Transitional Selves and the Question of Class Consciousness
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This paper aims at understanding the phenomenon of working class subjective growth through two British working class autobiographies of the middle and late 20th century. It seeks to chart the relationship between the cultural aspects of class–based identity through the contesting and allied concepts of habitus (Pierre Bourdieu) and “structure of feeling” (Raymond Williams) on the one hand, and the more revolutionary potentials of class–consciousness on the other. While the term “structure of feeling” expresses a generation–specific temporal unconscious, habitus is tied to a more spatial system of dispositions. While these terms delineate the possibility of the working class as subject in capitalism, the empirical proof from the autobiographies suggests that the attributes of this subjectivity may be the function of capital more than individual consciousness or a will to truth. Winnicott’s concept of the transitional object and the playing subject (seen as the apogee of creative humanity) is then used as the limit concept to demonstrate the hindering of subjectivity in capitalism. This lack of subjectivity or negative subjectivity could become the constellation that points beyond capitalism.
Abstract
This paper aims at understanding the phenomenon of working class subjective growth through two British working class autobiographies of the middle and late 20th century. It seeks to chart the relationship between the cultural aspects of class–based identity through the contesting and allied concepts of habitus (Pierre Bourdieu) and “structure of feeling” (Raymond Williams) on the one hand, and the more revolutionary potentials of class–consciousness on the other. While the term “structure of feeling” expresses a generation–specific temporal unconscious, habitus is tied to a more spatial system of dispositions. While these terms delineate the possibility of the working class as subject in capitalism, the empirical proof from the autobiographies suggests that the attributes of this subjectivity may be the function of capital more than individual consciousness or a will to truth. Winnicott’s concept of the transitional object and the playing subject (seen as the apogee of creative humanity) is then used as the limit concept to demonstrate the hindering of subjectivity in capitalism. This lack of subjectivity or negative subjectivity could become the constellation that points beyond capitalism.
참고문헌 (13)
- Bourdieu, Pierre, "52–65. Print", pp.52~65 (1990), The Logic of Practice
- Eagleton, Terry, "Raymond Williams: A Critical Reader" (1989), University of Manchester Press
- Fox, Pamela, "Class Fictions: Shame and Resistance in the British Working Class Novel, 1890–1945" (1994), Duke University Press
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- Postone, Moishe, "Time, Labor and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx’s Critical Theory" (1993), Cambridge University Press
- Steedman, Carolyn, "Landscape for a Good Woman: A Story of Two Lives" (1987), Rutgers University Press
- Williams, Raymond, "Culture and Society: 1780–1950" (1958), Penguin
- Williams, Raymond, "The Long Revolution" (1961), Penguin Books
- Williams, Raymond, "Marxism and Literature" (1977), OUP
- Williams, Raymond, "Politics and Letters: Interviews with New Left Review" (1979), Verso
- Williams, Raymond, "Border Country" (2006), Parthian
- Williams, Raymond., "Politics of Modernism: Against the New Conformists" (2007), Verso
- Winnicott, Donald, "Playing and Reality" (1971), avistock Publications