Hello all --
I just finished _Democratic Subjects_ a week ago, so I thought I
might add my thoughts to David Fahey's review.
I should probably own up that I have not been in the past a big fan
of Patrick Joyce's writing. But I found this book interesting and
provocative. Like David Fahey, I thought the third section on narrative
forms was the most interesting--as well as the most useful for one at
the dissertation stage. Joyce's theoretical introduction is
important in illustrating how he places himself in relation to other
scholarship, but I felt he made his points better throughout the text.
By the second section--that is, after reading about both Edwin Waugh
and John Bright--I felt like I "got" why Joyce finds these two men so
interesting in relation to ideas about the self and the social, and so
challenging to the belief that class is the overriding factor in
determining identity. I had to agree: here are two men who
fundamentally challenge some of our assumptions about what "working-
class" and "middle-class" people ought to be. However, the strength of
Joyce's argument relies on our accepting Edwin Waugh as a true
representative of "the working class"; and though Joyce continually
asserts this fact, he never quite convinced me. Perhaps this stems
from Joyce's slightly paradoxical use of class language. I agree
that Waugh remained in touch with "the popular"--"the demotic" as
Joyce continually refers to it--and with that realm of the popular
embraced by "the working class". However, Joyce wants to go
beyond that. He wants to claim that Waugh was working-class,
and, moreover, that he was that animal that traditional class analysts
claim doesn't exist: the working-class intellectual, with a tradition
of intellectual activity behind him. (Hence Joyce's constant
emphasis on the "auto-didacticism" of Waugh and his ancestors.)
However, this forces Joyce ultimately to rehabilitate the importance
of class identity. According to Joyce's argument, if Waugh is to be
the man who explodes our idea of what working-class means, then he
must over and above everything else be working-class, which means
that class--although now more loosely defined--once again becomes the
determining factor in Waugh's identity.
But don't let my criticism mislead you--Joyce raises some very valid
and provoking questions about how we define and use "class", especially
in relation to cultural and intellectual activities: education,
"improvement", reading, writing, speaking, listening. Joyce's
distinctions, though, are very fragile; they can easily be
caricatured into opposing positions. For example, it could seem that
he is suggesting that cultural influences function across and
regardless of class boundaries and therefore nullify them. On the
other hand, his characterization of Waugh as "working-class"
sometimes seems to depend on his presentation of Waugh's influences
and audience as "low culture" (his argument about Bright's
cross-class importance drifts toward the same terms), suggesting a
very traditional conclusion indeed about the relationship between class
and culture. Joyce never really crosses either line explicitly. But if
I still have some questions about Joyce's argument, I have to say that
I found his book a great exercise; it gave me a lot to think about.
In addition, his chapters on John Bright are very interesting and
engaging--a really nice presentation of biography and context. It's
probably no coincidence that his argument about "the self" and "the
social"--with the fine interplay of individual and group, local and
national, popular and political--is also at its best here.
I am curious about how David Fahey's undergraduate classes took to the
book. I'm sure an upper-level seminar would eat it up and come up with
plenty to discuss. I would guess, however, that for a larger, more
introductory course, one would have to work a lot harder to frame the
debate and the definitions that Joyce works against--because he does very
consciously place himself _against_ other interpretations of class in the
19th century.
-- Laura Sinclair
Laura E. Sinclair
lesincla@casbah.acns.nwu.edu
Northwestern University
Evanston, Illinois