They Must Be Represented?

Problems in Theories of Working-Class Representation

Author(s): Peter Hitchcock
Source: PMLA, Vol. 115, No. 1, Special Topic: Rereading Class (Jan., 2000), pp. 20-32
Published by: Modern Language Association
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Peter Efitchcock

They Must Be Represented?

Problems in Theories of WorkingClass Representation

PETER HITCHCOCK, profes-

M | OST LITERARY CRITICS visibly wince at the mention of

sor in the English department

working-class representation as a significant component of

and the film program at the

cultural analysis ("too sociological," "too political," some may say, while

Graduate Center and at Baruch

College, City University of New

others might offer more interesting but no less dismissive assessments:

"too realist," "too easy," "too coarse," or simply "too late"). One could
respond that such judgments confirm the constitutive excess of working-

York, is the author of Working-

class culture as inherently valuable within literary criticism. They

Class Fiction in Theory and Prac-

certainly support Raymond Williams's position that "the simplest de-

tice (UMI, 1989), Dialogics of

scriptive novel about working-class life is already, by being written, a

the Oppressed (U of Minnesota

significant and positive cultural intervention. For it is not, even yet, what

P, 1993), Oscillate Wildly (U of

Minnesota P, 1999), and the

a novel is supposed to be, even as one kind among others. And changing
this takes time" ("Working-Class" 111). Nevertheless, the idea that changing a cultural form, or even modes of literary criticism, takes time may

forthcoming Imaginary States

strike one as "too precious" in the time- space compression of postmoder-

(U of Illinois P). This essay

nity, where the shifting sands of literary taste scarcely allow for projects

draws from a work in progress,

with a notion of longue dure'e. The difficulty is not intrinsically about

"Worker of the World(s)."

processes of adjudication but more about the elusive and unstable nature

of class itself, the consciousness of which provides its own forms of historical intervention (also a political lesson about identity in feminist and
race studies). Rather than read this difficulty outside the confines of art, as

an excess that is merely not art, I want to maintain a forceful connection

between what makes class excessive and specific problems in theorizing

working-class representation. Why? While class is constantly being

rethought vis-'a-vis the social,' it is generally undertheorized in terms of

the literary, as if what is problematic for the social scientist is transparent

or inconsequential for the literary critic.2 In what follows I want to expand a particular vocabulary in literary criticism, a lexicon of labor, by
taking on some of the methodological impurities of class head on. Far
from confining working-class representation as some historical curiosity,

the rethinking, reworking, and reformation of class provide a prescient

20 PMLA, vol. 1 15, Jan. 2000. 0 2000 by The Modern Language Association of America

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Peter

provocation for literary critique that, while hardly

HitcIcock

21

class subject" as intellectual, in which the eco-

"emergent" in the sense of Williams's cultural-

nomic and social determinants that produce the

formation analysis, is not "residual" either.3

former are seen to exclude the latter;5 the assump-

The major problem in theorizing working-class

tion that working-class communities only exist as

representation concerns the received ideas that

that from which one must escape;6 and finally, the

govern its apprehension. An anecdote might clar-

problem of the multicultural reflex that gives every

ify the prevalence of such assumptions. Recently I

margin centrality for a nanosecond, or for however

was asked to participate in a panel responding to

long it takes not to change fundamentally the con-

Brassed Off!, a quirky British film from 1996 that

ditions of cultural inclusion. Many of these issues

features the efforts of a colliery band to provide

are being discussed elsewhere and need no elabora-

substance to the lives of a mining community fac-

tion here. Most of all, the event reminded me of a

ing the upheavals of pit closures and unemploy-

continuing necessity for theory when class is read.

ment. The panel organizer told me he was aware

In particular, we need to think seriously about the

that I had written on working-class literature and

abstraction of the working class as a subject, not to

film, then added that it would be "good" to include

make her or him more simply visible (or as readily

me because he had heard I was "actually from the

available as consciousness, presumably) but to un-

working class." I prepared myself for a somewhat

derstand the complex processes that produce mis-

surreal experience, particularly since the film series

recognition, or Lacanian meconnaissance. As Pat

was dubbed "Escape: The SurReality of Working-

Barker's character Louise in The Century's Daugh-

Class Life on Film." The brochure for the event

ter suggests, "You're not supposed to be seen,"7 but

read, "This film series explores representations of

the paradox of working-class subjectivity is that you

the working class on film from 1930 to the present.

must be seen in order to confirm that class is there

In each film, class consciousness is readily visible

and negotiable in stable and unthreatening ways.

as characters escape the reality of their everyday

The "must be seen" of working-class subjectivity

existence with some sort of appeal to a more com-

is intimately connected to modes of representation

pelling vision of life." My interest in attending the

and power. Ironically, however, the more represen-

event was piqued by this kind of phrasing and also

tation is elaborated as a process of cognition of

because universities do not often sponsor film se-

class in cultural critique, the less relevant class is

ries on working-class issues. Certainly the efforts

held to be as an analytic category. There are good

of the organizers were sincere and committed, and

historical and theoretical issues surrounding this in-

my point is not to belittle the vision of their proj-

congruity in class representation, and it is impor-

ect. At the reception after the showing and panel

tant to explore these matters here before they are

discussion, there was a bizarre moment when I

connected to the cultural and the literary in more

talked to someone for several minutes before real-

detail. First, although Marx had considerable diffi-

izing that my interlocutor thought I was an actor in

culty negotiating the difference between working-

the film (surely a professor would not have said

class formation and proletarian Being in his work

those things!). I was cheered not so much by the

idea of being a movie star as by all the issues of
working-class representation that came tumbling
out of my experience of the event. Briefly, these
issues include the question of working-class au-

