More specifically, the sheer productivity of the proletarian imaginary can be eval-
uated onlybyrecognizingproletarian cultureasasemiautonomous sphere and
by interpreting the socialist appropriation of the bourgeois heritageasafirst step
in the realization of the utopian function of artand literature. The connection to
the Marxist critique of capitalism and classsociety and the adherencetouniver-
salist propositions about the emancipation of all of humanityonlycomes into
clearer view throughacorresponding criticalterminologythat focuses on prole-
tarian identificationsrather than identities.⁸Herethe choice of identifications as
the study’spreferred term is intendedto highlight the fundamental differenceof
the proletarian dream from the constructivist and essentialcategories of contem-
porary culturalstudies that define identitiesprimarilyinrelation togender,race,
and ethnicity.Likeidentities, proletarian identificationsare fluid, contested, and
subjecttocontinuousrevisions and negotiations; they do not requireaworking-
class biographybut acommitmentto the socialist or communist cause. However,
unlike identitarian claims, whose constructivist arguments often concealessen-
tialist assumptions, proletarian identifications are predicated on the analysis of
class asastructural category and aim at the elimination of classdifferences.
Their visions of community,sociability,and collectivity are developed precisely
against the ideologyofbourgeois individualism and western liberalism that,in
modified terms,continues in contemporary identity discourse.
As the most powerful expression of the dream of community and collectivity,
proletarian culture functionedatonce as an extension of Marxist theory and so-
cialist praxis,avessel for older traditions and conventions, andalaboratory for
new attitudes and mentalities. Emotions–their definition, evaluation, and cul-
tivation–playedakey role in the anticipated transition from economic oppres-
sion to political empowerment and functionedasarepository of all that had
been left out of the official analyses of capitalist domination and exploitation.
The conception of the workingclass as an imaginary community and the equa-
tion of socialism and communism with specific emotional regimes,however,
cannot be analyzedapart from the historical struggles over the discourses of cul-
ture, its forms and functions, and its institutions and traditions. Especiallythe
implicit and explicit assumptions about political and aesthetic emotions shared
by Marxist theorists and socialist writers and artists draw long overdue attention
to the centralityofaesthetic experiencestoclass mobilizations and the continu-
ous transformationofthe category of the aesthetic from its elevation in eight-
eenth-century idealistphilosophytoits politicization in the historicalavant-
The distinction between identity and identificationisbased on RogerBrubaker andFrederick
Cooper,“Be yond‘Identity,’”Theoryand Society29 (2000): 1–47.
Introduction 15