Nancy Fraser Shares her Vision for a Labor-Based Opposition to Trumpism

On Thursday night, philosopher Nancy Fraser spoke to a packed CAPA symposium, sharing an argument from the book she is currently working on. Fraser, who is a professor at the New School of Social Research in New York City and the author of ten books, proposed labor as a hidden link between race, class, and gender. 

This theory was inspired by W. E. Dubois’s Black Reconstruction, which identified a connection between race and class in terms of labor. Like Dubois, Fraser posited herself as writing in a time when things could go one way or another, a “hinge point.” 

In using labor as a lens to view multiple struggles as interconnected, Fraser hopes we can advance the project of intersectionality and build a counter-hegemonic block to defeat Trumpism. She expressed concern that emancipatory political forces were overmatched with the scale of the current crises. Analyzing how, unlike the left, MAGA has developed an affecting political identity, she asked: “Can we rethink class and develop a class identity?” 

Fraser also remarked on how neoliberalism has shifted the way people of different identities interact with the faces of labor, which she defines as exploited, expropriated, and domesticated. Fraser, who has written a great deal of critical feminist theory, has noticed a recent resurgence of rhetoric that a women’s role should be purely domestic. 

She diverged from her lecture to comment on a recent radio segment she heard in which 60% of respondents preferred a hierarchy where men were breadwinners and women were caregivers, and made an offhand remark about Charlie Kirk (who often professed that women should stay out of the workforce and focus on taking care of their husband and children) and the trad-wife trend, which was met with laughter from the room. These developments seemed to her like a quick change from previous norms of gender and labor. 

After her lecture, Fraser took a handful of questions from the audience, including from professors Paul Voice and Lopamudra Banerjee. A few students also shared questions, including how the disabled community fits into Fraser’s thesis. The audience seemed generally compelled by Fraser’s argument, although there was some concern from those who asked questions about the dangers of making labor the focus of an emancipatory struggle. A reception followed in the CAPA faculty lounge.