Using ‘the thousand voices’ of the working class to re-negotiate normative notions of culture

Abstract

This essay considers the politics of working-class voices in This Slavery, Children of the Dead End and The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. By analysing spoken word as an accessible mode of cultural production, the essay suggests the texts unsettle hierarchical and exclusionary understandings of culture. Ultimately, it argues that normative understandings of culture as the written word are limiting, and instead reframes culture as an evolving, accessible, and communal force. The author’s keen interest in the relationship between literature and working class representation shows in this re-negotiation of class depictions across the texts.