At this conference, we are being asked to think class, a thinking which requires us to think that without which we might well be unthinkable. Humans are apparently programmed to think in categories and thinking outside these ultimately calls upon a different form of thinking, a thinking that is difficult to think about. This conference is asking us to achieve what Marx deems as “class consciousness” and it is this state of being conscious that is difficult to achieve, particularly if we are not aware of our own lack of consciousness. Thus the interrogation of class is a tense moment for the social inquirer. It is tense because of the intensity of the search for class. Where do we look? How? What? Why?

Although class manifests itself all around us, class is not something you can capture. Instead you are captured and watched by class , move for move, thought for thought. South Asians are no strangers to the control of class and given the capacity of class, you could assume that this conference is doomed by its drive. After all, how does the captured interrogate the captive? To take it a step further, bones are stitched to skin and made to mean through a fabric of class : South Asians are classified and only mean based on their types of class and classification.  This interrogation of the human’s social meaning is in essence an attempt to define the human outside meaning, outside society, society that is socially constructed. Imagining the social body without a social shadow is quite impossible for it becomes clear that the individual ( let alone the South Asian ) is moved by class. Do you not think twice about wearing traditional clothing when strolling down York Lanes? Do you not hesitate to not speak except in the recognized language?

So given the control of class, how are we expected to think outside of it?

This question leaves us desperate in thought but if we dissect the idea of a social body  and a social body to its bare bones, we come to a location at which we see the individual as separate from class, the person out of the public, the I outside the eye.  This dissection is indeed difficult, but given the shadow of class that tags along with the South Asian social, it is indeed a dissection worth going forward with. Of course how you go forward with this is exactly what this conference is about. In my opinion, one route would be to think about the I outside the eye : you out of the gaze. The instant individuals become aware of their self reality and find meaning in their selves, we might just have a classless world.

You could surely say that my words would work for any conference on class : perhaps it would. But think about how South Asian bodies play in society and of the subsequent shadows they caste. How has South Asia enforced class and how have we have reinforced it? Who has control over the body?  Who is South Asian?

Your class follows you out of the room and it is time to confront it. Imagine a South Asia without surveillance, a South Asia blind to

the ways of the body.

Author: Ali Abbas