The Dialectical Co-Constitution of Work and Art

• In Event: Theory Section Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 7

Abstract

This paper builds on Durkheim’s and Marx’s theories of division of labor to argue that art and work are both co-constitutive and dialectical. I argue that work and art are not separate spheres as sociology has tended to consider them—work as material and art as symbolic—but actually mutually shaping practices. I use the case of contemporary fisherpoets—commercial fishermen who create art about their work and lives—to illustrate this empirically. Fishing provides the material, emotional, and temporal conditions that give rise to artistic reflection, while art in turn reframes labor as meaningful, expressive, and political. Here, I propose a theoretical model for understanding cultural production as embedded in working life, which I call the dialectical co-constitution of work and art. I offer this model not just for the case of fisherpoets but as a broader analytic for exploring laboring identities across occupations, from farmers to physicians. The paper also situates fisherpoetry within broader transformations in twenty-first century labor—marked by precarity, polyoccupationalism, automation, etc.—and considers how these shifts may give rise to new forms of art-work. I conclude by reflecting on Marx’s vision of a post-capitalist future in which the separation between work and creativity dissolves, suggesting that fisherpoetry might gesture toward this possibility in the present.

Author

• Allison Wigen, Boston University