Nina Power, senior lecturer in philosophy at Roehampton University and author of One Dimensional Woman, spoke on the concept of emotional labour from a Marxist perspective in Oxford this Thursday. As usual Wadham College attracted a good crop of radicals-in-training and the session was incredibly interesting. Nina outlined her thesis that Arlie Hochschild’s concept (in The Managed Heart) of emotion-work in the post-Fordist economy can be reconciled with Marxist theories of labour. The smile of the air-hostess represents a form of alienation whereby the self-objectifying work is done by the subject herself: sell yourself, make the most of yourself, make the most of your assets, put it out &c. Discussion involved elucidation of the reactionary writing ‘The Coming of the Body’ by Hervé Juvin, and touched on issues of domestic as well as public emotive dissonance, the marketing of job insecurity to young females, and the gendered aspect across the economy of pressures to be unassailably omnicomptent and well turned out at all times. Nina blogs at ‘Infinite Thought’ – against the cuts, needless to say – and I hope to link arms with her again soon.