(a difficulty about which Capital provides enduring

lessons),8 this tension was often overlooked in po-

litical practice by organizational appeals to the

party, the state, and the union. Indeed, whatever the

historical claims of working-class constituency,

thenticity (my being hailed as an informant, an in-

these organizations have often stood in for the

terpellation that underlines why there are very

working class: they have represented it. Obviously,

good reasons for further elaboration of subaltern

voice and working-class subjectivity);4 the prob-

tions, as if such representations have not had a vital

one cannot simply jettison those synecdochic rela-

lem of class consciousness and its "visibility" or

and productive purchase on working-class politics

transparency for particular constituencies; the age-

and solidarity. Yet the failure of many a "workingclass" state, the banalization of many a "labor"

old but continuing predicament of the "working-

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22 Problems in Theories of Working-Class Representation

party, and the denigration of many a "worker"

vantages of this approach will be evident below,

union might at least give us pause and urge a re-

but here let me note its most serious weakness. The

consideration of the problem that Marx attempted

fascination with the constructive tenacity of sym-

to address many years ago: namely, the difference

bolic practices can all too easily slide into an anal-

of the objective conditions of class formation from

ysis of the symbol, of what is constructed, for its

the political forms of its expression. It is this rep-

own sake, and the grounds of such constructive

resentational quandary that haunts the current

activity then slip into the ether of discourse qua

epoch, when workers exist but apparently have no

discourse. At issue is not the principle of the con-

representational hold on a political machinery that

struction of meaning but what modes of material-

would transform their existence.

ization of meaning are operative in the meanings

This is not the place to untangle the difficult and

constructed. Symbolic practices are subject to the

appreciable efforts to provide a political base for

rule of difference: language, for instance, is struc-

working-class solidarity-I merely remark on the

tured by difference, without which communication

importance of a theory of representation for these

could not occur. For the constructionist, the lure

claims. Within my comments is a lesson about the

contrasts and points of contact between political

here is ironically the role of the deconstructionist,

for the artful play of the signifier can become a

and cultural representation, which continue to pro-

full-time occupation, and what Hall calls "the work

vide a theoretical knot for literary criticism (a point

of representation" offers to be simultaneously

to which I will return). The second component of

meaning's primary mode of production and its ul-

this representational quandary derives from theo-

timate abyss: this "workday" never ends.

ries of representation themselves. Stuart Hall has

How do theories of representation threaten the

usefully categorized theories of representation as

relevance of class? At an obvious level, those who

reflective, intentional, or constructionist.9 In the

project a unified or undifferentiated working-class

first, meaning resides in persons, events, ideas, or

subjectivity have been thwarted by representation's

objects, and a form of representation-say, lan-

profusions. This is undeniably a good thing. Marx's

guage-reflects this meaning. Here it must be said

conception of class is based on its mutability; in-

that just as mimesis has dominated aesthetic prac-

deed, understanding change is the first principle of

tice in the cultural mainstream, so it has conditioned

the forms of working-class political practice possible. The truth of mimesis is not an accident-it is
just that a representation does not coincide with
whatever it is purported to represent, so vigilance is

materialist critique. Certainly, this does not disable

incapacitate intentionality because intention and its

necessary to avoid conflation of them (and my con-

representation are agonistically and persistently ne-

ference experience would seem to confirm this).

gotiated. The main threat, paradoxically, arises out

working-class representation dependent on mimesis since presumably change will also be "reflected" at some point. Neither does it necessarily

The intentional theory of representation has just as

of materialism's interest in the constructedness of

long a history and just as great a danger, and for lit-

class and of its meanings. The givenness of class as

erary studies Wimsatt and Beardsley's warnings on

a socioeconomic category begins to dissolve in the

the intentional fallacy remain pertinent. The work-

complex modes of symbolic practice that give to

ing class does not own its meanings, and however

its formation identifiable meaning. Symbolic prac-

much consciousness informs working-class intent

tices come to stand in for class formation and iden-

(or whether a specific representation is intended to

be working-class), the result is not an unmediated

tity. This is the primary problem of representation

representation of the verifiably social nature of its

a particular class as the "motor of history" can

Being. The constructionist theory of representation

is by far the most popular among cultural material-

this problem, or it will confirm class as an insignif-

ists and indeed theorists of any kind who take seri-

icant way to understand forms of social being. The

ously human beings' capacity to make meaning, to

construct systems of signification. Some of the ad-

in the logic of class formation more than they do in

for class, which no amount of breast-beating about

solve. Yet class critique must continue to address

answers (and answerability, as I will elaborate) lie

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Peter

Hitchcock

23

conventional categories of representational aesthet-

content-oriented components might function as an

ics, such as "surReality."

exchange for what class means in a materialist anal-

The following discussion approaches the problem of representation in a number of ways, although

ysis: the relation through which one social group

may come to dominate the lives and livelihoods of

this is a working blueprint rather than a prescriptive

another. Could it be that the first word in a lexicon

theory for understanding or reading working-class

of labor for literary critique is abstraction?

culture in terms of the theories of representation

This proposal should not shock, for just as the

just described. The primary aim is to encourage an

Lacanian suggests that the Real is unrepresentable,

expanded lexicon of labor in cultural critique that,

so the materialist knows that theories of representa-

while it will not convince working classes to build

tion do not all occlude absence in the breadth of

barricades in defiance of those who lord over them,

their analyses. The point would be to stress the non-

might just militate against the tendency to build

representational aspects of class Being rather than

barricades around workers through representation.

to identify absence as an actor in the wings awaiting

The difficulty of working-class representation be-

presence on the stage. Raymond Williams makes a

gins with the fundamental abstractness of class.

similar case regarding Marx's theory of ideology.

