Public Lecture by Nancy Fraser on The Art of Work: William Morris on Emancipated Labor
Hosted by Secession, as part of the series Foregrounding Externalities, in cooperation between the Secession, the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and Central European University.
- Date: 6:30 pm on November 15, 2023
- Venue: Vereinigung bildender Künstler*innen Wiener Secession, Friedrichstraße 12, 1010 Vienna
Abstract: William Morris (1834 –1896) is best known today as a textile designer and a leading influence on the Arts and Crafts Movement. But he was also a radical socialist. This lecture locates the link between Morris’s craft aesthetic and his socialist politics in his understanding of work. It examines both his fierce critique of industrial labor and his remarkable vision of emancipated labor. The latter, I claim, represents an original contribution to social philosophy with continuing relevance today.
Bio: Nancy Fraser is Professor of Philosophy and Politics at The New School for Social Research in New York City. For more than twenty years, Fraser’s theses on social justice, democracy, and feminism have fueled public debates around the world. She analyzes the relations of inequality specific to our world from a critical perspective in order to develop concepts to address them—for example, in relation to the welfare state, multiculturalism, gender relations, democracy, and economics. She is widely known for her critique of identity politics and her work on the philosophical conceptions of justice and injustice. Also, Fraser is a staunch critic of contemporary liberal feminism and its abandonment of social justice issues. Her recent books include Cannibal Capitalism; Scales of Justice; and Fortunes of Feminism.