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They Must Be Represented? Problems in Theories of Working-Class Representation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Peter Hitchcock
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Abstract

Most studies of working-class culture are based on a content-oriented approach to class. While such a mode of interpretation is useful to an understanding of working-class expression, it often fails to come to terms with the nature of class as a relation. Although hardly a manifesto, this essay argues for a theoretically nuanced reading of class that takes up the challenge of abstraction in a working-class representation. In a series of examples drawn from fiction, poetry, and film, the argument shows the myth of the disappearance of the working class to be a symptom of current problems in representational aesthetics.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 115 , Issue 1: Special Topic: Rereading Class , January 2000 , pp. 20 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2000

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