{"id":1609,"date":"2025-09-02T18:12:51","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T18:12:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/?p=1609"},"modified":"2025-09-02T18:12:51","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T18:12:51","slug":"universal-prostitution-the-crisis-of-labor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/?p=1609","title":{"rendered":"Universal Prostitution &#038; the Crisis of Labor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>Minor Compositions Podcast Episode 37 Universal Prostitution &amp; the Crisis of Labor<\/b><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Universal Prostitution &amp; the Crisis of Labor\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/3Pe8T_hK9sk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This episode is a conversation with Jaleh Mansoor on the themes of her new book <i>Universal Prostitution and Modernist Abstraction: A Counterhistory<\/i>. In this provocative work, Mansoor offers a counternarrative of modernism and abstraction and a rethinking of Marxist aesthetics. Drawing on Marx\u2019s concept of prostitution \u2014 as an allegory for modern labor \u2014 she explores how generalized and gendered forms of work converge in modern and contemporary art.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>More on the book: \u201cIn Universal Prostitution and Modernist Abstraction, Jaleh Mansoor provides a counternarrative of modernism and abstraction and a reexamination of Marxist aesthetics. Mansoor draws on Marx\u2019s concept of prostitution\u2014a conceptual device through which Marx allegorized modern labor\u2014to think about the confluences of generalized and gendered labor in modern art. Analyzing works ranging from \u00c9douard Manet\u2019s Olympia and Georges Seurat\u2019s The Models to contemporary work by Hito Steyerl and Hannah Black, she shows how avant-garde artists can detect changing modes of production and capitalist and biopolitical processes of abstraction that assign identities to subjects in the interest of value\u2019s impersonal circulation. She demonstrates that art and abstraction resist modes of production and subjugation at the level of process and form rather than through referential representation. By studying gendered and generalized labor, abstraction, automation, and the worker, Mansoor shifts focus away from ideology, superstructure, and culture toward the ways art indexes crisis and transformation in the political economic base. Ultimately, she traces the outlines of a counterpraxis to capital while demonstrating how artworks give us a way to see through the abstractions of everyday life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Bio:<\/strong> Jaleh Mansoor is Associate Professor of Art History, Visual Art, and Theory at the University of British Columbia and author of <em>Marshall Plan Modernism: Italian Postwar Abstraction and the Beginnings of Autonomia<\/em>, also published by Duke University Press.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dukeupress.edu\/universal-prostitution-and-modernist-abstraction\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">More on the book<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The Minor Compositions podcast is in made in collaboration with <a href=\"https:\/\/fireflyfrequencies.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Firefly Frequencies<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Minor Compositions Podcast Episode 37 Universal Prostitution &amp; the Crisis of Labor This episode is a conversation with Jaleh Mansoor on the themes of her new book Universal Prostitution and Modernist Abstraction: A Counterhistory. In this provocative work, Mansoor offers a counternarrative of modernism and abstraction and a rethinking of Marxist aesthetics. Drawing on Marx\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1610,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[83],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-podcast"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1609"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1611,"href":"https:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1609\/revisions\/1611"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}