Flipping the script: Rethinking working-class resistance

Abstract

This article argues that any viable notion of working class resistance will rest on reclaiming those narratives, historical memories, and elements of resistance that provide a sense of meaning, dignity, and working class courage. In too many instances, members of the working class are defined by their deficits, which are used to both depoliticize people and render them as excess and mere refuge. The article also analyzes and makes a case for the importance of historicizing, critically engaging, and breaking through the ways in which working class people are rendered disposable through a variety of ideological, educational, and repressive mechanisms utilized by the ruling elites. In this script, education becomes central to politics and the struggle over agency becomes crucial to what Giroux calls flipping the script. The article makes a call for the creation of working class public intellectuals and a critical formative culture that makes such acts possible at a time of increasing authoritarianism, especially under the Trump regime.