ABSTRACT
The conclusion to The Working Class and Twenty-First-Century British Fiction looks at how class continues to shape political discourse and contemporary reality. It notes the dramatic changes to class formation and discusses the selection of texts in the book as mapping the complex trajectory from deindustrialisation to demonisation and, therefore, drawing attention to the lasting impact of class, how it works, how it is used and lived in emerging new ways. It highlights some of the risks of categorisation as well as the ways in which class, capital, and capitalism continue to evolve. There have been radical changes to class formation in Britain, and this must be understood and theorised if contemporary examples of writing about class are to be identified and analysed. A lack of understanding around class in the twenty-first century has informed much of the debate both before and after the Brexit vote in 2016. The conclusion, therefore, argues for a renewed focus on how the logic of capital uses class and in what ways the mobilisation of class stigma to justify or explain inequality can be resisted and disrupted by the novel.