There is no way to understand critically the extrac-

In The German Ideology Marx and Engels offer the

tion of value from the working class under the sign

following: "If in all ideology men and their cir-

of capital (a sign, by the way, that immediately un-

cumstances appear upside down as in a camera ob-

derlines the continued necessity of studying class

scura, this phenomenon arises just as much from

and labor) without coming to terms with class ab-

their historical life-process as the inversion of

straction (Amariglio and Callari). Class is not a

objects on the retina does from their physical life-

thing but a relation and one that puts a heavy bur-

process" (47). Williams comments that "the empha-

den on representation. For instance, Marx in the

sis is clear but the analogy is difficult" (Marxism

chapter on the commodity in Capital (vol. 1) strug-

59). As he points out, the brain will not leave ob-

gles to articulate how labor constitutes value. Marx

jects inverted in viewing the world, whereas ideol-

wants to convey how an unseen relation neverthe-

ogy may do this more or less precisely in terms of a

less constructs a social reality, but then he resists a

human being's life process. Indeed, the metaphor is

representational imperative by pointing to use val-

as careless as it is misleading. W. J. T. Mitchell, for

ue's absent presence in exchange (exchange value

instance, has noted the irony in this deployment of

is the way that use value "appears" within capital-

the camera obscura, since John Locke had used the

ism). Exchange value substitutes for use value and

figure to exemplify scientific exactitude rather than

then measures it by price, using that "universal"

to gloss falsity or illusion.'0 Similarly, Sarah Kof-

equivalent money. Instead of miming capital's gov-

man has drawn attention to the contradictory aes-

erning logic, Marx attempts to preserve the abstract

thetic provenance of the camera obscura. And what

integrity of labor's relation to commodity values by

of mediation in the life process, which is a govern-

a form of logical subtraction, so that labor value is

ing trope in Capital and Contribution to a Critique

"seen" as a congealed residue of human labor in the

of the Political Economy? Marx, in particular, of-

abstract. It is an extremely complex and ingenious

fers several versions of the general theory of ideol-

approach to the labor theory of value, an approach

ogy that are beyond summary here, but while this

whose main objective is to get materialists to think

metaphor of inversion is inadequate to the range of

beyond the tactile presence of the commodity to

thinking Marx and Engels bring to the subject (even

labor's integral role in the commodity's potentiality.

if we finesse the issue by saying they refer to a spe-

The literary critic interested in representations of

cific characteristic of German ideology), the meta-

the working class might well be alarmed at the

phor invokes sight and perception, which are

prospect that the desire to see class might elide the

closely bound to the formation and apprehension of

abstract process in which class becomes possible.

class. The difficulty remains in thinking an ele-

While we busily elucidate the various class mark-

ment of falsity in what is a verifiable relation lived

ers or signifiers of working-class identity, these

through consciousness. Ideology does not work by

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24 Problemvs in Theories of Working-Class Representation

being external to the subject it interpellates: it is at

and profound concepts, commodity fetishism. In-

one with the processes of consciousness. It is not

deed, the worker's modes of existence in abstract

somebody else's problem, secreted somewhere in a

value and in the unseen of visualization seem to

social superstructure and to be later revealed as an

conjoin in what Marx describes as "the mysterious

elaborate hoax-it constitutes the texture of a sub-

character of the commodity form" (Capital 104).

ject's lived relations, a set of meanings that are

Commodity fetishism is the process through which

insistently renegotiated and rearticulated. To this

a social relation among persons becomes transmog-

extent, for all the inappropriateness of the camera

rified into an apparently autonomous relation among

obscura as a corrrelative of a subject's percep-

things, or commodities in exchange. If this concept

tion, the metaphor nevertheless retains a grain of

has become a truism in materialist critiques of capi-

truth vis-'a-vis subject constitution: it invokes a ma-

talism, nevertheless one cannot easily represent it

terial ground.

in culture without making the representation itself

Ideology has been in a lexicon of labor for a long

an example of the object of critique-for capitalist

time, but it continues to provide a specific chal-

societies are defined by the extent to which they ex-

lenge for theories of working-class representation.

clude any culture that does not "appear" through

The keyword here is not ideology itself but is

commodity relations in general. Marx investigates

found in how ideology might come to mean, the

a psychic and material investment in things to show

process of its significance. Whether a particular

that social life has been displaced and become the

perception is false is not the vital issue; it is visual-

attribute of things. Again, this appearance is not

ization that is at stake in Marx and Engels's other-

false; it is the process by which capital establishes

wise dubious claim for the camera obscura. To

itself as an objective relation, a way to live. If labor

return to surReality once more: Was the panel or-

disappears or is effaced from products grounded by

ganizer's information on my class background

its value, commodity fetishism ensures or confirms

confirmed when he saw me? Did my code of dress

the persistence of this curiously absent presence. In

betray the docklands from which I came? Knowing

commodity fetishism Marx discovers a way to ar-

what was "good" in my authenticity, did I play on

ticulate the dual existence of commodities as si-

appearances, so much that I was mistaken for an

multaneously sensuous things and "suprasensible"

actor in Brassed Off! (in perhaps a nod to my fa-

artifacts ("Manuscripts"). The world of the com-

ther's family of northern Midlands miners)? Rather

modity for capital is, as Disney well knows, a

than discount perception, we should remark on the

magic kingdom where an uncanny relation to the

ambivalent relation between visualization and false

object comes to express social relations in general.

consciousness. It is inadequate to say simply that

The more naturalized this relation, the more the na-

class consciousness is not readily visible in culture

ture of work and worker disappears. The greater the

that features working-class subjects. The complex-

fetishism, the greater the disavowal of what makes

ity of ideology requires that the visualization of

the commodity possible. But what use could this

labor be analyzed for more than the falsity or truth

possibly be in rethinking theories of working-class

of appearances (what is represented). It demands

representation?

that critics of class culture come to terms with the

logic of visualization as a historical, epistemologi-

Here perhaps a lexicon of labor can be expanded

with reference to Brassed Off! The film tracks a pri-

cal, and cognitive imperative. Otherwise, working-

mary contradiction in capitalist social relations-

class representation is reduced to a laundry list of

namely, the difference between profitability as a

perceptions-the clothes, the hair, the voice, the

principle and a community's desire to maintain

hands-as if the nature of class were manifest

its conditions of socialization. The story is about

purely in physical attributes. These attributes are

Thatcherism and its aftereffects, which for the

vital components of the culture of class, but class as

northern England mining town Grimley mean pit

a relation does not give up its meanings so easily.

