Re-Imagining Class: Intersectional Perspectives on Class Identity and Precarity in Contemporary Culture Liesbeth Francois 9789462704022

Unique cross-cultural and multimedial approach to class identity and precarity in literature, theatre, and film

Contemporary culture not merely reflects ongoing societal transformations, it shapes our understanding of rapidly evolving class realities. Literature, theatre, and film urge us to put the question of class back on the agenda, and reconceptualize it through the lens of precarity and intersectionality. Relying on examples from British, French, Spanish, German, American, Swedish and Taiwanese culture, the contributors to this book document a variety of aesthetic strategies in an interdisciplinary dialogue with sociology and political theory. Doing so, this volume demonstrates the myriad ways in which culture opens up new pathways to imagine and re-imagine class as an economic relation, an identity category, and a subjective experience. Situated firmly within current debates about the impact of social mobility, precarious work, intersectional structures of exploitation, and interspecies vulnerability, this volume offers a wide-ranging panorama of contemporary class imaginaries.

Contributors: Magnus Nilsson (Malmoe University), Christian Claesson (Lund University), Christoph Schaub (University of Vechta), Olaf Berwald (Middle Tennessee State University), Valeria Pulignano (KU Leuven), Lander Vermeerbergen (Radboud University), Markieta Domecka (KU Leuven) Deborah Dean (Warwick University), Sula Textor (Potsdam University), Irene Husser (University of Munster), Katrin Becker (University of Siegen), Marissia Fragkou (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) Sarah Pogoda (Bangor University), Daniel Brookes (University of Worcester), Tim Christiaens (Tilburg University), Joeri Verbesselt (KU Leuven).

Ebook available in Open Access. This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).

Re-imagining Class not only demonstrates the recent resurgence of interest in class in the humanities and social sciences but confirms that some of the most exciting and necessary current scholarship focuses on the concept. Michiel Rys and Liesbeth Francois' wide-ranging collection valuably contributes to efforts to produce more theoretically-sophisticated and internationally-engaged forms of intersectional scholarship, capable of analyzing class, and the position of the working-class in particular, in a neoliberal system in crisis. - Ben Clarke, University of North Carolina, Greensboro

This important volume brings together heterogeneous and complex stories about class, poverty and precarization that also stimulate a theoretical recomposition of the concept of class - a rhizomatic composition of analyses of narrative and visual stories from literature, film and theater. - Isabell Lorey, Academy of Media Arts Cologne

This important anthology both contributes to and consolidates the emerging field of new class and precarity research in literary and cultural studies. It helps consolidate the field through its thorough and highly useful overview of most existing research while its major contribution to scholarship is the intersectional approach and the inclusion of multiple regional perspectives as well as hitherto largely neglected forms and genres. In sum, this is a welcome contribution that will surely become an unmistakable point of reference for future scholarship. - Peter Simonsen, University of Southern Denmark