File spoon-archives/marxism-feminism.archive/marxism-feminism_1997/marxism-feminism.9710, message 40


Date: Sat, 25 Oct 97 00:49:58 UT
From: "Margaret Morganroth Gullette" <mgullette-AT-classic.msn.com>
Subject: RE: M-FEM: Feminist mailing lists


Wojtek Sololowski writes:

> Which raises another interesting question: to what extent the Left discourse
> is (willingly or unwillingly) a part of the much wider process of
> manufacturing commodified cultural identities for the consumption of college
> educated middle class audience in a position to pay for cultural products,
> rather than an attempt to influence public discourse, or people outside the
> mainstream?
Carroll Cox responds:
I am almost always disturbed by the appearance of the term "middle class"
in Marxist discourse; I don't think there is any group in the developed
capitalist world that this label fits.

Margaret Gullette muses:

I'm happy Carroll caught me using the term, because I have theorized my use of 
it only in a few contexts, and not in any general way. 
	A few comments. My book is aimed at people who think of themselves as "middle 
class,"  and since I am arguing that they are being "proletarianized" it is 
rhetorically useful to posit a position from which they can fall. (I think I 
am writing to the mainstream in an attempt to influence public discourse. And 
of course all writers of books are writing for people who read books, 
largely--given the price of books-- people with tertiary education and 
"middle-class incomes". I do radio shows and magazine articles (or try) to 
reach people with other levels of education. And they too think they're 
"middle class" or want to be thought to be. And when they deny it, as in the 
Susan Sheehan article in the New Yorker titled, "There Ain't No Middle Class," 
it's because they're bitter about losing the $11/hr. job that made the life 
style they identify with it possible.

	Although I know the rationale behind writing "80% of Americans are working 
class" I don't think that is meaningful to that 80%.  "Working people need. . 
. better day care, better pensions, etc." would be a meaningful sentence to 
any of them, of course. 
	
	As for my own private view, I go to Nicaragua, where people who have a car or 
own a home are called "borghes." Of course there it would be ridiculous to 
deny that I am borgues. There are (sigh) many different contexts in which we 
use language.
   
Gramsci had many interesting things to say about speaking to people so they 
understand, but we still have to decide case by case, no?



   

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