closures and redundancy (the latter is named when

Perhaps this challenge of abstraction can be best

the film's own lexicon of labor is defined during the

exemplified by one of Marx's most controversial

opening credits). Obviously, commodity fetishism

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Peter

Hitchcock

25

structures the relation between management and

shake the capitalist foundations of society to pieces.

the miners, with the proviso that both are invested

On the contrary, to develop a lexicon of labor in re-

in the mysterious nature of the commodity in their

lation to working-class representation is to expand

everyday existence. The fetishism consists not in a

the resources of hope beyond the putative content

love of coal but in coal's abstract equivalence: ac-

of this work or that. This endeavor would draw

tivity and livelihood. The film is less interested in

attention to the "space-off" in a film like Brassed

mining (only nineteen seconds are devoted to this

Off! (what is not represented so that representation

labor) than in what this work means to a commu-

can take place) and to the film's unabashed com-

nity predicated on its availability. The colliery's

modity status (for film often works to conceal the

brass band then stands in, metonymically, as a re-

conditions of labor in its making and circulates as a

sistance to the rule of commodification that yet is

commodity through an extraction of surplus value).

inextricably linked to this particular mode of pro-

Film is not a ruse of representation, but it certainly

duction. The band leader Danny's exhortation that

challenges theories of representation.

"music is what matters" is gradually overshadowed

To read class in terms of absence is not to bracket

by the specter of the pit closure, which demon-

the aesthetic in relation to content. The difficulty for

strates how workers are asked to conspire in their

objecthood for capital (as disposable labor). Just

when the narrative seems to have solved an eco-

nomic predicament through a humanist gesture to

community spirit (the band's dogged struggle to

win a national brass band competition), Danny

(dying from "black lung" a consequence of his
labor in the pits) tells the audience at the Albert

Hall, and by extension the audience of the film,

that making such a gesture is basically all the narrative can do: "I thought that music mattered. Does

it bollocks, not more than people matter." On the

one hand, the colliery band wins the competition,

and the victory is an appropriate endorsement of

the importance of music to the community; on the
other, the mine is closed, and despite the sentimen-

tality of the film's denouement, there is little to

compensate for the dire future implied. As the final

credits role, the band is seen playing "Land of

Hope and Glory" outside Westminster. Is realism's
answer to the abstract realities of commodity fetishism irony?

Brassed Off! is a reminder that it is one thing to

position the spectator as voyeur over other people's

misery but quite another to implicate the viewer in

the pitfalls of visualization. Make no mistake, this

is a working-class film (it comes close to being so-

cialist, particularly in its moments of proselytizing), but it is one by virtue of the contradictions it
measures between its aesthetic pleasures and the

lives that they are intended to depict. It would be

most readers of working-class culture is to maintain

the aesthetic as a viable category at all. On the left,

there is fear that any trace of the aesthetic is evi-

dence of a bourgeois contagion; on the right, there

is a patronizing view that the concept is generally
anathema to working-class expression. Whatever

the political shade, there is good reason to understand class aesthetically. Without recounting the

lengthy debates that have occupied materialist

thinking on this topic, let us argue for a common
necessity for abstraction in both class and the aes-

thetic. The above discussion depends on a level of

abstraction to gauge the operations for capital of

value, of ideology, and of commodity fetishism. Instead of simply confining the aesthetic to ideology,
writers have increasingly tried to understand an
ideological struggle over the aesthetic. Terry Eagle-

ton, for instance, has cogently argued for Marx

himself as a kind of aesthetician, as one who wants
to return sensuousness to the worker's severed self

(a sensuousness displaced by value-the alienation

effect of commodity production and by labor's

"representation" in the money form):
Marx is most profoundly "aesthetic" in his belief that
the exercise of human senses, powers and capacities is
an absolute end in itself, without need of utilitarian justification; but the unfolding of this sensuous richness
for its own sake can be achieved, paradoxically, only
through the rigorously instrumental practice of overthrowing bourgeois social relations. Only when the

incorrect to believe that all that is left to working-

bodily drives have been released from the despotism of

class culture is failure to the extent that it does not

abstract need, and the object has been similarly restored

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26 Problemns in Theories of Working-Class Representation

from functional abstraction to sensuously particular

its bodily sense (but in a body that is not detached

use-value, will it be possible to live aesthetically.

from its mind). From this perspective, the trilogy is

(Ideology of the Aesthetic 202)

not about labor, or from labor, but more or less into

labor, within the texture of its lived relation for the

Neither Marx nor Eagleton argues for an aes-

laborers depicted. Berger does this by sensing la-

thetic practice as the primary means to this end-

bor, by addressing its most immediate and tactile

living aesthetically-but it is important to stress

effects on the worker working and by sensing those

that the aesthetic is not an aberration in working-

effects in the way one worker relates to others or to

class representation. It may indeed be related to the

nonworkers in the community. The sense of labor

kind of political unconscious indicated in Eagle-

is not to be disparaged, even if it is a link between

ton's reading. Another way to explore this problem

the abstract and the real that cannot, in itself, confirm the objective conditions of either. For in-

is to consider sense perception an aesthetic category of working-class representation. Sensing la-

stance, as Odile notes in Once in Europa, "the men

bor is not simply doing labor, yet it can provide

who worked in the factory smelt of sweat, some of

insight into the nature of work for workers and into

them of wine or garlic, and all of them of some-

alternative strategies of representation. John Ber-

thing dusty and metallic" (114). Or Marius: "When

ger, for instance, in his extraordinary trilogy Into

I came back to the village, you could pluck a hair

Their Labors, evokes the passing of a European

out of any part of my body [ . l sniff it, and say:

peasant community into forms of proletarianization

this man has worked in a tannery" (78). Or Boris,

by constantly attending to the experience of work

who believes in his sexism and knows he has fallen

as it writes itself through the worker's sensate

for a bourgeois blond when he notes, "She has the

being (Pig Earth, Once in Europa, and Lilac and

smell of a buxom, plump body without a trace of

Flag). Now, there are plenty of problems with

the smell of work. Work has the smell of vinegar"

