A WAY OF STRUGGLE - REFORMATIONS AND AFFIRMATIONS OF THOMPSON,E.P. CLASS ANALYSIS IN THE LIGHT OF POSTMODERN THEORIES OF LANGUAGE

This paper is an analysis of the role of language in historical class formation in light of the recent developments in postmodern social the ory and historiography. Revisionists from within this perspective have questioned if not abandoned E. P. Thompson's class struggle analysis, arguing that he fails to account for the constitutive character of la nguage in the construction of collective identities. They oppose his a ccount of the making of the English working class with alternative his tories emphasizing populist and other non-class identities. Drawing on the Bakhtin Circle of literary studies, and returning to Thompson's o wn writings, I argue that we can incorporate language into class strug gle analysis as a critical mediating force. I maintain that class stru ggle occurs largely within a hegemonic discursive formation, and that class consciousness and identity thus in part are formed through count er-hegemonic strategies of resistance to ideological domination. To il lustrate this theory I analyse the role of language in the class strug gles of the silk weavers of the Spitalfields district in London in the 1820s. I analyse how the silk weavers articulated a class consciousne ss through their counter-hegemonic struggles with the large capitalist s and the language of political economy.