Category: Labour

Bitches of Capitalism: My Speech on International Working Women’s Day, March 8

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date March 17, 2017

I was invited by the Chicago Socialist Party to speak about and on International Working Women’s Day, March 8. My thanks to all the organisers, and to the many amazing people who showed up — and stayed — through all my words and those of my co-presenters, Tobita Chow, Erica Nanton, Red Schulte, Zerlina Smith, and Rehmah Sufi.* You can watch a video here; below is the text of the speech.

Capitalism, Class, Inequality Labour Politics

Saints Alive!: The Left Wags Its Finger, And Nothing Changes

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date February 27, 2017

If we frame political questions in terms of whether or not we can like each other or the ones we claim to fight for, and whether or not we’re being really, really nice to each other, our struggles are doomed and, frankly, we deserve to lose.

Capitalism, Class, Inequality Labour

How to Be Poor

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date February 25, 2016

Excerpt: When we berate the poor for their “waste” or, for that matter, the rich for their “excess,” we are simply engaging in personalised narratives that do nothing to explain or even reveal the larger systems of power at work.

Academia Animals Capitalism, Class, Inequality Labour On Books and Publishing Race, Sex, Gender, and Sexuality

Working Skin: Joseph Hankins Writes about Leather, Japan’s Buraku People, and Global Circuits of Identity Formation

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date April 1, 2015

“This is an attempt to trace the conditions that reproduce the logic of the suffering/savage slot, even as I position my own work within those conditions.”

Academia Labour

Solidarity without Affect: The MLA Subconference Enters Its Second Year

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date January 6, 2015

“Our struggle needs to be understood as capable of generating material and theoretical gains for us all, not less for the few through a misguided ‘race to the top.'”

Academia Capitalism, Class, Inequality Labour

“Class Shock: Affect, Mobility, and the Adjunct Crisis”: New Piece in Contrivers’ Review

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date October 15, 2014

Class Shock: the feeling of inadequacy and anger that arises when one’s class aspirations have been trampled underfoot.

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Immigration Labour

“Undocumented”: How an Identity Ended a Movement

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date March 13, 2014

Excerpt: Capital and capitalism flow unimpeded through the body of the “Undocumented and Unafraid” immigrant figure, whose only purpose is to solidify the presence of a benevolent neoliberal state through a litany of affective narratives.

Capitalism, Class, Inequality Labour

Nonprofit Housing: The Soup Kitchen Approach to “Social Justice”

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date January 9, 2014

“Why does a willingness to accept lower wages (much lower wages than for-profits) seem to be an indicator or qualification for one’s job in the nonprofit sector?”

Tags Nonprofits

Academia Capitalism, Class, Inequality Film, Art, Television, and Media Labour On Books and Publishing

On Writers as Scabs, Whores, and Interns, And the Jacobin Problem

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date December 11, 2013

Left publishing will increasingly be filled with lots of timid writing that doesn’t require the hard skills that experienced writers might bring to their work.

Tags Jacobin, Left Publishing

Capitalism, Class, Inequality Labour

The Rise of the Nouveau Frugalese Or, Why Those Cups of Coffee Won’t Amount to a Hill of Beans

Post author By Yasmin Nair
Post date June 8, 2009

”I don’t need frugality; I need a job, and health care, and rent money.”

Image result for paintings of coffee wayne thiebaud