[lbo-talk] "Theory's Empire," an anti-"Theory" anthology

[Jenny Brown]

Carrol:
>The assumption itself is an expression of identity politics!
>Unfortunately, for 150 years working-class politics have not been class
>politics but idenitity politics, the assumption being that class gives
>identity, and that "working class"is an identity, a classification that
>gives knowledge of the items in that classification as individual items.
>This is true of the class "bumblebee," as I pointed out recently, but it
>is not true of the category/class, "working class."

Why do you say for 150 years?  Wouldn't that pretty much mean never?  The identity politics version of class is certainly in full flower in "Working-Class Studies." In the course of writing a paper on WCS I was reminded that in the Manifesto class was explicitly seen as a political expression forged through conflict--"If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to constitute itself as a class..."

Jenny Brown