Berger's identification with the peasants in these

(46). Obviously, a worker is not a worker on the

novels, such as their Heideggerian overtones (a

basis of an individual sense (particularly because

nostalgia for a kind of organic certitude in peasant

of its separate history within class prejudice and

existence) and his position as an observing urban

because it is imbricated with the identification

soul, but nevertheless Berger understands well the

codes of gender, sex, race, and age, to name but

difference between "abstract need" and the "sensu-

four), but Berger knows how to read such signs

ously particular." While he acknowledges the dis-

into the experience of work as a whole without as-

tinction between his work as a writer and the work

suming that they express the essence of the charac-

of those he writes about, Berger also recognizes

ters drawn. To the charge that once again this is

that his art can participate in a broader understand-

simply expressive aesthetics (or too realist), one

ing of the meanings of manual labor. Thus, he con-

must reply that there is too much that is ambivalent

cedes that the sum of cultural knowledge can be

in the characters' sense of self for the real of their

revolutionary even if individual acts must fall short

existence to be confirmed. Their inner self is not

of achieving such social change (a point that Laclau

necessarily their sense of self or even the processes

and Mouffe take in a different theoretical direction).

The multiple perspectives and time frames of the

trilogy offer an ambivalent and fractured com-

of proletarianization that many of Berger's characters here demonstrably feel. There is a good deal

munity identity rather than a seamless narrative re-

more to Berger's trilogy than this commentary;

indeed, the shifting perspectives of the narrative

flection on the real of peasant or factory-worker

existence. These novels are strongest, however, in

are themselves deeply entwined with the ambiguities of class purview. One must be sensitive to

the serious attention given to the processes of work.

the senses in reading class, however, for they too

inform the consciousness of class even while ex-

It is as if, realizing the shortfalls of basic expressive

aesthetics, Berger attempts to write labor through

its sensate experience rather than as a descriptive

panding the stricter notion of class consciousness

in political science. In Manifesto of the Communist

gloss on that experience. The aesthetic of work is

Party Marx and Engels famously opine that "the

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Peter

Hitchcock

27

history of all hitherto existing society is the history

the extraction of surplus value from labor is some-

of class struggles" (48). What is less quoted is

thing akin to the eighth day of creation-and thus

Marx's declaration that "the forming of the five

economic exploitation can never end because it has

senses is a labor of the entire history of the world

always been there.

down to the present" ("Manuscripts" 89). While

Fortunately, ideology cannot legislate itself out

Marx does not necessarily mean sensing labor in

of existence. Even if the oppressed may not always

cultural production, he takes seriously labor's sen-

identify those at the root of their oppression, they

sate experience in his elaboration of class, but it re-

continually resist the structural relations that the

mains severely undertheorized in working-class

oppression confers and the logic of its ignoble ex-

representation. I1

istence. Yet it is sometimes held that this answering

There are other strands of Marx's thinking that

back is merely reactive, as if working-class sub-

remain provocative for the theorization of working-

jects do not creatively engage that which at each

class representation. I will adapt his point that

moment of history constitutes subjection. Such

science would be superfluous if things, in their es-

"answerability" requires greater elaboration as

sence, were identical with their appearance. While

something insistently active, for it constitutes an

most critics of class, at least since the moment of

ethical responsibility at the heart of what we call

Althusserianism, have quietly bracketed the possi-

praxis, or "action about." Working-class writing,

bility of a science of the text,'2 my interpellation as

for instance, is structured from within by a poten-

an authentic voice of the working class underlines

tial answerability to a variety of community inter-

the necessity of analyzing the disjunctions between

ests. Such a notion of answerability is derived from

appearances and the real of working-class existence

Mikhail Bakhtin's early theoretical essays (col-

(with at least the subtlety and acumen that the ap-

lected as Art and Answerability and Toward a

pearance-and-reality debate has developed in race

Philosophy of the Act), in which Bakhtin uses an-

or gay and lesbian studies). For class cultural cri-

swerability or responsibility to describe the relation

tique, this means that while class relations may not

between art and life: they should be answerable to

be obviously represented, they are a precipitate in

each other or else both run the risk of being inef-

the moment and context of representation. Again,

fectual. In Bakhtin's thought, this mutual responsi-

class is not a thing, but we are forever drawn to the

bility entails what he called a "liability to blame"

objects that appear to give class identity a material

(Art 1), an ethical dimension to aesthetics that ap-

presence. The hasty claims for the eclipse of class

plies as much to those who would avoid art as to

and ideology are a direct development of the reifi-

those who produce it and who attempt to appreci-

cation of such categories and are alarmingly in step

ate it. Bakhtin did not develop this principle much

with a commodification of social relations in gen-

in his work, although it certainly operates within

eral. To counter these trends we need not only more

dialogism. (Dialogism is communication, in its

complicated theories of desire (for instance, in the

widest sense, that is formed in recognition of and

logic of the need that attenuates self-alienated

as a response to the context in which it is posed:

Being) but also concepts that stress the ethicopoliti-

we frame what we say according to the expected

cal content of desire.

In general, a worker knows that capitalism has a

audience and response. This too is a way to understand the surReality of the event recounted

lot to answer for, but there is no obvious space or

above.)"3 How might answerability be useful to

place to seek redress from it since capitalism's own

questions of working-class culture?

survival is guaranteed by a specifically amorphous

Representations of workers not only address the

(and contradictory) sustaining logic, a saturation of

lived relations of worker existence but also ponder a

the social imaginary, a subtle universalism that de-

culpability in the form of representation itself, to the

nies (with suitably postmodern aplomb) any and all

extent that such representations answer to an inabil-

totalities while reconstituting its real foundations

ity in the articulation of worker identities.14 The

as a glorious and victorious continuum. Unions

artist can rarely answer sufficiently to the burden

come and go, communist parties live and die, but

of representation that inheres in the figure of the

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28 Problemns in Theories of Working-Class Representation

worker, for the worker's condition is guaranteed by

a certain invisibility. If workers were fully representable, it would transform aesthetics and the
nature of living on which aesthetics have been secured. In an analysis of working-class writing,

might inflect workers' cultural logic. Such a logic

is riven by material responsibility (even in consumption the worker must decide if the pleasure of

the moment has practical consequences will I still

be fed, clothed, and sheltered?). One cannot deduce

answerability may be used not just as a form of con-

moral superiority in worker answerability (although

scious address but also as a structural and psychological imperative of class relations. This imperative
can emerge between author and characters, critic
and text, reader and story, and so on. In general, answerability is a form of social responsibility that allows workers to "speak" to one another across a

it might be a tad less disingenuous compared with

range of discourses, discourses of memory, of expe-

rience, of alienation, of solidarity. This notion does

not privilege class above or beyond gender and race,
for instance, but looks at why specific modes of responsibility are significant in working-class culture.

