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Angela Demetri Kharki
Sponsored Jobs welcome to the New Books Network
Interviewer
welcome to the New Books Network. On this episode I'm talking to Angela Demetri Kharki about feminism art capitalism. So welcome to the podcast.
Angela Demetri Kharki
Thank you very much. It's very pleased to be here and
Interviewer
I'm really pleased to be talking to you about this brilliant book which is both, I think a major theoretical intervention for people in the kind of, you know, art theory, art world space, but also has got lots of kind of crossovers with things like sociological theory, theories about work, understandings of capitalism, Marxism, feminism, like lots of, I think kind of possible readers for for the text. And the place to start I guess is where your sort of inspiration came from. What inspired you to write a book about feminism, art, capitalism, Right?
Angela Demetri Kharki
Well, the fact is that no said book existed in the languages I was able I am able to read. While at the same time we know that art and feminism as we know art and feminism are very closely connected to the emergence and trajectory of capitalism. Capitalism that appears very recognizable and strong already in the 19th century and the Industrial Revolution. So I often Return to that time, to that century. And already in my previous work I had argued, for example, that the inequalitative and injustice, the feminist dryser dress, they're saved by capitalism and not something trans historical culpatriarchy in ceremony. So the capitalism is far more of the problem here. And it's not that in previous modes of production, because capitalism is a mode of production, a way that is to obtain the necessities of life in a given society. That's what mode of production means. So it's not that in previous modes of production, women were not oppressed and exploited, but the historical reality in which we fight us feminists is now, and this now is the historical materiality of capitalism. So it is, for example, the capitalist principles of pyramid art that families are expected to work with or cause, or they have to succeed in the capitalist art market. So this is not just a general art market, but a capitalist art market. Or we have other art institutions which support competition, which is a key aspect of our capitalist reality. So the book tries to being realistic, I would say in many ways it seeks the depth that realism can offer an understanding of reality not in terms of what limits with God, but in terms of understanding where is that we shape our dreams of emancipation, for instance. And what shapes me as a historical human being is also part of of this. What desires do I have? Where do the desires come from? These are all shaped by capitalism at the moment, and they have for, I would say, a few centuries. But capitalism is evolving, so there is a story to tell there. And I'm trying to tell this story actually in this brief. I think in relation to this, it's important to understand that the goals of feminism, what we set out to do, cannot be realized in a capitalist society. For me, that's an important understanding that I try to prove in some way and discuss with the reader. And it's also important to say in this regard that capitalism and feminism, they both end with this infamism. Capitalism, feminism, they pursue different, I would say, opposing goals. So this is what I tried to explain, at least in part of the book. And I think that not joining the dodge of feminism, rapules and art, as I've tried to do here, the tag of the book says that creating a knowledge gap which I so reproduce year after year in the classroom, having taught well for quite a long time, I would say at least since 2000 in higher education in the UK. So I would see, I was thinking about students and my students, how they think about art and how they think about themselves. In relation to art. And this is certainly one of the subjects students that I addressed in this book and very often this my students that have the tendency to not read books from other subjects from other disciplines. So the story I try to tell in drawing the dots between feminism and capitalism, hopefully it does this for them. It kind of minimizes the need to read out bigs. I hope it's a story that integrates material from diverse disciplines in order to say something about how art and feminism through art and both of those things kind of being situated in capitalism kind of work together or don't. And then finally, what inspired me to. Not to inspire it is the right word, but what motivated me to do it is that I often saw in the west kind of feminism being narrated as a success story. And at the same time, a lot of things were not changing. So there was a conflict there somehow, that feminism could not have been a success story precisely within capitalism. So I started researching in order to narrate a different, perhaps I would say, story about feminist and capitalism through art. I hope this answers the question.
Interviewer
Yeah, and you've introduced, I think, lots of the themes in the book there as well. I guess one thing that maybe is kind of implicit is the sort of orientation that you've got towards understanding feminism, art and capitalism, which draws on, I guess, a kind of broadly Marxist perspective. And I'm sort of intrigued as to where that perspective, that kind of Marxist feminist perspective fits in to the analysis.
