Out of Sight Is out of Mind: The Imaginary Space of Postindustrial Culture

Abstract

A great deal of theoretical work has been devoted to investigating transition to a so-called postfordist epoch in which traditional industrial city has been supplanted by a far-flung network of export processing zones and assembly plants.' This spatial and economic restructuring has had a profound impact on way that people live and work around world. Because of extent to which this transition alters conventional organization of industrial labor, it has had a particular impact on experience of class and class formations in countries of so-called Third World, as well as political and economic capitals of West.2 There are two questions to be considered here. The first has to do with ways in which postfordism effects formation of a class consciousness among members of global assembly line. If concentration of large numbers of industrial workers in urban centers class consciousness (or produced a situation in which working class could narrativize itself as a class), postfordist logic of fragmentation and deconcentration resists narrative construction of a working class, or resists formation of discursive communities that might lead to a class consciousness. As John Urry writes, the radical restructuring of modem industry and policies of residential relocation have undermined some of conditions of facilitating sustained [working-class] 'dialogue,' especially across localities.... 3 The second question concerns effect of postfordism on way in which class structures are perceived within postindustrial core nations. This question needs to be considered in relation to experience of class under industrial capitalism. The social costs of industrial capitalism-overcrowded and decrepit housing, disease, congestion, and oppressive working conditions endured by industrial labor-were to a greater or lesser extent an unavoidable part of lived experience of urban bourgeoisie. The spatial proximity of residential neighborhoods and factories within industrial city made some visual or physical contact with working class inevitable. Regular encounters with large masses of people who were so clearly not enjoying fruits of industrial productivity posed a potential threat to bourgeoisie, who imagined their own condition as universally obtainable. Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, among others, have written of complex psychic mechanisms employed by Victorian bourgeoisie in their attempt to restructure working class as