Cannibal Capitalism: The View from Trump’s America - 2025 Faculty Book Celebration
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4 pm, Tuesday, February 25, 2025
Umrath Lounge in Umrath Hall
Keynote lecture
“Cannibal Capitalism: The View from Trump’s America”
If critical theory is “the self-clarification of the struggles and wishes of the age,” then what form should it take today, in the age of Trump? How should critique be envisioned in a period of general crisis, when multiple system dysfunctions (social, economic, ecological and political) spark multiple axes and sites of social struggle — some potentially emancipatory, others decidedly not? In this lecture, Nancy Fraser traces the roots of the crisis to the constitutive dynamics of our society, which she calls “cannibal capitalism.” Integrating Marxian insights with those of feminism, anti-racism/anti-imperialism and ecological and democratic theory, she expounds that system’s institutional structure, crisis tendencies and grammars of struggle. She also addresses the burning question: How, in the age of Trump, might participants in those struggles coalesce in a counterhegemonic bloc with the heft and vision to effect an emancipatory transformation of society?
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About the keynote speaker
NANCY FRASER is the Henry and Louise A. Loeb Professor of Philosophy and Politics at the New School for Social Research and a member of the Editorial Committee of New Left Review. Trained as a philosopher, she specializes in critical social theory and political philosophy. Widely known for her work on the relation between redistribution and recognition in the theory of justice, she works now on the relation of capitalism to racial oppression, social reproduction, ecological crisis, feminist movements and the rise of rightwing populism.
Fraser’s newest book is Cannibal Capitalism: How Our System Is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet—and What We Can Do About It (Verso, 2022). Other recent books include Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto, co-authored with Cinzia Arruzza and Tithi Bhattacharya (Verso, 2019); The Old is Dying (Verso, 2019); and Capitalism: A Conversation in Critical Theory, co-authored with Rahel Jaeggi (Polity Press, 2018).
Fraser’s work has been translated into more than 20 languages and was cited three times by the Justices of the Brazilian Supreme Court in opinions upholding marriage equality, affirmative action and Afro-descendant collective land rights. A Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor, a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a past president of the American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division, she is the recipient of six honorary degrees, the Alfred Schutz Prize for Social Philosophy, the Nessim Habif World Prize and the Nonino Prize 2022 “Master of our Time.”
Washington University faculty speakers
Peter Kastor
Samuel K. Eddy Endowed Professor, Department of History
Creating a Federal Government (launched 2024)
Creating a Federal Government provides the first comprehensive portrait of the U.S. government at the moment of its creation. This digital project reconstructs the careers of more than 37,000 civil and military careers during the crucial first decades after ratification of the Constitution. Combining the individual stories of these people with mapping technology that shows the location of U.S. officials around the world, this project reveals how the Founding Fathers converted the brief and abstract language of the Constitution into institutions that could meet the extraordinary challenges facing the young republic.
Raven Maragh-Lloyd
Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies and Film and Media Studies
Black Networked Resistance: Strategic Rearticulations in the Digital Age (University of California Press, 2024)
Black Networked Resistance explores the creative range of Black digital users and their responses to varying forms of oppression, utilizing cultural, communicative, political, and technological threads both on and offline. Raven Maragh-Lloyd demonstrates how Black users strategically rearticulate their responses to oppression in ways that highlight Black publics’ historically rich traditions and reveal the shifting nature of both dominance and resistance, particularly in the digital age. Through case studies and interviews, Maragh-Lloyd reveals the malleable ways resistance can take shape and the ways Black users artfully demonstrate such modifications of resistance through strategies of survival, reprieve, and community online. Each chapter grounds itself in a resistance strategy, such as Black humor, care, or archiving, to show the ways that Black publics reshape strategies of resistance over time and across media platforms. Linking singular digital resistance movements while arguing for Black publics as strategic content creators who connect resistance strategies from our past to suit our present needs, Black Networked Resistance encourages readers to create and cultivate lasting communities necessary for social and political change by imagining a future of joy, community, and agency through their digital media practices.
12 pm, Wednesday, February 26, 2025
Washington University, Olin Library, Room 142
Panel discussion
Are We Toast? Humanities Under Capitalism
Taking the prompt offered in the preface to her latest book, “Cannibal Capitalism: Are We Toast?’ keynote speaker Nancy Fraser joins a conversation with WashU faculty members Rachel Brown, assistant professor of women, gender and sexuality studies; Ila Sheren, associate professor of art history and archaeology; and Anca Parvulescu, the Liselotte Dieckmann Professor of Comparative Literature. Moderated by Talia Dan-Cohen, associate professor of sociocultural anthropology and associate director of the Center for the Humanities.
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About the Faculty Book Celebration
The publication of a monograph or significant creative work is a milestone in the career of an academic. The Center for the Humanities commemorates this achievement annually during the Faculty Book Celebration. The event recognizes Washington University faculty from the humanities and humanistic social sciences by displaying their recently published works and large-scale creative projects and inviting two campus authors and a guest lecturer to speak at a public gathering.
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