4.2
Where is Working Class Writing Headed?

by Ian Syson

• About
• By
• For

• In the interests of

This allows in the notion of history: what is in the interests of the wc at different periods changes

Ind Rev � Low levels of wc literacy

• Wclit is a combination of oral culture and middle class representions of the wc
• Peter Keating
• Gaskell
• Zola

Late 1800s wc literacy on the rise:

• wc becomes a reading community
• reading mass market publications
• libraries
• oral -> literary
• smaller portion becomes a writing community involved in self-representation
• Epitome is Tressell's RTP

1920s � writing as organised activism

• Proletarian writers movements influenced by CPs
• America
• Australia

1950s � post war, new confidence

• In Australia a whole new culture of writing
• Hardy, Hewett, Collins
• Wc lit is assertive and propagandist and tied to a conflictual model of wc life

1970s � collapse of the old certainties

• Postmodernism
• Anti-realism
• Emergence of new issues that seemed to bury class as a notion that explained the world
• A new optimism quickly evaporates
• Wc writing becomes nostalgic and/or defeatist
• Tsiolkas, Trainspotting

2000 and on

As capital moves offshore it's important that we look offshore for the new working class literature while keeping an eye on what appears to be a remnant culture at home.

It remains to be seen what the future holds for class consciousness but while capitalism exists there will always be a class from which wc culture may emerge.

Perhaps contemporary WC writing is that which acknowledges the impoverished nature of class consciousness but which also explores the potential for its re-emergence in the future � that which would be in the interests of the WC.