Angela Demetri Kharki
Yes. So it's a Marxist feminist perspective rather than a Marxist perspective at the time. So Marxist feminism is a way of thinking about society and history. The fact that society changes and is not the same since humans appeared on earth. And this way of thinking that we call Marx's fandom, Remember something important that Marx wrote in the 19th century that every mode of production which defines a society is of course also a mode of reproduction of that society. Right. So society needs certain things in order to exist from one day to the next. And Marcus Fentonism asks, for example, why capitalism as a mode of production is so much against women. Why are women often paid lower wages, or why they're often directed to specific jobs, or why they're expected to do hajj work free when this housework is absolutely essential for keeping humans, humans who work. Right. So the workers alive. So Max Van Denz is very much interested in why what we call the division of labor across scales takes the form that it does. That is from the family, which is the most perhaps intimate scale, to the nation state with a global economy. How do these things work? How does the division of labor work across all these scales against the people who are called women? And what does this have to do with power? So the second upstairs about power or power is not something that arises in language or can be exhausted through booking or changing language. But we need to think about the materiality of production, the material conditions in which we live. So can we really think how the capitalist class, the class that owns the factories, that owns the companies in the firms in which we work, can we really think how the capitalist class exploits the working class? How did it do it without thinking about gender and sex? No, we cannot actually understand this. And in this way, Marxist feminism insists on something important, on taking account of this gender reality in relation to clotsworm synths, right? And I would say also that in starting from the material conditions in which we live, Marxist feminists are committed to denaturalizing probative ideas that are with us, such as, hey, they have always been rich and poor people. This cannot change. We hear this often, but in this book I try to show why capitalism is a very particular system of having written poor people and what makes it particular and how, for example, the label of working class women sustains both factory production. And all these things were surrounded with, because we're surrounded with objects that are industrially produced and the free laser time that others, including other women who are very well off, for instance, enjoy. Right? So Marxist feminism certainly look at, looks at this relationship of women across different classes. And the Marxist feminism that I am interested in kind of tries to understand class struggle also as something that women from different parties are actually involved with. And in our times, like we're in the century now, it should be obvious that capitalism is a transnational global system of production and this is central to how exploitation occurs, right? It can't be. We can't think about it. I think that most Marxist feminists who distinguish between exploitation and oppression, and we find both in this, in capitalism as a global system, but how they're connected, this is something that we need to understand. So I can feel oppressed, for instance, aren't a woman in the West. But at the same time, through capitalism as a global system, I can exploit through the cloaks I buy, right? The working class women very, very far away from me. So that's an important aspect that I'm trying to clarify. The Marxist feminism using this method in the book now coming to art, right? We may want to ask whether we beat the Marxist feminist method in art history and theory. And that's Another important thing that I think I'm trying to do through the book, I'm trying to see whether Marxist feminine method developed consistently from the late 60s, for example, and 70s when the second wave, as it is called the second wave of feminism emerged. And if we don't refer a Marxist feminist method, why not? What happened then? Why did second wave feminism kind of flip in different directions? I think that feminist thought, some feminist thought for me, the most persuasive feminist thought in art, it used key concepts and ideas and tools that it took from Marxism. I think, for instance, this is there's a very important essay by Brisel Depollock on the need of doing this. But looking back, I think Marxism was used in an eclectic and very fragmented way. So I'm not sure I would say that we had a Marxist feminist method in art history. I think this the real collective to an extent. However, collective effort around developing a Marxist feminist method started Leica and it started when, I would say around the global financial crisis of 2007 and 8, when a lot of things became very dangerous and there was a need to return to the economy and understand it also from within the art in relation to to art. So the book does try to provide a Marxist feminist framework as a small the other method for art applied, and it argues a case of what we would miss if we didn't adopt this method and what has been missed so far. Part of the book is devoted to how capitalism has generated intellectual paradigms that push Marxism aside and effectively. Besides the very good and wonderful intentions of those who adopted those intellectual paradigms, they have been assisting rather than define capitalism as a system of exploitation and oppression.
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Interviewer
I mean, what one thing in in there and you sort of touched on This a little bit some of the kind of, I guess, sort of contradictions. You know, feminism offers both kind of critique, but also that critique gets kind of incorporated by capitalism. Obviously art offers potential forms of critique, but that also gets incorporated. And I think there's a line in the introduction to the book that talks about the way that kind of there's a range of contradictions that feminism faces in the capitalist art field. And I'm interested to know a bit about that partially because later on in the book you talk about, you know, the sort of potential critical or revolutionary possibilities from the feminist art movement, but also you're sort of stressing the, the range of limitations of those possibilities. So yeah, what are some of the contradictions that feminism faces in capitalist art fields?
Angela Demetri Kharki
And it holds up on contradictions, but contradictions are embedded in what we call capitalist modernity and a very much stout way, a different modernity that was not in some way owned or defined by capital within Petrie. So and capital, I would say skood is faster in learning from the contradictions it masters than the social movements try in some ways to work against capitalism. Feminism has not learned as fast from the contradictions it has faced, both in social life, but also in the art field. And for many years I felt that there was non dialogue in art among different emancipatory projects that artists are involved with. And in my book, and specifically in this chapter, I tried to to suggest that feminism as an emancipatory project, yes, it's specific, but the contradictions it faces in the art field actually concern all emancipatory movements and ideas that enter the art world. And I wanted to explore these contradictions and to show that feminism troubles are no gimmicks or kind of dialogue has to exist. So for example, an obvious contradiction is that the artwork is an object to be an object, it can be a practice, but very often it does take the form of the object because it needs to be traded for money. So even if you have a performance or a process based artwork that does not take the form of painting or sculpture, you'll end up having a suggestion bind the remains of, say, foodstuff or objects used, you know, during that process. So the artwork is indeed an object to be treated for money because the artist needs to make a living. But it's also the repository of very lofty and critical and kind of cutting ads ideas. We have expectations that we pin on art in ways that we don't have the same expectations from United States, for instance, right. So because art under capitalism has moved to ultimate reality. I'm very focused on this in the book. Is moved towards materiality, towards ideas and concepts. I think at some point in the 20th century we had something called conceptual art, right. But still the artist had to sell the artwork in order to harbor it. Tweet Art came very close to selling its radicalism, to selling its critical ideas. And that includes the idea that capitalism is bound. There was an obvious contradiction there between the artwork of something which critiques capitalism, and we expect it to do this actually and the artwork as something which is an object of trade. I should say at this point that there are theories, very, very important theories or of art that look at art as an exception almost to Kaplan's relations of production. That is, art is not made by a mass anonymous workers in factories mostly. And this is true. But I am I think to an extent questioning whether this exception of our the guides and exception stands because all the social relations that surround art, they're capitalist, like competition, for instance. Right. So our artists actually compete with each other. Curators compete with each other. Art theorists compete with each other for resources. And that is something that factualism imposes, that is normal, that is to do so for us. Another contradiction would be the fact that who have such a push for collectivism in art, but at the same time, even collectives can compete with each other. They can't kind of operate above the competition principle that the capitalist art will imposes on them. So with regard to feminism, I have looked at specific sets of contradictions that the folks there together is called autonomy, dependency. And this has to do with institutions. So whereas women artists we'll see in the 6 and 7 is and before they have been trapping much more consciously, I would say at the mass level they craved autonomy. But at the same time, to achieve autonomy, they had to enter the art institutions that constructed their dependency on them. And I think that it's important that regard to keep remembering that art is a profession and that women also entered the art institutions because they need employment. So it's not just to make themselves visible. Right. They also needed to make a living. The second Peter that signifies contradiction is the conflict between reform and revolution that we have in art. And we know very well that reforms evolution is almost impossible to achieve in our day. So reform is or is all we're left with in art. And I'm asking how this happened and why it happened and what does it mean to have reforms without tying them to evolutionary horizon? And how do you make a choice of whether or to suggest because if you don't have the evolution in mind, then you end up with your forms that actually strengthen the system of which you're part, which is capitalism. Right. And finally, I look like a pair of work. And on work, what counts as work, what counts as non work? What is work for women? And I want me to have a labor of love, but women are particularly good at that. I would say that this last conflict between what is work and what is not work is the question and the contradiction that Marx's feminist enarc has so far looked at. So we do have studies of that. But I hope that what I'm doing to the book in relation to it was just one trajectory in. The book highlights why in capitalism, even if we manage to extricate ourselves from work, we really have nowhere to go. We will need to rely, unless we're very wealthy, on somebody else's work for us to exist. So we're still in the realm of necessity somehow, not the realm of freedom, as Marx would say. Yeah, yeah.
Interviewer
I think you sort of covered quite a lot of the themes that run all the way through the book. I'm maybe going to jump forward really to quite near the end of the text because the book kind of concludes with a chapter that I guess, thinks about technology. And obviously you've talked about labor ideas of critique, reform, revolution, you know, obviously centering this question of gender and work throughout. But where does technology fit in to this story? Why did you include a kind of specific chapter thinking about technology towards the end of the book?
