Doing Class: Intersectional Encounters in Swedish Contemporary Fiction (2000–2020)
This project investigates how class is depicted in Swedish contemporary fiction. Based on literature’s ability to uncover and renegotiate societal as well as emotional and artistic processes, it examines how class is charged with new political meanings and aesthetic expression. The aim is deeper knowledge of the political role of art and post-industrial society’s obscured images of class, as perceptions of work, identity, life style and the welfare state are rapidly changing.
In the analyses, class is treated as performative and relational, but also as a set of specific experiences. Theoretically, the study combines norm-critical perspectives, cultural- and textual analysis, and aspects of affect theory and sociology of culture. An intersectional approach is used, with an enhanced awareness of how class interacts with gender and ethnicity.
Several preparatory parts have been published. Apart from expanding these, two new chapters and a theoretical framework will be produced. The result will be an academic volume in Swedish and a synthesising peer-reviewed journal article in English.
The project includes a one-month research stay at SDU, Odense, in “The Uses of Literature”-programme. This collaboration offers opportunity to sharpen the theoretical tools in an international interdisciplinary environment and to place Swedish literary class depictions in transnational contexts, which in turn promotes future long-term exchange within teaching and course development.
Final report
Background
In June 2019, my RJ Sabbatical application “Doing class: Intersectional encounters in Swedish contemporary fiction” (SAB19-0092: 1) was granted. The 12 months of research also included funding for a month-long stay at the program “Uses of Literature: The Social Dimensions of Literature (UOL)” at University of Southern Denmark, Odense, led by Rita Felski and Anne-Marie Mai. The project has resulted in several publications (see below), conference participation with papers and a number of new contacts concerning research and teaching about literature and class.
Results of the project
The main purpose of the project has been to complete a monograph that examines how class is portrayed in Swedish contemporary fiction over the past twenty years (2000–2020). The manuscript has been accepted for publication by Makadam publishing house and has undergone expert review before open access publication at Kriterium (www.kriterium.se), scheduled for spring 2022.
Att göra klass [Doing class] consists of eight chapters plus introduction and conclusion. By tracing how class is charged with new meanings and ways of expression, and how class interacts with other categories, the study aims at new insights into how fiction establishes complicated relationships to contemporary society.
The wider selection of class descriptions, where focus is not set only on working-class literature, makes visible a diversified and complex selection of what class means and how class is embodied in contemporary prose. An important conclusion is that the protagonists in the works examined do not seem to want or are not able to assume a simple defined class identity. Class travelers are described as “homeless” in a double sense, and characters from both the working and middle classes seek, albeit in different ways, for respectability in their respective contexts, by trying to “do” class “correctly”. Characters with a non-Swedish and / or non-white background tries to people around them who wants to define them as “different”. The contrasting doings of class accommodate different strategies and economies of emotion, which are portrayed in varying modes, where especially the narrator becomes an important mediator of ideology and temperament.
The different analyzes make class visible first and foremost as performative and relational, but also as a specific type of experience. Theoretically/methodologically, norm-critical cultural and text analysis is combined with aspects of affect studies and sociology. The project takes an intersectional and “bivalent” perspective (Nancy Fraser) with sharpened attention as to how class interacts with gender and ethnicity/racialization, in order to make visible new and linked layers of meaning in the analyzed works. The starting point is that the phenomenon of class is included in almost all types of fiction, and that in literary prose it appears above all performatively, i.e. through continuous action, often with an imaginary middle class as governing, albeit invisible, norm.
Recurring concepts throughout the study are: respectability (Beverley Skeggs), performativity (Judith Butler, Ervin Goffman), precariat (Guy Standing) and identity (Anthony Giddens, Steph Lawler). From a literary studies perspective, difference – in living conditions, status and taste – is examined as a recurring motif. How experiences of class emerge through descriptions of the characters’ thoughts and feelings is discussed particularly on the basis of Sianne Ngai's aesthetic concept ugly feelings.
