lover.” A “lover of,” instead of “expert at.” You could say a vocateur cultivates that amateur love into expertise.
In the post-scarcity world of Terra Ignota, careers are a thing of the past, no one needs to earn their basic necessities, and one is not permitted to work more than a certain number of hours per week (10 I think?). Vocateurs apply for the permission to work extended hours on their passions.
From an interview with Ada:
I’ve been delighted to have a lot of readers respond enthusiastically to voker/vocateur, and I do think it’s something we see every day but don’t have a good name for, the difference between someone who works and then stops versus someone for whom work is an all-hours passion. We have “day job” but that implies that it’s somehow not important, not the real you, whereas I have friends who love their jobs and are great at them but are still happy that the job ends when they clock out. I like how voker/vocateur make clear that both kinds of relationship to one’s work are good and worthy of respect.
Appealing to that passion/love/respect makes the word useful to discuss the opposite too:
I think the word “vocateur” is an important one to have as a tool for discussing job exploitation, how so many jobs that people are willing to do for love become riddled with exploitative practices (teaching, research, writing, animation, social work…)1