Lecture
Three Faces of Labor. Uncovering the Hidden Ties among Gender, Race, and Class
Walter Benjamin Lectures with Nancy Fraser
In English with simultaneous translation into German
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Labor, the philosopher Nancy Fraser argues, forms the hidden link between gender, race, and class. Her 2022 Benjamin lectures are inspired by W.E.B. Du Bois’s claim that nineteenth century America had two labor movements, anti-slavery and trade unionism, which tragically failed to unite. Extending this idea to the present, Fraser proposes to add a third: construing feminism, too, as a labor movement, focused on the work of care.
Tuesday, June 14
Gender, Race, and Class through the Lens of Labor: A Post-Intersectional Analysis of Capitalist Society
On June 14, she talks about Gender, Race, and Class through the Lens of Labor: A Post-Intersectional Analysis of Capitalist Society. Endorsing widespread dissatisfaction with identity-based politics, Fraser here joins those activists and intellectuals who are seeking larger paradigms that can unify disparate struggles. Aiming to advance that project, she proposes that capitalist society relies on three distinct types of labor: exploited, expropriated, and domesticated. By theorizing their structural entwinement, she discloses the inner, systemic ties between gender, race, and class.
Wednesday, June 15
Labor’s Twisted Histories: Practical Entanglements and Political Fault Lines
Speaking on June 15 of Labor’s Twisted Histories: Practical Entanglements and Political Fault Lines, Fraser historicizes the changing relations among capitalism’s three faces of labor. Specifying for each era who performs each type of work, as well as who is recognized as a “worker” and who is not, she highlights both the inextricability of the three forms of labor in capitalism’s history and the forms of misrecognition that have divided those who perform them.
Thursday, June 16
Class beyond Class: Toward a Counter-Hegemonic Politics
Her final lecture on June 16 addresses that mismatch: although their work is functionally integrated, the three types of “workers” are politically divided according to the famous triad, gender, race, and class. In Class beyond Class: Toward a Counter-Hegemonic Politics, Fraser examines strategies for overcoming those political separations – by linking the “three labor movements.”
An event by the Humanities and Social Change Center at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin