Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Meaning It: Everyday Hermeneutics and the Language of Class in Literary Scholarship

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Book cover Working-Class Writing

Abstract

This chapter discusses the influence of class-based inequality on scholarly writing in relation to the current reevaluation of “critique” as a scholarly norm. Building on prior theorizations of class-inflected rhetoric, it advocates for the freedom to write enthusiastically, to address embodied experiences and to be honest about class. Class is approached from a phenomenological perspective, drawing attention to the ways that lived experience shapes readers’ interactions with texts. Attending to hermeneutic processes that include life outside of texts, scholars who write frankly about their class backgrounds empower readers from similar backgrounds in the still very unequal world of higher education.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 109.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Works Cited

  • Carnevale, Anthony P., Nicole Smith, Michelle Melton, and Eric W. Price. 2015. Learning While Earning: The New Normal. Report from the Center on Education and the Workforce. Georgetown University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Charlesworth, Simon. 1999. A Phenomenology of Working-Class Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge Universitry Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Christian, Barbara. 1987. The Race for Theory. Cultural Critique 6: 51–63.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clancy, Kim. 1997. Academic and Anarchist. In Class Matters: Working-Class Women’s Perspectives on Social Class, ed. Pat Mahony, Christine Zmroczek, 45–54. London: Taylor & Francis.

    Google Scholar 

  • Felski, Rita. 2000. Nothing to Declare: Identity, Shame and the Lower Middle Class. PMLA 115 (1): 33–45.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2008. The Uses of Literature. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2009. After Suspicion. Profession 2009 (1): 28–35.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2015. The Limits of Critique. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fisher, Jonathan, and Timothy M. Smeeding. 2016. Income Inequality. Pathways: A Magazine on Poverty, Inequality and Social Policy. Special Issue: State of the Union: The Poverty and Inequality Report.

    Google Scholar 

  • Freedman, Diane P., and Olivia Frey. 1993. Introduction. Durham: Duke.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gil, Natalie. 2014. One in Seven Students Work Full-Time While They Study. Guardian, August 11.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grusky, David B., Marybeth J. Mattingly, and Charles E. Varner. 2016. Executive Summary. Pathways: A Magazine on Poverty, Inequality and Social Policy. Special Issue: State of the Union: The Poverty and Inequality Report.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hanley, Lawrence. 2003. Dialogue: The Status of ‘Experience’ in Working-Class Cultural Studies: Working-Class Cultural Studies in the University. Radical Teacher: A Socialist, Feminist, and Anti-racist Journal on the Theory and Practice of Teaching 68: 26–31.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hochschild, Arlie. 2016. Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right: A Journey to the Heart of Our Political Divide. New York: The New Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hoggart, Richard. 1994. A Measured Life: The Times and Places of an Orphaned Intellectual. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • hooks, bell. 2000. Where We Stand: Class Matters. New York: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Jones, Owen. 2016. Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lecourt, Donna, and Anna Rita Napoleone. 2011. Teachers With(Out) Class: Transgressing Academic Social Space Through Working-Class Performances. Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture 11 (1): 81–108.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marion, Jean-Luc. 2013. Givenness and Hermeneutics. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Medhurst, Andy. 2000. If Anywhere: Class Identification and Cultural Studies Academics. In Cultural Studies and the Working Class: Subject to Change, ed. Sally Munt, 19–35. Bloomsbury, London: Cassell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pell Institute and PennAHEAD. 2017. Indicators of Higher Education Equity in the United States: 2017 Historical Trend Report.

    Google Scholar 

  • Perera, Sonali. 2014. No Country: Working-Class Writing in the Age of Globalization. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Polanyi, Michael. 2015 [1958]. Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-critical Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ricoeur, Paul. 1977. Freud and Philosophy. New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rimstead, Roxanne. 2001. Between Theories and Anti-theory: Moving Towards Marginal Women’s Subjectivities. 1995, Rpt. In What We Hold in Common: An Introduction to Working-Class Studies, ed. Janet Zandy, 182–199. New York: The Feminist Press at CUNY.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ruiz, Roman, and Laura W. Perna. 2017. The Geography of College Attainment: Dismantling Rural ‘Disadvantage’. In Indicators of Higher Education Equity by The Pell Institute and PennAHEAD, 94–102.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 1997. Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading; or, You’re So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Introduction Is About You. In Novel Gazing: Queer Readings in Fiction, ed. Sedgwick, 1–40. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smarsh, Sarah. 2016. Dangerous Idiots: How the Liberal Media Elite Failed Working-Class Americans. Guardian, October 13.

    Google Scholar 

  • Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1999. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanshing Present. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Walkerdine, Valerie. 1990. Schoolgirl Fictions. New York: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Weis, Lois, Kristin Cipollone, and Heather Jenkins. 2014. Class Warfare: Class, Race, and College Admissions in Top-Tier Secondary Schools. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wyner, Joshua S., John M. Bridgeland, and John J. DiIulio, Jr. 2009. Achievement Trap A Report by the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation & Civic Enterprises: How America Is Failing Millions of High-Achieving Students from Lower-Income Families.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Tromsø, Tromsø, Norway

    Cassandra Falke

Authors
  1. Cassandra Falke
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Cassandra Falke .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC, USA

    Ben Clarke

  2. Department of Arts and Humanities, Brunel University London, Uxbridge, UK

    Nick Hubble

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Falke, C. (2018). Meaning It: Everyday Hermeneutics and the Language of Class in Literary Scholarship. In: Clarke, B., Hubble, N. (eds) Working-Class Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96310-5_4

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation