Kathi Weeks expands on economic power, essential work and the tension between reform and revolution

Kathi Weeks is an Associate Professor in the Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies Program at Duke University. Her book Constituting Feminist Subjects was reissued by Verso in 2018 (https://www.versobooks.com/books/2696-constituting-feminist-subjects); it looks again at feminist standpoint theory and tries to remove some of the imaginary blockages that have stymied the development of a socialist feminism. Her important book The Problem with Work (https://trinity.duke.edu/problem-work-feminism-marxism-antiwork-politics-and-postwork-imaginaries) is a panoramic study of the ways that we tend to think about and value work as a foundation not only for our livelihoods but also our lives. She advocates for a structural shift in the way we think about, commodify and relate to our labour. We talk in this conversation about the pragmatic value of utopian thinking--how it has become, in the years since The Problem With Work was published in 2011, notably less “embarrassing” to be utopian. Her goal is, in many ways, to engage with, as she puts it, the “confining structures” that police us in our homes and on the job, in our relationships to others. It is also her hope that we will be more open to the ways that even seemingly small, incremental changes can create the space necessary to sustain enduring social movements.