Answerability is productive on two levels when

working-class representation is theorized. First, it

allows us to think through the axiological function
of the Other in aesthetic production (for instance,
how has the experience of the Other, as workingclass, been internalized, textualized, in the author's
utterance?); second, it emphasizes the struggle in
self-other relations, not just between the author and

the author's class, but also between that class, as it

is coexperienced, and that which constrains its self-

identity, perhaps surreptitiously. The first point is

about the ontic nature of class culture; the second

is about its moral purview, performativity as responsibility. At this point in his thinking, Bakhtin
was coming to terms with "the more fundamental
position of the author in the event of being, in
the values of the world" (Art 197). To understand
worker answerability is to produce a correlative
working knowledge of worker knowledge.
Unfortunately, answerability provides no easy
grid for critiques of working-class culture. For one
thing, coexperiencing does not occur in any obvious or unilateral way. Ironically, it is the radical
specificity of coauthoring, what Bakhtin calls the
eventness of the event (Toward 1-75), that defies
theorization from it (Marx and Engels realized this
ruse of specificity in the slogan "Workers of the
world, unite!"; they knew that the objective conditions for such unity cannot be brought about simply
by naming them). I have already begun to suggest,
however, the ways in which active coparticipation

some bourgeois discourses on rights), but it underlines that working-class Being is more than the

content of such lives or the aura of dispossession

that this content implies.

We must participate in the world (we have no

"alibi in being," Bakhtin suggests [Toward 6]), but

that is far from saying that participation is equal,
conscious, or propitious. It does, however, highlight
a materialist ethics that structures from within what

might make a working-class utterance. Consider,

for a moment, Philip Levine's elegiac poem (an
elegy for work) called "What Work Is." It is a poem
in which the narrator's voice has a distinct community address, which is in fact inseparable from
the community addressed. On one level, Levine
achieves this fusion by shifting the voice between
"we" and "you"; on another, the voice inflects an
experience that can barely be spoken of or acknowledged, the identity that explodes in the differ-

ence between having a job and joblessness. The we

in this poem are waiting for work: they are the we
of postindustrialism, the we of a pressing existential
crisis among the workers of late capitalism, for how

can one talk of class identity among workers when

millions of heads are so often bowed and beaten by

the lack of work? (The calculation of acceptable

rates of unemployment is acceptable to those who
are working.) The answerability here is not focused
on guilt, but the problem of the poem has an ethical

dimension that defies the speaker's self-knowledge:

You know what

work is, although you may not do it.

Forget you. This is about waiting,

shifting from one foot to another. (18)

The you here is divided between those who work

and those who do not, divided then not just by the
nature of work (blue-collar, white-collar, no-collar)
but also by an understanding of that nature: one
person's grim reality of unemployment ("No, we're

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Peter

Hitchcock

29

not hiring today") is another person's dream of, in

tempting to think through. Because of the workers'

this case, a brother who works ("he's home trying

relation to capital, the class content of the working

to I sleep off a miserable night shift / at Cadillac so

class is not identical with its representation. People

he can get up / before noon to study his German. /

come to think and feel in class ways through their

Works eight hours a night so he can sing / Wagner,

relations to capital, but they do not represent these

the opera you hate most, I the worst music ever in-

relations in unified or pure forms; indeed, the na-

vented" [18]). The poem hinges on attempting to

ture of class as a relation denies this representation.

speak the unspeakable: it is driven by a recognition

Yet the working class must be represented? Repre-

that the community coexperiences so differently

sentations of class are active negotiations on the

that the communal address ("we" and "you") no

meaning of class as it is lived but do not constitute

longer corresponds to communal reality. Thus, be-

the real of proletarian Being as an abstraction for

cause the you of this poem (a second person who

capital. This certainly explains why cultural repre-

functions literally as a displacement of a demoral-

sentations in themselves do not encompass social

ized first) does not know what work is, he cannot

change, but it also goes a long way toward under-

tell his brother that he loves him. The narrator of

standing the tenuousness of working-class expres-

the poem is not admonishing "you" but explaining

sion in general. The given content of this cultural

why you cannot say something and why you do not

artifact or that can refract the shards of class Being

know why you cannot say it. The narrator does not

(whether it wants to or not), yet there is no level of

romanticize work (after all, there is no inherent

cultural representation that undoes class as a so-

dignity in the making of a Cadillac, since job satis-

cioeconomic category, however great the role of

faction does not ultimately derive from the object

representation in social consciousness. The chal-

produced), but in this poem we are made aware of

lenge for theories of working-class representation

how work structures our worldview, our acknowl-

is to resist both the idealism that darstellen can sim-

edgment, our "we-experience," as V. N. Volosinov

ply do the work of vertreten and the defeatism that

called it (88-89).

brackets the cultural as some kind of bourgeois fib.

