{"content":[{"text":"72","bbox":{"left":0.083404,"top":0.031245,"width":0.024973999999999996,"height":0.019557}},{"text":"THOUGHT & ACTION","bbox":{"left":0.154486,"top":0.031245,"width":0.24255299999999996,"height":0.019557}},{"text":"‘ C l a s s ’ is almost always ignored in the \n contemporary critical discourse of \n ‘race, class, and gender. ’","bbox":{"left":0.140085,"top":0.08934,"width":0.638212,"height":0.077382}},{"text":"resistance remains, for the his- \n torical moment, a subspecies of \n bourgeois culture.2","bbox":{"left":0.121284,"top":0.265813,"width":0.293209,"height":0.05350699999999997}},{"text":"“Class” is almost always ignored \n in the contemporary critical dis- \n course of “race, class, and gender. ” \n Many working-class authors, such \n as Toni Morrison, have received \n critical attention as writers, but not \n as working-class writers. They are \n tagged instead “African A m e r i c a n ” \n or “woman,” as in Morrison’s case, \n or “lesbian,” as with Dorothy A l l i- \n son. Other working-class authors, \n such as Carolyn Chute, remain \n thoroughly marginalized, without \n any tag at all. \n Why so much resistance to \n examining the classed nature of lit- \n erature? Literary studies has not \n been willing—or able—to take on \n this class nature simply because \n embracing a classed approach \n would mean rethinking many of the \n most fundamental questions of lit- \n erary theory, genre, and criticism. \n Working-class literature, at \n base, cannot simply fit into the sta- \n tus quo of literary criticism. \n One example: If working-class \n literature is defined as work by an \n author with origins in the working \n class, then authorial biography is \n integral to literary criticism, a posi- \n tion contrary to the “death of the \n author” notions central to much \n recent critical theory. \n Working-class literature also","bbox":{"left":0.083352,"top":0.333714,"width":0.36934900000000004,"height":0.5967169999999999}},{"text":"challenges genre definitions as \n well. If the plot of the novel \n requires movement, a quest, a jour- \n n e y, mobility of some kind, and \n working-class lives are defined by \n lack of such movement, how can a \n work of fiction addressing working- \n class experience even be a novel? \n Likewise, if poetry is defined as \n an intense distillation of language, \n rather than a portrayal of experi- \n ence, and a working-class poem is \n one rooted in working-class experi- \n ence, can a work even be said to be \n a working-class poem? \n L \n iterary criticism, especially in \n the context of so-called “high \n t h e o r y,” demands only an \n intellectual relationship to the \n work being studied, no different \n from a scholar’s intellectual rela- \n tionship to a math problem. \n This intellectual relationship \n moves literature into a purely \n abstract realm and severs the con- \n nection between thought and action \n so integral to working-class concep- \n tions of the world. \n Most working-class literature, \n by contrast, calls for action by the \n reader, calls for change in the con- \n ditions detailed in the literature \n (as, indeed, does much feminist lit- \n erature and literature by writers of \n color). \n To deal with working-class lit- \n erature as if it only had an aesthet- \n ic dimension is to fail to under-","bbox":{"left":0.492579,"top":0.265813,"width":0.373359,"height":0.6646179999999999}}],"images_bbox":[],"images_bbox_not_text_overlap":[]}