Week 4 Meeting: Seguin & Dreiser Please see the handout for details of preparation (as discussed in the Introductory meeting). To set the ball rolling - very briefly, I would suggest that Seguin is attempting to do two things: 1. To investigate how US culture represents 'class.' He begins with the often remarked upon idea that class is invisible or non-existent in the US. As Seguin implies, this goes much wider than class itself. In general, US culture has tended to affirm individual freedom, and the ability of individuals to transcend their economic status. Conversely, US culture tends to understate (or obfuscate) the ways in which individuals are constrained by their economic circumstances. It is worth thinking of how material you have already looked at exemplifies this. As a direct example, think of the ideology of American individualism, running through from the founding fathers, de Tocqueville and Crevecoeur, Horatio Alger, Theodore Roosevelt, to the present. A more complex example might be the history of identity politics. In varying degrees, Civil Rights, feminism, and gay and lesbian movements have achieved a sense that barriers based on race, gender and sexuality should be removed. But it has proved more difficult to fight against and/or gain mainstream support to eradicate economic barriers. Attitudes to work, as a means of self-fulfilment and of climbing up society, are fundamental to this. 2. Seguin's second theme flows from this. How can such economic barriers be removed? He moves on to consider how in 'Sister Carrie' and other texts which seem to affirm the 'individualistic' world view, there is yet a 'utopian' yearning for a transformation of work and its relation to the individual. This vision is suggested in the 'around quitting time' passage from the novel. Note that it is ideas about work that connect these two strands in Seguin. A good place to start in trying to understand this is Seguin's quotation from Marx and Engels' quite early work 'The German Ideology.' This is a famous passage in which, before 'Marxism' as a political ideology was formulated, Marx and Engels formulate a vision of what unalienated work could be: ie varied, fulfilling, and of interest to the individual, without defining the individual. It would be useful if you can think about this vision in connection with 'The Toil of the Laborer
For Some reason I could not post a new comment; the site would only let me comment on an older post.
The review of Around Quitting Time I have found is from http://www.amazon.com/Around-Quitting-Time-Middle-Class-Americanists/dp/0822326701. This site gives two reviews from academics, and is aimed at people who are possibly contemplating buying the book.
Seguin aims to look at the notion of Middle-classness in the united states, and juxtaposes this with the notion that America is a classless society; on page 2 he argues "the term "middle class" itself in effect becomes synoymous with "classlessness", an ideologico-practical inhabitance of the world wherein class has been putatively superseded, or at least temporarily suspended".
Seguin aims to outline that although America views itself as a largely classless society, most Americans describle themselves as middle-class, therefore showing how America is imagined as an ideological utopia by its residents.
The extract of Dreiser's Toil Of the Laborer counters this, showing how the working man is exploited, overworked and underpaid. He describes from his own experiences how manual labour is hard and boring and meagerly rewarded; the worker, he says, is treated like a machine and pushed to his physical limits. He also shows from the perspective of a foreman how the hierarchy is so powerful; although he wishes to ease the lives of the laborers in his promoted role, there are many constraints from above, showing how the world of work involves taking orders from superiors, and in Drieser's experience, is unfulfilling.
(This isnt working properly. Or have you disabled us posting new blogs... we can only comment)
Post a link to a review of Seguin’s book Around Quitting Time: and Middle-Class Fantasy in American Fiction.
The Review ‘Producing Middle classlessness’ by Amy L. Blair on Seguin’s article, notes Seguin’s contended notion of ‘class as lifestyle’. Seguin finds the idea of middle-classlessness problematic in what he sees as a “symptomatic, unproductive, peculiarly ‘postmodern’ preoccupation with the consumerist element of class.” Blair expresses that middle classlessness is different to ‘classlessness’ as “it is not just a desire to weaken class structures but a utopian wish for the ‘felt elimination of these - a freedom from class altogether’”. Seguin thus proposes that once ‘class’ becomes synonymous with ‘lifestyle’ then anyone can conform towards a class society and therefore Seguin suggests in theory that the U.S becomes a ‘classless society’. However, as noted by Blair Seguin’s most important interest is to emphasize that “class has not been treated with the kind of analytic power it deserves, and those who would downplay the material underpinnings of class risk adding to the suppression of the potential for class consciousness in American society”.
Dreiser’s extract of Toil of the Labourer contradicts Seguin’s notion of a classless society. In Dreiser’s view and experience he expresses how the labourer is constrained to his role as a manual worker. Usually worked hard, beyond his ability, Dreiser states “There is no provision made for the future of those who will be as tattered remnants when the things they laboured for have been accomplished”. With this negative opinion on the future of the working American, it contrasts Seguin’s optimistic look upon the collapse of class divide.
Seguin "Around Quitting Time" The review of Seguin's book "Around Quitting Time: Work and Middle Class Fantasy in American Fiction" I have chosen is :
Review: Producing Middle Classlessness * Amy L. Blair * American Quarterly, Vol. 54, No. 2 (Jun., 2002), pp. 341-348 * Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
on JSTOR. Sorry, I just couldn't seem to get the link to come up correctly!
