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The Melancholia of Class: A Manifesto for the Working Class QUOTES

The Melancholia of Class: A Manifesto for the Working Class QUOTES

1 " Neoliberalism insists that if we work hard enough, we can earn as much money as anyone else. Of course, the concept of meritocracy is integral to neoliberalism and erases the reality of capital itself, that capitalism is not just material capital but also, importantly, social and cultural capital. Without these forms of capital, (p. 77) one cannot, in fact, “succeed” in a capitalist culture. One obvious example is the art world, where one can only have their work shown in a gallery if they have connections to that gallery (galleries do not, for the most part, accept unsolicited submissions). All the cash in the world can’t create the generations of social connections of a middle-class family, whose circle might include art collectors, gallerists, critics, and artists. It is also the values and unspoken rules of the ruling class that distinguish who is allowed in and who is not. "

― , The Melancholia of Class: A Manifesto for the Working Class

2 " The society I grew up in, ruled by the middle class, was and remains entirely middle-class. When I look in magazines or books, watch films or TV shows, when I talk to my colleagues and other writers and my students, there always seems to be the same handful of middle-class writers referenced. These books are referenced by the middle-class writer they read about in literary journals. And these middle-class writers write from a middle-class point of view, which is to say from a distance and, for the most part, this means not about the concrete, real world in which the majority of people live. This massive deployment of values and beliefs, aesthetics and desires, is a form of indoctrination, one we remain for the most part, unaware of. Rather than confronting the working class with their values and aesthetics, insisting we adhere to them, the middle class simply present their beliefs and aesthetics as natural, as the world. "

― , The Melancholia of Class: A Manifesto for the Working Class

3 " Freud can help here. He reminds us that what the psyche cannot handle, the mind represses. In a world where one does not exist, being ignored and, at the same time, being the subject of daily acts of violence, is difficult if not impossible. The mind, or rather the psyche, represses the reality of what is happening in order to survive. Furthermore, one’s psyche may also repress the truth that one is working-class in order to survive. The working-class artist who trades in her past, her history, family, community, and self for a sleeker, more palatable version of herself, who tries to pass as middle-class (or upper-middle class in Anthony’s case), is only doing what culture and society tells her to do. Neoliberalism assures us that we are all born equal, each of us with the same access to material, cultural, and social capital — and that there are no social classes. To insist otherwise is to appear ungrateful, negative, depressing, and often mentally ill. Indeed, to blame one’s inability to “succeed” in neoliberal society (to blame systemic forces rather than one’s own personal failure) is to set one’s self outside the all-pervasive neoliberal system. Pointing out the unfairness of the system, is, in a sense, a form of giving up and dropping out of the game. The “boot-straps” trope is just that — a trope, a lie. And yet it’s what most people still believe. This splitting of the self speaks to the contradictory nature of this book and its subject. "

― , The Melancholia of Class: A Manifesto for the Working Class

4 " To resist assimilation is to insist on our working-class origins, on carrying with us the lives and histories of our families, communities, histories, and culture. To give up pretending that one is not who one is, is to render one’s self marginalized. It is to refuse neoliberalism — which insists on homogeneity — with all of its ideologies of aspiration, optimism, progress, and the idea that power and money ought to reside in the hands of the ruling class. I don’t personally care if the middle class has money or material things or power. What I care about is that the working class and the poor lack material goods, jobs that could provide such goods, agency, and mastery over our lives and the lives of those in our communities. "

― , The Melancholia of Class: A Manifesto for the Working Class

5 " In order to write, let alone think, about social class, we need to have a language for it. And yet we don’t. Or rather, everyday working-class people don’t. "

― , The Melancholia of Class: A Manifesto for the Working Class