"Class": Definitional Discussions

Entered by Leong Yew, Research Fellow, University Scholars Programme, National University of Singapore

Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies

Although they do not provide a definition for class in their entry in Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies, Ashcroft et al understand it as an enormously complex notion in postcolonialism. In order to appreciate "class," one must go beyond Karl Marx's division of society between the proletariat and capital-owning class and the Eurocentrism displayed in his distinction between capitalist countries and those still employing "Asiatic" modes of production (39). For postcolonial studies, class:

• is used in forging the colonizers' attitudes toward "different groups and categories" among the colonized;
• is also the mechanism eventually adopted by colonized subjects to organize and explain the development of their own societies;
• provides the proletarian-capitalist model, which serves as a paradigm for the imperial centre/colonial periphery distinction;
• is tightly interwoven with the category of race;
• in order to be a useful concept, must be able to negotiate cultural and social considerations, for example the notion of caste in India, and the production of an 'anti-class' myth in Australia.
• still has to be more adequately addressed, particularly in analyzing the relationship between "representation and material practice."

Last Modified: 1 April, 2002