Angela Demetri Kharki
Yeah, for me, this is the most important chapter of a big demand technology, because capitalism is an acceleration of technology. Capitalism constantly needs new technologies in order to be able to expel labor, which is actually people, workers from production. It can shift the balance. This is a general direction. And at the same time, these technologies always absorb more and more skills for humanity. So I'm looking at this from the perspective of Marxist feminism. So in relation to women, really, even the idea of women and how they have been appropriated within the chronological apparatus of the Constitution. Now, it's super interesting that technology is often presented as a tool, but it's not always a tool. So we have, for instance, feminist artists working in the 60s and 70s, and some of them hold message with their tools. For instance, a camera. And they can leave the camera, you know, if I choose, I can get the camera and go and do something else. Right. But there is also, I would say, a narrative, this point to start becoming one with machine. And this is. This means that you cannot actually Exit this new fusion of flesh and machine that we often understand as the cyborg, which discussed very much in this chapter. So what happens for instance when we have this embodied technologies is precisely that we cannot really live in more the realm of production. These are technologies that very often are military apologists, but they also used a very, very big corporations. Anyway, the diagnosis of capital. There is a question there as to whether they can be repurposed. I'm arguing that this is almost impossible to do. We don't have really. We have only minor sets, examples. And I'm trying to follow this logic of capital and see where it takes us with regards to the increased fusion of flash and technology. Looking back, I'm going before the second World War, what happened is a very important film that features a female cyborg, a female coded cyborg. And that film which is called Metropolis, makes it very apparent of what is the affinity there. Because that was meant to be a servant to capital, to a capitalist master. And so it was very interesting to me to see later on, like in the 80s at about when the neoliberal President Reagan going to Moscow and announcing the ditzel revolution. Around that time we have in America a new theory that looks very favorably at the cyborg. And I'm asking myself why? What did it mean if we put all these things together? What happens in the 80s that we suddenly have these troops from capital? And why this presentica the radical idea in the context of founders? So I'm looking at all these configurations I would say, that draw us more and more into serving capital rather than extricating ourselves from it. And I'm using. I'm using a real wonderful actually artwork by Melanie Hilligan called the common sense from 2015 to sci fi narrative that Hilligan develops to think about how capital occupies more and more our sensorial apparatus through these technologies and what this means about what Marxism calls subsumption, that is that we do the way we are, is produced by capital at the end of the day, more and more so. Right. So I'm looking at the future of subsumption through this technology. And the other thing that prioritoplies me in this chapter. And again we find it across what I call the long modern. This idea that I introduce in the book is the coming together of technology that we think as very kind of science folks and so on, with the occult, with spiritualism, with the magical. And I ask why do these two seemingly different things coexist? What is the meaning of this coexistence, this fusion? Again, I'm very Aware that many people today, actually much more than a few years back, are very interested in forms and transgression that involve the occult. But in reality we have this drought modernity. So modernity never becomes about science, as capitalist modernity always maintains. I would say the. This kind of. I don't want to say fight, but I don't want to say that either. This relationship between reason and unreason, what can be explained, what cannot be explained. And more and more people are actually directed at something which does not make use of reason. But at the same time, they look at this, they approach this through technology. And that is very interesting for this chapter. So I'm following practices where artists interested in feminists kind of return and perform through the magical, the ghost, the spectral. Right. And what technology has to do with this, because I think technology, to an extent, extent, it supports. It supports the irrational. And I think that's a very interesting thing to explore through a Marxist feminist lens. I'm also keen to look at this lens, the history of art as a history of labor, which is really a history of losses for labor. I think I mentioned this just before. We really need to understand that very often, I mean, yeah, workers don't have a say in this. So in the 90s, when, after President Reagan and Moscow announced digital revolution, right, the workers who refused to retrain, the. They. They disappeared. So everybody has to take part in whatever new technological revolution. Capital mountains for profit, right? It's always for profit. There's nothing there which is about progress. It's always for profit. So. So I'm looking at all this and what is the predicament of feminism? Because sometimes feminism without Marxism are. I feel it can run the risk of becoming collusive with reproducing the gangs of capital through pushing this. Through this technological acceleration. So technology is central to the book. And that is why the last chapter before the postscript, that is, which takes us to the contemporary moment, kind of deals with technology.