The project offers a significant broadening in relation to previous Swedish research on literature and class both in terms of the selection of fictional material, the applied perspectives and theoretical focus. For quite a long time, studies on working-class fiction has dominated, using literary sociologist Lars Furuland’s definition – about, by and for laborers (Furuland, 1984), and/or Magnus Nilsson’s reception historical perspective (Nilsson, 2006). The focus in this study is rather on how different images of class experience are shaped in contemporary literature, with the aim of pointing to the amplitude of today’s Swedish class depictions.
That the study is not only based solely on Marxist analysis based on economic strata, class conflict and class consciousness, but instead examines class as a practice visualized by actions and emotions, opens up to additional versions of what class can entail and how it can be portrayed. The different chapters approach a number of fictional protagonists from different social contexts; a housewife in Örnsköldsvik, three class-travelers born in the 1960s, young adults with temporary employment in traditional labor professions, a high-performing gynecologist in a well-to-do residential suburb, young people in segregated suburb areas, and so on. The intersectional perspective, where class interacts with gender, age and different types of racialization, also allows for new, intertwined layers of meaning to emerge. The study has no ambitions to be comprehensive; the purpose is to show how the complex connections of class relations and experiences are shaped in contemporary prose, where focus on the “doings” of class works cohesively.
Published articles and book chapters
In addition to working with the book manuscript, I have published two book chapters and two articles related to the project. ”I tystnadens kloak. Arbetarförfattaren som självetnograf i Susanna Alakoskis April i anhörigsverige” revolves around how the diary narrator Alakoski, by compulsion rather than desire, takes the position as a witness, and how the self-imposed task of making visible and remembering class and family problems is characterized by (post) traumatic experiences and the certainty of being the only one who can tell. Is it even possible to write life stories in the wake of poverty and abuse?
”Mellan privilegium och sårbarhet: Fluktuerande känsloekonomier i Negar Nasehs De fördrivna” examines conflicting experiences of vulnerability and abundance in a depiction of a couple belonging to the global, creative upper middle class. Sianne Ngai’s concept of ugly feelings and Sven Anders Johansson’s thoughts on the cynical state of today are used to discuss growing demands on privileged individuals to recognize complicity, take a stand and act in contemporary burning social issues.
”Precarious University Life in Post-Welfare Sweden: Time, Place and Identity in Isabelle Ståhl’s Just nu är jag här (2017)” discusses, using Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of fluid modernity, the reluctance or inability of the protagonist in Ståhl’s novel to adopt and specific identity or lifestyle. An overarching question is whether seemingly apolitical literature can also hold a political appeal, and how norm-critical literary studies can approach non-emancipatory depictions.
”To Be or Not to Be a Laborer: Three Swedish Novels About Young Adults, Temporary Employment, and the Precariat’s Consciousness” compares three works from the 2010s dealing with young adult protagonists and their complex encounters with temporary employment and working life in a time of rapid change. From Guy Standing’s thoughts on the precariat’s consciousness, the analysis shows a recurring conflict in the stories, between adopting new ideals of flexibility and independence, and becoming more permanently involved in the workplace.
One additional book chapter is being published (see below).
Research stay at the University of Southern Denmark
The pandemic made a longer continuous physical stay at the University of Southern Denmark impossible. Instead, during the Autumn semester 2020 and also during the Spring and Autumn semesters 2021, I attended the center’s online meetings, which turned out to be quite valuable. I participated in recurring Wednesday meetings, seminars with invited researchers from around the world, symposia, a dissertation, and the program’s final conference in November 2021.
I was quickly introduced to the environment and gained access to specific seminars and working groups. Several researchers contacted me in order to develop further collaboration. I have been asked to be part of the Advisory Board for a new research project and to be a supervisor for an MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship application by a junior researcher who wants to place his research at my department in Gothenburg.
In my upcoming project, one of the researchers that I have been in contact with in Odense will be a co-applicant.
