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CEPPA Talk (online only) – Nancy Fraser (The New School)
September 29, 2022 @ 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Location: Teams (online only)
Title: Three Faces of Capitalist Labor: Uncovering the Hidden Ties among Gender, Race, and Class
Abstract: Dissatisfied with identity-based politics, many activists and intellectuals are now seeking larger paradigms that can unify disparate struggles. Aiming to advance that project, I propose that labor forms the hidden link between gender, race, and class. My inspiration is W.E.B. Du Bois’s claim, in Black Reconstruction, that nineteenth century America had two labor movements, anti-slavery and trade unionism, which tragically failed to unite. Extending this idea to the present, I expand it by adding a third. Construing feminism, too, as a labor movement, focused on the work of care, I argue that that capitalist society relies on three distinct types of labor: exploited, expropriated, and domesticated. Their structural entwinement, I maintain, constitutes the inner, systemic ties between gender, race, and class.