>you will eventually find an expression of what sennett and cobb once
>aptly called 'the hidden injuries of class'. indeed, i'd suggest a list
>reading, since PLOP was such a plop. it's an oldie but goodie, i think,
>and writing this post prompted me to have a look at it again with fresh
>eyes, since i last read it completely in 1984 as a first yr college
>student. the intro takes on new meaning, as i didn't quite understand much
>of it back then. and funnily enough,i did not yet know i was 'working
>class' --an old story, of course, but there it is.
>i really think this book would be an interesting read for the list. not
>only is it simply a classic, but it also speaks to something i've long
>thought about: given that people have more access to higher education and
>are, increasingly, working in the kinds of jobs that signify 'clean'
>'mental' labor, then what might sennett and cobb's work have to tell us
>today. they'd captured the socially mobile ethnic [white] working class as
>some of them became 'upwardly mobile' but this was largely structural
>mobility.
A book remaindered at 1.99 pounds. 1972. Faber and Faber reprinted UK 1993 This post prompted me to try to get into it. It is beautifully written and elusive. It prompts reflections rather than quick conclusions. It complements rather than reproduces marxist categories. Yet there appears to be a dialectical approach to the analysis.
It addresses the subjective exeriences of living in a late capitalist society to which many of us react subjectively but without knowledge of our subjectivism.
I agree it would be an interesting read for the list.
A further quote:
"The irony is that a man who seeks to display his talents as efficiently as possible feels held back by others, and yet it is toward establishing his worthiness to be respected by others that all this concentrated striving is directed. We are arguing here against ability organized in this form, not against being good at something as an automatic evil in itself. The plea we feel runs though all the lives presented in this book is to be relieved of having to prove oneself this way, to gain a hold instead on the innate *meaningfulness* of actions."
Chris Burford
London