One issue that I had hoped to be able to develop further during the collaboration with the Uses of Literature environment, was teaching on literature and class. This proved more difficult than I thought. UoL is primarily a research environment, even though several doctoral students are included in the group. In addition, the centre’s operations will finish in March 2022. However, I will continue to collaborate with some of the researchers. In addition, questions about reading in general, and not least the treatment of different types of controversial literature in classroom situations, have been very present in our discussions. In addition, UoL has worked extensively with how literature studies continuously enters into a dialogue with sociological research and what advantages or disadvantages this entails. Continued collaborations with researchers at the University of Southern Denmark will certainly also include issues concerning different aspects of teaching. My future teaching and research will certainly benefit from Rita Felski's use of post-critique and ANT (Actor-Network Theory).
In June 2019, my RJ Sabbatical application “Doing class: Intersectional encounters in Swedish contemporary fiction” (SAB19-0092: 1) was granted. The 12 months of research also included funding for a month-long stay at the program “Uses of Literature: The Social Dimensions of Literature (UOL)” at University of Southern Denmark, Odense, led by Rita Felski and Anne-Marie Mai. The project has resulted in several publications (see below), conference participation with papers and a number of new contacts concerning research and teaching about literature and class.
Results of the project
The main purpose of the project has been to complete a monograph that examines how class is portrayed in Swedish contemporary fiction over the past twenty years (2000–2020). The manuscript has been accepted for publication by Makadam publishing house and has undergone expert review before open access publication at Kriterium (www.kriterium.se), scheduled for spring 2022.
Att göra klass [Doing class] consists of eight chapters plus introduction and conclusion. By tracing how class is charged with new meanings and ways of expression, and how class interacts with other categories, the study aims at new insights into how fiction establishes complicated relationships to contemporary society.
The wider selection of class descriptions, where focus is not set only on working-class literature, makes visible a diversified and complex selection of what class means and how class is embodied in contemporary prose. An important conclusion is that the protagonists in the works examined do not seem to want or are not able to assume a simple defined class identity. Class travelers are described as “homeless” in a double sense, and characters from both the working and middle classes seek, albeit in different ways, for respectability in their respective contexts, by trying to “do” class “correctly”. Characters with a non-Swedish and / or non-white background tries to people around them who wants to define them as “different”. The contrasting doings of class accommodate different strategies and economies of emotion, which are portrayed in varying modes, where especially the narrator becomes an important mediator of ideology and temperament.
The different analyzes make class visible first and foremost as performative and relational, but also as a specific type of experience. Theoretically/methodologically, norm-critical cultural and text analysis is combined with aspects of affect studies and sociology. The project takes an intersectional and “bivalent” perspective (Nancy Fraser) with sharpened attention as to how class interacts with gender and ethnicity/racialization, in order to make visible new and linked layers of meaning in the analyzed works. The starting point is that the phenomenon of class is included in almost all types of fiction, and that in literary prose it appears above all performatively, i.e. through continuous action, often with an imaginary middle class as governing, albeit invisible, norm.
Recurring concepts throughout the study are: respectability (Beverley Skeggs), performativity (Judith Butler, Ervin Goffman), precariat (Guy Standing) and identity (Anthony Giddens, Steph Lawler). From a literary studies perspective, difference – in living conditions, status and taste – is examined as a recurring motif. How experiences of class emerge through descriptions of the characters’ thoughts and feelings is discussed particularly on the basis of Sianne Ngai's aesthetic concept ugly feelings.
The project offers a significant broadening in relation to previous Swedish research on literature and class both in terms of the selection of fictional material, the applied perspectives and theoretical focus. For quite a long time, studies on working-class fiction has dominated, using literary sociologist Lars Furuland’s definition – about, by and for laborers (Furuland, 1984), and/or Magnus Nilsson’s reception historical perspective (Nilsson, 2006). The focus in this study is rather on how different images of class experience are shaped in contemporary literature, with the aim of pointing to the amplitude of today’s Swedish class depictions.
