This book examines labour in the age of US hegemony through the art that has grappled with it; and, vice versa, developments in American culture as they have been shaped by work’s transformations over the last century. Describing the complex relations between cultural forms and the work practices, Art, Labour and American Life explores everything from Fordism to feminization, from whitecollar ascendency to zero hours precarity, as these things have manifested in painting, performance art, poetry, fiction, philosophy and music. Labour, all but invisible in cultural histories of...

This book examines labour in the age of US hegemony through the art that has grappled with it; and, vice versa, developments in American culture as they have been shaped by work’s transformations over the last century. Describing the complex relations between cultural forms and the work practices, Art, Labour and American Life explores everything from Fordism to feminization, from whitecollar ascendency to zero hours precarity, as these things have manifested in painting, performance art, poetry, fiction, philosophy and music. Labour, all but invisible in cultural histories of...