Rayanne Eskandari Varzali PhD student

My research explores the division between work and life in the history of philosophy and political science, examining its various iterations before turning to the problematisation and models of work in nineteenth-century British literature. It spans a diverse range of texts, from the social criticism of Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin to the silver fork novels of Benjamin Disraeli, the realist works of Charles Dickens, the socialist utopianism of William Morris, and the decadent writings of Oscar Wilde. These literary analyses are framed by critical perspectives from thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, Marx, Arendt, Agamben, Habermas, and Rancière. The thesis has two aims: to investigate how political science conceptualises the separation of knowing and doing – life and work – as distinct activities, and to trace how these ideas are reimagined in nineteenth-century literature.