Towards a nonessentialist class consciousness

Abstract

This paper has presented a concept of class consciousness from the framework of nonessentialist Marxism. Class consciousness as class-expressive discourse is epistemologically and theoretically different from concepts of that consciousness both in and outside the Marxian and nonessentialist frameworks. The concept here was developed within and by means of that framework-through the process of conceptual juxtaposition. I have indicated that instead of viewing a “lack” of class consciousness as “false” or “mystified” consciousness, it is possible to analyze various class conscious discourses. Thus an individual's lack of a capitalist class consciousness is attributed not to his/her inability to perceive the essence of his/her being as a capitalist class member, but as the presence of (multiple and contradictory) class conscious discourses that are themselves determined by the various social and natural processes in society. From the theory of multiple class processes and nonessentialist epistemology, the complexity of class and class consciousness was explored. Neither consciousness nor class was reduced to each other. Rather, their overdetermined complexity was analyzed.