(I personally found Seguin's ideas very difficult to understand but hopefully the I have got the general idea in the following summary!)
Robert Seguin is of the Marxist school of thought and seeks to correct a postmodern preoccupation with consumer culture whereby class and lifestyle are intertwined - you are defined by what you desire, therefore in a truly American way of thinking anyone can participate in class identity, making the U.S. a classless society (in theory, at least!) Seguin sees that there are differences which are not purely material. Middle classness rather than classlessness. People are identified by the question, "What do you do?" To understand middle class functions Seguin cites 'quitting time' as the crux of this, a shifting and variable state between working and not working as work prepares to end and leisure prepares to start. (Seguin also quotes Andre Gorz who identifies modern leisure with being solitary, compared historically to it being a group activity). While he says that class is at heart about economics, he also says it is about time and this shifting time at that part of the day is one which could be possibly understood in future as important in a non-alienated relationship to labour.
Seguin explains that Dreiser positions Carrie's arrival in Chicago (a big American city at the start of rabid consumerism)at 'quitting time' shows American middle classness with a synthesis of frontier ideology of forward movement and dynamism and pastoralism, citing the text where the street lamps stretch out further and further to the prairie, which can also be read in reverse. Seguin suggests that the twilight time which Carrie arrives at of finishing work is interpenetrated with the approach of leisure - it is a moving, interconnectedness of all these things; what Seguin says of Dreiser as a 'utopian breathlessness' moment.
In "The Toil of the Labourer" Dreiser explains how hard work is artless and thoughtless. It is hard graft with a taskmaster foreman and paltry wages with no humanity, and even when he is made foreman himself he has a problem with equating his ideals with getting the job done or losing it. However, when the work is completed he could see 'that this lovely thing might be' - that all the trials and tribulations of hard graft made something beautiful. As he finishes work in the end, he exhibits that 'utopian breathlessness' at all the incredible sights of the city around but knows the labourers will not get to share it. Ultimately seeing the contrast of this, watching the Italian workers trudge wearily home, he decides he does not want to be a part of it. Both "Sister Carrie" and Dreiser's own labouring experience reflect the time where there is a certain excitement at the end of the day in this transitional period, but of a time when consumerism was coming to the fore but working roles, although changing, were clearly delineated. Posted by Jo Wrigley
Welcome to the blog for 'Work and Fulfilment in American Culture.' Further relevant details are in the module schedule, and printed handouts.
ReplyDeleteJD
Week 4 Meeting: Seguin & Dreiser
ReplyDeletePlease see the handout for details of preparation (as discussed in the Introductory meeting).
To set the ball rolling - very briefly, I would suggest that Seguin is attempting to do two things:
1. To investigate how US culture represents 'class.' He begins with the often remarked upon idea that class is invisible or non-existent in the US. As Seguin implies, this goes much wider than class itself. In general, US culture has tended to affirm individual freedom, and the ability of individuals to transcend their economic status. Conversely, US culture tends to understate (or obfuscate) the ways in which individuals are constrained by their economic circumstances. It is worth thinking of how material you have already looked at exemplifies this. As a direct example, think of the ideology of American individualism, running through from the founding fathers, de Tocqueville and Crevecoeur, Horatio Alger, Theodore Roosevelt, to the present. A more complex example might be the history of identity politics. In varying degrees, Civil Rights, feminism, and gay and lesbian movements have achieved a sense that barriers based on race, gender and sexuality should be removed. But it has proved more difficult to fight against and/or gain mainstream support to eradicate economic barriers. Attitudes to work, as a means of self-fulfilment and of climbing up society, are fundamental to this.
2. Seguin's second theme flows from this. How can such economic barriers be removed? He moves on to consider how in 'Sister Carrie' and other texts which seem to affirm the 'individualistic' world view, there is yet a 'utopian' yearning for a transformation of work and its relation to the individual. This vision is suggested in the 'around quitting time' passage from the novel.
Note that it is ideas about work that connect these two strands in Seguin. A good place to start in trying to understand this is Seguin's quotation from Marx and Engels' quite early work 'The German Ideology.' This is a famous passage in which, before 'Marxism' as a political ideology was formulated, Marx and Engels formulate a vision of what unalienated work could be: ie varied, fulfilling, and of interest to the individual, without defining the individual. It would be useful if you can think about this vision in connection with 'The Toil of the Laborer
For Some reason I could not post a new comment; the site would only let me comment on an older post.
ReplyDeleteThe review of Around Quitting Time I have found is from http://www.amazon.com/Around-Quitting-Time-Middle-Class-Americanists/dp/0822326701. This site gives two reviews from academics, and is aimed at people who are possibly contemplating buying the book.
Seguin aims to look at the notion of Middle-classness in the united states, and juxtaposes this with the notion that America is a classless society; on page 2 he argues "the term "middle class" itself in effect becomes synoymous with "classlessness", an ideologico-practical inhabitance of the world wherein class has been putatively superseded, or at least temporarily suspended".
