sense of urgency and possibility with which the problem of culturalhegemony
and class society can, andmust,beaddressed.
Negt andKluge’spronouncement that“We believeitiswrong to allow words
to become obsolete before there isachangeinthe objects they denote”²not only
offersacompellingargument for studying the working-class writers and artists
and socialist theorists and activists presented in the previous eighteen chapters.
Forthe purposesofthis afterword, theirwarningagainst forgetting also opens up
aspace for acknowledging thegenerations of literaryscholars, labor historians,
and culturaltheorists on both sides of theAtlantic who, in the 1970s, rediscov-
ered the forgottencultureofthe workingclass and the workers’movement.Like
their historical subjects, most of the studies from the period have either been for-
gotten or declared irrelevant to contemporaryresearch interests. Inawareness of
the complicatedrelationship between social struggles in history and the history
of these struggles,rereading these works cannot be separated fromabroader as-
sessment of Critical Theory and the New Left and their profound impact on new
social movementsand the humanities since the 1970s. Thistumultuous period
has now become historical itself.With the end of the ColdWar and the demise
of Western Marxism, the insights and blind spots of theseyears have addedyet
another layerofattachments to the proletarian dream. They have introduced new
ways of thinkingabout class, culture, and society,especiallyinthe context of
(British) culturalstudies. But they have alsocreated new impasses, whether
through nostalgia for socialism and retreat to theory or through various critical
interventions, from the discredited embourgeoisement thesis to the ubiquitous
diagnosis ofapostindustrial, postclass society,made to provethe obsolescence
of class-related perspectivesand categories.³
The forgotten works,minorgenres,flawed arguments, and obsolete styles
presented in this book have made it possible to address questions and uncover
connections thatwereignored by the scholarship from the 1970sand 1980s and
that have been marginalized by the cultural studies paradigms prevalent since
the 1990s. The introduction established the book’smain research questions by
highlighting the insufficientconsideration of aesthetic questions in cultural
studies; the limited attention to collective identifications and imaginaries; the ur-
gent relevance of more historicalperspectivesonpolitical emotions in social
sphere, seeWerner Eisner andWolfgang Eggersdorfer,“Arbeiterliteratur und proletarische Ge-
genöffentlichkeit,”alternative104 (1975): 217–227.
Negt and Kluge,Public Sphereand Experience,xlv.
Foracritique of the concept ofVerbürgerlichungin the contextofpostwar sociology see Birgit
Mahnkopf,Verbürgerlichung.Die Legende vom Ende des Proletariats(Frankfurt am Main: Cam-
pus,1985).
AHistoriography of the Proletarian Dream 335