Interviewer
I mean, as I expected, there's a kind of flavor of the book in our conversation, but there's a lot more. And obviously people should buy the book, should read the book to get the kind of full range of ideas and analysis. And indeed I see the kind of art projects and artworks that you're talking about. I'm also interested in, I guess, kind of what you're doing sort of next, beyond the book, partially. You know, you said at the start that this is a. A long kind of combination of lots of different ideas that you've been working on for, For Quite a long time. So obviously, like, you know, having a bit of a rest between projects is. Is understandable. But I'm intrigued as to whether you're doing, I guess, kind of similar work in that kind of Marxist feminist art theory space, or are you working on something a little bit different?
Angela Demetri Kharki
No. Well, yes, and I am working on something a little bit different. But the post trick with which I end the book, it mentions four things which kind of create the contemporary in which we function, which is this feeling of permanent crisis, that there will be no better times either times like feminism to this work, the need to leave what used to be, I would say postmodernism was a little kind of parentheses there in the history of capitalist modernity. The rise of geopolitics that we see now and how we produce knowledge as feminists in this new geopolitics that we've got today and how. I think that's a very important actually aspect, because through geophobics we can see how imperialism permitted, for instance, the emergence of, let's say, feminist art movement in the US but suppressed a feminist art movement elsewhere because of the operations of the US in that other country. And finally feminism against capital's war economy. That feminists must work for liberation of labor in order precisely to stop this war coming in which we find ourselves now. And our leaders tell us that it's going to create jobs and so on. So we think this framework, when discussing the postgres, land down a new project. And this project says to do with how the family functions in this configuration of the contemporary, because it touches on all this. So we have family, imperialism, even geopolitics producing okaque. We have the family in crisis. We have the abolition of the family at certain aspects of the contemporary advocate for and so on. So for me to move on to this project at Penkowe, and I'm very grateful for this, I have a wonderful fellowship in order to be able to do this research. Now writing this book that we're discussing today has been an absolutely necessary step in order to understand the gaps of Fermi's theory in order to understand the contemporary. Right? To get me an opportunity to understand the contemporary in order to start thinking. Okay, let me look now. This particular scale which is called the family. What why are these. Or catspeed? What are its contradictions? Why do we keep seeing it so much in photography, for instance, and so on. So I followed my contemporary projects around the first Duke of the Family, certain vectors that I first explored or launched in feminism or capitalism, which is the bit that. Yeah, we're talking about here, Sam.
Podcast: New Books Network
Host: New Books (Interviewer not named)
Guest: Angela Dimitrakaki
Date: May 6, 2026
This episode features Angela Dimitrakaki, discussing her new book, Feminism. Art. Capitalism. The conversation explores the intersection of feminism, contemporary art, and capitalism through a Marxist feminist lens. Dimitrakaki articulates why feminism’s aspirations clash with capitalist structures, how art both resists and is co-opted by capital, and why technology and the family must be reckoned with in any emancipatory project. The discussion offers theoretical insights and practical examples, making key connections between art history, feminist politics, and the capitalist mode of production.
Absence of the Existing Work [(02:32)]
Dimitrakaki explains her impetus for writing the book:
“No said book existed in the languages I was able I am able to read...art and feminism as we know them are very closely connected to the emergence and trajectory of capitalism.”
She highlights the historical emergence of capitalism in the 19th century and stresses that feminism’s struggles are deeply shaped by, and implicated in, capitalism’s material reality.
Feminism’s Goals vs. Capitalism
She argues the core objectives of feminism cannot be realized within a capitalist society:
“It’s important to understand that the goals of feminism… cannot be realized in a capitalist society.” [(06:18)]
Both “capitalism” and “feminism” share the same suffix (-ism) but pursue fundamentally opposing aims.
Teaching and Knowledge Gaps
Dimitrakaki’s experience with students reveals persistent knowledge gaps between fields, motivating her to create a resource that bridges feminist theory, art theory, and Marxist analysis.
Marxist Feminism Defined [(08:47)]
“Marxist feminism is a way of thinking about society and history... Every mode of production which defines a society is also a mode of reproduction of that society.”
She discusses the specific ways capitalism oppresses and exploits women, such as wage disparities, division of labor, and unpaid housework.