But of course, this we is radically differentiated

on a world scale, and global differentiation is both a

In this regard, I want to close with a more recent

word for a lexicon of labor, globalization.

measure of the difference in working populations

To the extent that no human subject is formed

and a reminder about who is doing the representa-

along a single trajectory of identity, working-

tion and under what circumstances that representa-

classness is a partial being. (Whatever was "good"

tion is circulated or translated. This thought returns

about my appearance on a panel about Brassed

me to the question that forms my title. Whenever

one invokes Marx in reading class representation,

Off!, my class was only part of that display.) It is

with great effort and sustained critique that femi-

one invites the appreciable criticism that the argu-

nist, queer, and postcolonial theories, for instance,

ment is immediately compromised by his some-

have explored the complexities of social identity

what botched formulation on the French peasantry

beyond the single-motor-of-history argument. While

just about to hand over their social force as an-

some will say this accomplishment has been a

nounced in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis

disabling distraction in the class work of anti-

Bonaparte: "They cannot represent themselves;

capitalism, these interventions have been vital in

they must be represented" (378). As more than one

keeping that work alive to the processes of social

commentator has noted, Marx is referring to politi-

change at this juncture. The next step for theories

cal representation (vertreten), not its cultural correl-

of working-class representation is extremely diffi-

ative (darstellen), but that has not stopped cultural

cult, for whatever one thinks about the historical

critics from stomping all over Marx for cultural col-

mission of the working class, the globalization of

onization in this passage.'5 There are plenty of

capital as an organizing principle of socialization

grounds elsewhere in Marx's oeuvre for this charge,

shatters what are already discontinuous histories of

and it serves as another warning that is in part based

working-class culture. Just as feminism has had to

on the problem of representation that Marx was at-

challenge the patriarchal relations that inform many

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30 Problems in Theories of IYiorking-C/ass Representation

a "heroic" tradition of working-class fiction,'6 so

globalization now calls into question the parochial
subtext written into national literary formations.'7

They must be represented? The injunction works at

5There are several important works that address this issue, in-

cluding Zandy (Liberating); Tokarczyk and Fay.

6What is really concerned here is mobility and the circumstances under which it can occur. Like the problem of workingclass intellectuals, this has a history of engagement. For

the cultural level even less than it did at the politi-

discussions of this question in relation to film see, for instance,

cal level. For criticism, the new logics of cultural

Anderson; Jordan.

exchange should be examined in all their complexities, nuances, and contradictions. In terms of

7Louise comments, "You're not supposed to be seen.

You're supposed to skivvy after 'em and get it all done and out

of the way while they're flat on their backs, or out enjoying

working-class representations, this means attend-

themselves" (34). Louise refers to her experience as a house-

ing to new forms of transnationalism and to the ab-

cleaner of the Wynards, who own the iron foundry where her

straction of class culture. If nothing else, the

husband works. This notion of the servant who must be present

working class must be theorized. And this task is

still before us.

but not seen has been taken up by Robbins as a topos of bourgeois class attitudes in fiction.

8The most sustained recent analysis of this aspect of Capital

is Balibar's Masses, Classes, Ideas. The essays on ideology and
the chapter "In Search of the Proletariat" in Balibar's book underline how Marx and Engels struggle to overcome a constitutive theoretical aporia in the articulation of the proletariat as a

class in terms of its Being for capital. The fact that the word

Notes

proletariat almost never appears in volume 1 of Capital is

Even an essay is a collective labor, but my collaborators in this

of absent presence performed by capitalism but accentuates two

task are not the essence of the constituency here imagined. This

profound instabilities in the process: first, in the nature of the

symptomatic of this difficulty. The text seems to enact the logic

essay is dedicated to my brother, who is unemployed.

II will not try to summarize the various arguments of this literature here, but clearly the rethinking of class has greatly
intensified since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the East-

ern Bloc, which had previously guaranteed class critique as a

litmus test contrasting them in their truth with properly class-

structured societies. Of course, the contradictions of "actually

existing socialism" had spawned traditions of rethinking be-

fore these events, and any summary would also have to register
the not inconsiderable changes discernible since 1989 in the
economic sphere, for one. Yet these would have to be specified
in terms of other sociopolitical moments. Eventually, this
might mean linking recent developments to longer-term trends.
See, for instance, the neo-Weberian turn in J. Hall.

2Fortunately, there are notable exceptions. See, for instance,

Dimock and Gilmore. In general, this collection argues forcefully
away from monolithic or overly deterministic models of class cri-

tique. This is not to say that I necessarily agree with the modes of
theorization developed in the volume, which sometimes reduce
class to primarily a series of effects or epiphenomena.

3Williams lays out his theory of formation analysis in Culture.

working class (vis-a-vis the proletariat) and, second, in what

constitutes a political sphere for the economic analysis in which

Marx is engaged. The challenge that Balibar's reading provides

goes far beyond the philosophical, especially where theories of

representation are concerned. See also Balibar, "From Class

Struggle" and Philosophy.

91 refer here principally to Hall's "The Work of Representation," but many of the issues that Hall raises in this piece are explored in his other work.

'0Mitchell shows, in a generally convincing fashion, the extent to which Marx's writing is guided by ill-fitting tropes (see
esp. ch. 6). The iconic confusion is not always in the form that
Mitchell suggests, but perhaps the reminder here is that reading
class is always already reading the moment of its articulation,
whether, as in Marx's case, the terms are drawn from aesthetics
and anthropological discourse (to name but two) or, as in ours,
the socius seems more saturated with visual metaphors.

1 "The difficulties of sense and sense perception in the reading

of class are too complex to be fully investigated here. My point
is that this exploration often takes us into a realm of abstraction
beyond visual markers (even as reading is predicated on modes

of visualization). Yet a formidable danger in invoking sensate

One aim of his exploration is to come to terms with the disconti-

being in this way is that one might elide the nature of abstraction

nuities of class and culture, as well as with the disjunctions in

for labor noted earlier. As Dimock points out, the evidence of the

cultural forms themselves. While his categorizations remain too

senses was often taken up in Enlightenment philosophy as a ma-

neat, Williams nevertheless points toward a more nuanced expla-

terial ground with the body as a corporeal conduit. The body and

nation of the fragmentary emergence of class-inflected culture.