That the study is not only based solely on Marxist analysis based on economic strata, class conflict and class consciousness, but instead examines class as a practice visualized by actions and emotions, opens up to additional versions of what class can entail and how it can be portrayed. The different chapters approach a number of fictional protagonists from different social contexts; a housewife in Örnsköldsvik, three class-travelers born in the 1960s, young adults with temporary employment in traditional labor professions, a high-performing gynecologist in a well-to-do residential suburb, young people in segregated suburb areas, and so on. The intersectional perspective, where class interacts with gender, age and different types of racialization, also allows for new, intertwined layers of meaning to emerge. The study has no ambitions to be comprehensive; the purpose is to show how the complex connections of class relations and experiences are shaped in contemporary prose, where focus on the “doings” of class works cohesively.
Published articles and book chapters
In addition to working with the book manuscript, I have published two book chapters and two articles related to the project. ”I tystnadens kloak. Arbetarförfattaren som självetnograf i Susanna Alakoskis April i anhörigsverige” revolves around how the diary narrator Alakoski, by compulsion rather than desire, takes the position as a witness, and how the self-imposed task of making visible and remembering class and family problems is characterized by (post) traumatic experiences and the certainty of being the only one who can tell. Is it even possible to write life stories in the wake of poverty and abuse?
”Mellan privilegium och sårbarhet: Fluktuerande känsloekonomier i Negar Nasehs De fördrivna” examines conflicting experiences of vulnerability and abundance in a depiction of a couple belonging to the global, creative upper middle class. Sianne Ngai’s concept of ugly feelings and Sven Anders Johansson’s thoughts on the cynical state of today are used to discuss growing demands on privileged individuals to recognize complicity, take a stand and act in contemporary burning social issues.
”Precarious University Life in Post-Welfare Sweden: Time, Place and Identity in Isabelle Ståhl’s Just nu är jag här (2017)” discusses, using Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of fluid modernity, the reluctance or inability of the protagonist in Ståhl’s novel to adopt and specific identity or lifestyle. An overarching question is whether seemingly apolitical literature can also hold a political appeal, and how norm-critical literary studies can approach non-emancipatory depictions.
”To Be or Not to Be a Laborer: Three Swedish Novels About Young Adults, Temporary Employment, and the Precariat’s Consciousness” compares three works from the 2010s dealing with young adult protagonists and their complex encounters with temporary employment and working life in a time of rapid change. From Guy Standing’s thoughts on the precariat’s consciousness, the analysis shows a recurring conflict in the stories, between adopting new ideals of flexibility and independence, and becoming more permanently involved in the workplace.
One additional book chapter is being published (see below).
Research stay at the University of Southern Denmark
The pandemic made a longer continuous physical stay at the University of Southern Denmark impossible. Instead, during the Autumn semester 2020 and also during the Spring and Autumn semesters 2021, I attended the center’s online meetings, which turned out to be quite valuable. I participated in recurring Wednesday meetings, seminars with invited researchers from around the world, symposia, a dissertation, and the program’s final conference in November 2021.
I was quickly introduced to the environment and gained access to specific seminars and working groups. Several researchers contacted me in order to develop further collaboration. I have been asked to be part of the Advisory Board for a new research project and to be a supervisor for an MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship application by a junior researcher who wants to place his research at my department in Gothenburg.
In my upcoming project, one of the researchers that I have been in contact with in Odense will be a co-applicant.
One issue that I had hoped to be able to develop further during the collaboration with the Uses of Literature environment, was teaching on literature and class. This proved more difficult than I thought. UoL is primarily a research environment, even though several doctoral students are included in the group. In addition, the centre’s operations will finish in March 2022. However, I will continue to collaborate with some of the researchers. In addition, questions about reading in general, and not least the treatment of different types of controversial literature in classroom situations, have been very present in our discussions. In addition, UoL has worked extensively with how literature studies continuously enters into a dialogue with sociological research and what advantages or disadvantages this entails. Continued collaborations with researchers at the University of Southern Denmark will certainly also include issues concerning different aspects of teaching. My future teaching and research will certainly benefit from Rita Felski's use of post-critique and ANT (Actor-Network Theory).