The (Im)possibility of Class Identity: Reflections on a Case of Failed Right-Wing Hegemony

Abstract

This article discusses the dialectics of class identifications in the case of a shipbuilding community of workers in Greece. Unlike other working-class segments that went through the traumas of the recent economic crisis silently, the workers of Perama Zone attracted the attention of the public discourse on more than one occasion. The violent far-right activism that encroached on the formerly thriving industrial communities of the wider area have reopened an old discussion about the relationship of the working class with fascism. Analysing interview and ethnographic material, the article focuses on the discursive processes of class identity formation. Class as an (im)possible identity is examined through the lenses of sociological and psychodynamic distinctions between identity and identification drawing on the broader literature of cultural class analysis. The overarching aim of the study is to explore the opportunities and limitations of the far-right appeal when class is at work through affirmation and/or negation.