Global System and Interconnectedness
Dimitrakaki stresses that contemporary capitalism is a transnational system, making possible the exploitation of women across borders:
“I can feel oppressed, for instance, as a woman in the West. But at the same time, through capitalism as a global system, I can exploit through the clothes I buy…the working-class women very far away from me.” [(12:50)]
Art and Marxist Feminist Methodology
She criticizes the historical lack of a coherent Marxist feminist method in art history and theory, noting:
“Looking back, I think Marxism was used in an eclectic and very fragmented way.…I’m trying to see whether Marxist feminist method developed consistently from the late 60s and 70s…” [(14:50)]
The global financial crisis of 2007-08 prompted renewed attention to economic dynamics in art and a resurgence in Marxist feminist approaches.
Contradiction as Constitutive
“Contradictions are embedded in what we call capitalist modernity...” [(21:15)]
Capitalism quickly incorporates critiques and contradictions, often more swiftly than emancipatory movements learn from them.
Art as Object and Commodity
“The artwork is indeed an object to be traded for money because the artist needs to make a living. But it’s also the repository of very lofty and critical ideas.” [(22:20)]
Dimitrakaki details how art’s materiality under capitalism requires commodification, even for conceptual or process-based work.
Competition and Institutions
“All the social relations that surround art, they’re capitalist, like competition… Artists compete, curators compete, art theorists compete for resources. And that is something that capitalism imposes as normal.” [(24:30)]
Specific Feminist Contradictions
“Even if we manage to extricate ourselves from work, we really have nowhere to go...we will need to rely, unless we’re very wealthy, on somebody else’s work…” [(28:50)]
Technology as Capitalist Acceleration
“Capitalism is an acceleration of technology. Capitalism constantly needs new technologies in order to be able to expel labor...” [(30:13)]
Technology is analyzed as both tool and agent of subsumption, drawing on Marxist concepts.
From Tool to Cyborg
The transition from holding a camera as a tool to becoming one with the machine (cyborg):
“There is a narrative...of becoming one with the machine. And this means you cannot actually exit this new fusion of flesh and machine…” [(31:30)]
Occult and Technology
Dimitrakaki traces the historical intertwining of technology and spiritualism in art, especially in practices that blend techno-scientific and magical thinking:
“Modernity never becomes about science, as capitalist modernity always maintains…This relationship between reason and unreason...technology, to an extent, supports the irrational.” [(35:50)]
Labor, Loss, and Exclusion
She underscores how technological ‘progress’ results in loss and displacement for labor:
“Everybody has to take part in whatever new technological revolution capital mounts for profit, right? It’s always for profit. There’s nothing there which is about progress.” [(37:33)]
Feminism that is not attentive to Marxist critique risks facilitating capital’s gains through technological acceleration.
Contemporary Vectors
The book concludes with reflections on four contemporary dynamics:
Future Research—The Family
Dimitrakaki is moving on to study “how the family functions in this configuration of the contemporary,” linking it to imperialism, crisis, and contemporary photographic practices.
“This project has to do with how the family functions in this configuration of the contemporary… Why do we keep seeing it so much in photography, for instance, and so on?” [(40:50)]
On Contradiction:
“Capitalism is faster in learning from the contradictions it masters than the social movements try in some ways to work against capitalism.” (Angela Dimitrakaki, 21:25)
On Art as Commodity:
“Art came very close to selling its radicalism, to selling its critical ideas. And that includes the idea that capitalism is bad.” (Angela Dimitrakaki, 24:03)
On Feminism’s Limits under Capitalism:
“Feminism could not have been a success story precisely within capitalism.” (Angela Dimitrakaki, 07:35)
On Technology and the Cyborg:
“There is a narrative, this point to start becoming one with the machine...we cannot really live anymore outside the realm of production.” (Angela Dimitrakaki, 31:33)
On the Need for Marxist Feminist Analysis:
“Feminism without Marxism… can run the risk of becoming collusive with reproducing the gains of capital through pushing… technological acceleration.” (Angela Dimitrakaki, 37:45)
Angela Dimitrakaki’s Feminism. Art. Capitalism is a wide-ranging, theoretically ambitious intervention that addresses the underexplored connections between feminist aims, the contemporary art world, and capitalist production. The episode distills core arguments—capitalism’s inescapable effect on feminist goals, art’s fraught position as both critique and commodity, and the role of technology in both dominating and eroding emancipatory projects—while signaling that the struggle continues, newly focused on the family within contemporary crises.