The Rise and Fall of American Artists and Thinkers

On work stoppages and work-doings.

Ben Hickman, published poet and senior lecturer in English at the University of Kent, joins us to discuss his project on different understandings of work, or rather, The Work. 

What is The Work and why is it so pernicious? Ben wrote a piece for Compact regarding how the American poet and radical professor Audre Lorde transformed the way we think about work. We talk through the differences between work and The Work, how it impacted radical activism, and how middle class work became all about self-exploration. 

Ben talks through a new book project on work and how it is understood culturally through figures such as Jackson Pollock, among others. Plus, what is happening with industrial relations on UK campuses, and how has radical politics unfolded in the Labour Party over the last few years? 

Reading:

• Stop Doing The Work, Ben Hickman, Compact
• “Atlantis Buried Outside”: Muriel Rukeyser, Myth, and the Crises of War, Ben Hickman, Criticism, Vol. 57, No. 4 (Fall 2015)