4This is a vexed but provocative area of inquiry in which the-

sensate experience then seem to stand in for the institutions and

processes of the social. Dimock continues, "'Class' in Marx was

ories of class must be rethought on the basis of postcolonial

the effect of a generalization [. . .] not so much a primary cate-

historiographical, anthropological, and literary research on sub-

gory of thought as a projective or reflexive category, emanating

altern voice and subjectivity. The work of the group Subaltern

from and imagined after the bodily subject [ ..]" (72). Rhetori-

Studies is pertinent in this regard (Guha and Spivak).

cally, this observation is brilliant, but it is dependent on a form of

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Peter

Hitchcock

31

chronologism rather than on a more agonistic approach to am-

Discourse. Ed. Emily Apter and William Pietz. Ithaca:

bivalence in Marx's formulations. The political critique of gener-

Cornell UP, 1993. 186-216.

alizations holds true, of course, as Dimock shows by recognizing

Anderson, Carolyn. "Diminishing Degrees of Separation: Class

that workers have gender and by not generalizing from their bod-

Mobility in Movies of the Reagan-Bush Era." Beyond the

ies. In a reading of Berger, for instance, this critique would also

Stars 5: Themes and Ideologies in American Popular Film.

necessitate particularizing the sense at issue, especially since it is

Ed. Paul Loukides and Linda K. Fuller. Bowling Green:

often masculinist. The sense of work here is an attempt to under-

Popular, 1996. 141-63.

stand the production of embodied selves in labor processes that

sunder a body with the guillotine of exchange.

12Eagleton's Criticism and Ideology is a good example of this

genre, scaring away hordes of humanists with its category labels

GMP, GI, LMP, and AuI alone. The final chapter, by the way,
contains the seed of The Ideology of the Aesthetic. I am not sug-

Bakhtin, Mikhail. Art and Answerability. Trans. Vadim Lia-

punov. Ed. Michael Holquist and Liapunov. Austin: U of

Texas P, 1990.

. Toward a Philosophy of the Act. Trans. Vadim Lia-

punov. Ed. Liapunov and Michael Holquist. Austin: U of

Texas P, 1993.

gesting that we resuscitate the "science of the text" argument,

Balibar, Etienne. "From Class Struggle to Classless Struggle?"

but just as Eagleton avers we cede too much to bourgeois aes-

Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities. By Balibar and

theticians by not taking aesthetic value seriously, so also literary

Immanuel Wallerstein. Trans. Chris Turner. New York:

critics grant too much to reactionary forms of scientific rational-

Verso, 1991. 153-84.

ity by not continually reinscribing the question of culture within

. Masses, Classes, Ideas. Trans. James Swenson. New

York: Routledge, 1994.

a science of history.

13The idea here would be to expand our notions of dialogism

much further than dialogue to include "utterance contexts" as

. The Philosophy of Marx. Trans. Chris Turner. New

York: Verso, 1995.

social contexts. Holquist's book Dialogism makes several moves

Barker, Pat. The Century's Daughter. London: Virago, 1986.

in this direction.

Berger, John. Lilac and Flag. London: Granta, 1990.

14j have explored this issue elsewhere. Understanding it for

cultural analysis requires both a politics and an ethics, which
are means to assess not just an injustice depicted but also a
structure of injustice that a work of art engages.

15The most theoretically rigorous reading against this tide is

Spivak's ("Subaltern"). Her essay on value is also pertinent in
this regard ("Scattered Speculations"). For a detailed analysis of
the tropes governing The Eighteenth Brumaire, see Mehlman.
For a more recent deconstruction, see Derrida, who offers an-

Once in Europa. New York: Pantheon, 1987.

Pig Earth. New York: Pantheon, 1979.

Brassed Off! Dir. Mark Herman. Perf. Pete Postlethwaite, Tara

Fitzgerald, and Ewan McGregor. Miramax, 1996.

Derrida, Jacques. Specters of Marx. Trans. Peggy Kamuf. New

York: Routledge, 1994.

Dimock, Wai Chee. "Class, Gender, and a History of Metonymy. Dimock and Gilmore 56-104.

Dimock, Wai Chee, and Michael T. Gilmore, eds. Rethinking

other explanation for the slide between political and aesthetic

Class: Literary Studies and Social Formations. New York:

representation: spectrality. This is not unconnected to the

Columbia UP, 1994.

Gespenstergeschichte of proletarian Being that we see elsewhere in Marx.

Eagleton, Terry. Criticism and Ideology. London: Verso, 1976.

. The Ideology of the Aesthetic. London: Blackwell, 1990.

'6Examples include important anthologies (Zandy, Calling

and Liberating; Nekola and Rabinowitz), revisionist (and inter-

ventionist) literary history (Foley), and innovative theoretical

Foley, Barbara. Radical Representations. Durham: Duke

UP, 1993.

Fox, Pamela. Class Fictions: Shame and Resistance in the British

approaches (Fox). Such research and writing remain some of

Working-Class Novel, 1890-1945. Durham: Duke UP, 1994.

the most difficult not just because of patriarchal assumptions

Guha, Ranajit, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, eds. Selected

written into working-class representation but also because class

prejudice is not simply outside feminist theory.

17j do not exempt my own work from this charge, and it is

Subaltern Studies. New York: Oxford UP, 1988.

Hall, John R., ed. Reworking Class. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1997.
Hall, Stuart. "The Work of Representation." Representation:

clear to me now that even inspirational research like Klaus's The

Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. Ed.

Literature of Labor needs rethinking in terms of the international

Hall. London: Sage, 1997. 13-64.

division of labor. Nevertheless, his two chapters on English liter-

Hitchcock, Peter. "Bakhtin, Marx and Worker Representation:

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An Architectonics of Answerability." Face to Face. Ed.

Brassed Off! has in enunciating its community interest.

Carol Adlam, Rachel Falconer, Vitalii Makhlin, and Alas-

tair Renfrew. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1997. 81-92.

Holquist, Michael. Dialogism. New York: Routledge, 1990.
Jordan, Chris. "Gender and Class Mobility in Saturday Night

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