Class Struggles and Politics of Difference

A discussion with Gayatri Spivak (New York/Calcutta): Conservatives don’t dare to designate the increasing polarisation of income, power, education and consumption norms as re-configuration of class society. Some even call for a clear class consciousness of the bourgeois class facing the ›urban underclass‹ or the Precariat. Is this Precariat more than „a kind of impossible group“ (Wacquant), fragmented along class, gender or ethno-national ascriptions? Or do we experience a kind of ›re-making of the working class‹? The Precariat is struggling, some times spontaneous, some times organised, not on a common ground, rather along diverse segmentations. A variety of new labour struggles or unrest emerges, but usually not interconnected to each other, and even less related to feminist or migrant struggles or struggles around the public sphere. Does ›class‹ play a role for understanding of social transformations, to find common interest formation across different segments, to articulate the different struggles? How we can deal with the danger of fragmentation in a productive way, as well as with wrong forms of unifying the movement while negating differences? What is the role of old and new forms of (self)organisation on the one and (new forms) of political representation on the other? Chair: Mario Candeias (Rosa Luxemburg Foundation/Berlin)