Orders of Experience

The Differences of Working Class Cultural Forms

Bibliographic Data

ID2923967
AuthorsPaul Willis (0000-0001-9553-1733), Philip Corrigan
Year1983
Issue7
Pages85
Publication date1983-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Text (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0164-2472 • E-ISSN: 1527-1951
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/466456
OpenAlexW2317870813
LanguageEN
Citations received11

Let us begin by making strange a source which has been claimed almost totally by the arguments about culture which we are examining and criticizing here. Louis Althusser, writing in the theoretical journal of the PCF, La Pensde, in 1961, drew attention to how extraordinary division of labor led to discovering the reality of France while Engels did the same for England. Once again we must use the word retreat (not 'supersession'), that is, the retreat from myth to reality, when we are dealing with the actual experience which tore off the veils of illusion behind which and Engels had been living as a result of their beginnings . . . it should be understood that these discoveries are inseparable from Marx's total personal experience, which was itself inseparable from the German history which he directly lived (For Marx, Chapter 2, emphases Althusser). This may be thought an awkward lapse in early Althusser. But he writes in 1975 about how Marx continually insisted on the fact that it was the capitalist organization of production which forcibly taught the working class the lesson of class struggle . . . above all in imposing on them a terrible discipline of labor and daily life, all of which the workers SUFFER ONLY TO TURN IT BACK IN COMMON ACTIONS AGAINST THEIR MASTERS. Is it easy to be a Marxist in philosophy? (his emphases, our capitals). We wish to examine certain qualities and resources of working class cultural forms to puncture, deflate indeed to turn back the persistent myth of working class passivity, subordination, incorporation, and ignorance. It seems to us that the fundamental passivity of the working class is proclaimed in a number of recent theoretical developments. We are particularly concerned here with those that center around discourse analysis'I of various kinds. The fundamental insight of these

Epistemology · Political science · Sociology · Working class · Gender Studies · Labor Movements and Unions · Law · Marxism and Critical Theory · Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism · Psychology

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