Annals of the Social Science Academy of Nigeria 1(1) 1993 DOI: 10.36108/ssan/3991.05.0190
RETHINKING WORKER-CONSCIOUSNESS: Work, Class and Culture
Jimi O. Adesina
ABSTRACT
This paper re-examines current thinking on worker-consciousness, and criticizes the prevailing reluctance to accommodate non-class identities in class subjectivity. Much of the problem with the discussion of worker-consciousness, the paper argues, is epistemological. Consciousness is both experiential and defined by ‘preconstituted’ knowledge. It is contradictory as much as it is a contested terrain of individual and group engagement with ‘reality1. The experience of work, and class, is mediated by non-work and non-class experiences and identities, otherwise we miss the territoriality of class. Understanding workers as producers of knowledge allows an appreciation of how language, is itself, constitutive of identity and consciousness.