ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the ways in which dominant ideas of literature exclude working-class writing, often representing it as propaganda rather than art. It argues that ideas of inherent value obscure particular ideological assumptions about the function of literature and the people who can produce and interpret it. The effective study of working-class texts requires a broader model of literature that makes visible previously ignored forms of value and significance. It means reading differently as well as reading different things and so has productive consequences for literary study as a whole. The chapter argues that earlier feminist scholarship provides a model for this kind of critical intervention and for the material changes needed to sustain it, including the re-publication of neglected texts. It uses close readings of work by Philip Callow and Jack Common to expose the assumptions that underpin existing critical models and to demonstrate the interpretative possibilities of an approach capable of recognizing the ways in which working-class writers transform the genres and forms of language they inherit and intervene in what Rancière calls the ‘distribution of the sensible.’
