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Blogs by Erik Hare
Class and Struggles 2/11/2008 7:14:04 PM
It’s Tuesday, the day that I answer mail. I’m thinking very seriously about moving over to a normal blog format that allows comments to improve the interaction here, so that I don’t have to do this.
This week I had a good conversation starter on a topic that I think deserves interaction. The basic question is a simple one:
Is the label “Writer” a vocation or a social class, or more succinctly a statement of “doing” or “being”?
The question is not an idle one, because it appears that many people choose to become writers for personal, not social reasons. That belies the “theory” that constitutes a lot of the training associated with majors in the social sciences, which contends that writing is an inherently social act. Certainly, many people who ply the trades as reporters and so on do not see themselves as members of a distinct social class, but in the entertainment end of the field the distinction is rife.
What are you getting at with your piece on Why Do We Write? I don’t see that you can draw the distinctions that you are, since people write for different reasons.
True enough. But given the supposed democratization of information that comes with the internet and the increase in self-publishing the distinction will probably become more important. I agree that a Taoist shouldn’t worry about these labels, and for my own needs I do not. Yet I have encountered on several discussion boards a distinct group of people that I have a tremendously hard time communicating with on these topics. They apparently belong to a different class from myself. Their resistance to change is going to be a very interesting story as things progress, and I think it’s one worth watching.
How can writers be considered a distinct class if they cannot be defined by income, race, or any of the other ways that a social class is traditionally defined?
The experience of artists in our society is distinct enough that their ability to comment on other classes is invariably from the outside looking in. If the label of “Writer” is a statement of “being”, everything that is written has to be presumed as coming from that perspective. Its ability to comment on reality is limited by its own class-based vision of reality. The great luxury of ennui is not what defines the lives of most social classes, but it has a tremendous presence in “literature” of our time. That means that literature is not filling its fundamental function of providing the frames and myths that we need to navigate our world. It’s a fairly serious problem. And I do think that you can define this group as a class because it has its own perspective on the world defined by its own terms.
On to another fun subject, politics!
I’ll bet that you’re enjoying the drawn-out contest for the Democratic nomination. Are you going to stay on this all the way?
Well, as I said before Super Tuesday, I think it’s pretty much over. We just don’t know it yet. Obama is on fire, and with his Spoken Word Grammy he’s even obtained legitimate rock-star status. I’m a bit concerned with his ability to actually deliver, so I have to say that uniting the party with Clinton as running mate gives us a very capable veteran in the traditional Hatchet-Man role that the Veep slot demands. I still think that Obamania needs to understand how very real fear is as a motivating force for many people, but with Clinton on the ticket we’ll have the experience to back up the rhetoric.
Give it a week or two, you’ll see that this is over. John Edwards seems to be brokering a deal, and the way he bailed just before Super Tuesday shows that he has the cred to talk seriously about giving one up for the Party.
That’s my mail for the week, so you’ll have to send me more. Whether you think I’m a complete jerk or righteously on track, I love to have mail from my readers. If no one read a thing I wrote, how would I know I had my ticket punched to be part of this fun and exciting class called “Writer”? Wait, don’t answer that one …