Seguin aims to outline that although America views itself as a largely classless society, most Americans describle themselves as middle-class, therefore showing how America is imagined as an ideological utopia by its residents.
The extract of Dreiser's Toil Of the Laborer counters this, showing how the working man is exploited, overworked and underpaid. He describes from his own experiences how manual labour is hard and boring and meagerly rewarded; the worker, he says, is treated like a machine and pushed to his physical limits. He also shows from the perspective of a foreman how the hierarchy is so powerful; although he wishes to ease the lives of the laborers in his promoted role, there are many constraints from above, showing how the world of work involves taking orders from superiors, and in Drieser's experience, is unfulfilling.
(This isnt working properly. Or have you disabled us posting new blogs... we can only comment)
ReplyDeletePost a link to a review of Seguin’s book Around Quitting Time: and Middle-Class Fantasy in American Fiction.
The Review ‘Producing Middle classlessness’ by Amy L. Blair on Seguin’s article, notes Seguin’s contended notion of ‘class as lifestyle’. Seguin finds the idea of middle-classlessness problematic in what he sees as a “symptomatic, unproductive, peculiarly ‘postmodern’ preoccupation with the consumerist element of class.” Blair expresses that middle classlessness is different to ‘classlessness’ as “it is not just a desire to weaken class structures but a utopian wish for the ‘felt elimination of these - a freedom from class altogether’”. Seguin thus proposes that once ‘class’ becomes synonymous with ‘lifestyle’ then anyone can conform towards a class society and therefore Seguin suggests in theory that the U.S becomes a ‘classless society’.
However, as noted by Blair Seguin’s most important interest is to emphasize that “class has not been treated with the kind of analytic power it deserves, and those who would downplay the material underpinnings of class risk adding to the suppression of the potential for class consciousness in American society”.
Dreiser’s extract of Toil of the Labourer contradicts Seguin’s notion of a classless society. In Dreiser’s view and experience he expresses how the labourer is constrained to his role as a manual worker. Usually worked hard, beyond his ability, Dreiser states “There is no provision made for the future of those who will be as tattered remnants when the things they laboured for have been accomplished”. With this negative opinion on the future of the working American, it contrasts Seguin’s optimistic look upon the collapse of class divide.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/30041934?seq=6
ReplyDeleteP.S thats the link
Seguin "Around Quitting Time"
ReplyDeleteThe review of Seguin's book "Around Quitting Time: Work and Middle Class Fantasy in American Fiction" I have chosen is :
Review: Producing Middle Classlessness
* Amy L. Blair
* American Quarterly, Vol. 54, No. 2 (Jun., 2002), pp. 341-348
* Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
on JSTOR. Sorry, I just couldn't seem to get the link to come up correctly!
(I personally found Seguin's ideas very difficult to understand but hopefully the I have got the general idea in the following summary!)
Robert Seguin is of the Marxist school of thought and seeks to correct a postmodern preoccupation with consumer culture whereby class and lifestyle are intertwined - you are defined by what you desire, therefore in a truly American way of thinking anyone can participate in class identity, making the U.S. a classless society (in theory, at least!) Seguin sees that there are differences which are not purely material. Middle classness rather than classlessness. People are identified by the question, "What do you do?" To understand middle class functions Seguin cites 'quitting time' as the crux of this, a shifting and variable state between working and not working as work prepares to end and leisure prepares to start. (Seguin also quotes Andre Gorz who identifies modern leisure with being solitary, compared historically to it being a group activity). While he says that class is at heart about economics, he also says it is about time and this shifting time at that part of the day is one which could be possibly understood in future as important in a non-alienated relationship to labour.
Seguin explains that Dreiser positions Carrie's arrival in Chicago (a big American city at the start of rabid consumerism)at 'quitting time' shows American middle classness with a synthesis of frontier ideology of forward movement and dynamism and pastoralism, citing the text where the street lamps stretch out further and further to the prairie, which can also be read in reverse. Seguin suggests that the twilight time which Carrie arrives at of finishing work is interpenetrated with the approach of leisure - it is a moving, interconnectedness of all these things; what Seguin says of Dreiser as a 'utopian breathlessness' moment.
In "The Toil of the Labourer" Dreiser explains how hard work is artless and thoughtless. It is hard graft with a taskmaster foreman and paltry wages with no humanity, and even when he is made foreman himself he has a problem with equating his ideals with getting the job done or losing it. However, when the work is completed he could see 'that this lovely thing might be' - that all the trials and tribulations of hard graft made something beautiful. As he finishes work in the end, he exhibits that 'utopian breathlessness' at all the incredible sights of the city around but knows the labourers will not get to share it. Ultimately seeing the contrast of this, watching the Italian workers trudge wearily home, he decides he does not want to be a part of it. Both "Sister Carrie" and Dreiser's own labouring experience reflect the time where there is a certain excitement at the end of the day in this transitional period, but of a time when consumerism was coming to the fore but working roles, although changing, were clearly delineated.
Posted by Jo Wrigley