WisCon Day 2: Saturday, Part 3

[bcholmes]

I think that the only thing left for me on Saturday was the panel I was most excited about:

Untangling Class
What do we mean when we talk about class? Is it about how much money we have? How much education? How we grew up? Our position with respect to a global capitalist world system? There have been a lot of WisCon panels in the past focused on speculative fiction that "does class well" — but how can we know whether something's being done well if we don't even know what it is? This panel brings together WisCongoers with expertise and experience in talking about class to hammer out (if not actually decide upon) some definitions.

M: Jess Adams, Chris Wrdnrd, BC Holmes, Alexis Lothian

I didn't take notes because I was on the panel, but I was pretty happy with the way it turned out -- I really do think that you get a different conversation when you know the other panelists well enough to know what they're going to say and you can really have a conversation that deepens each other's points. Anyway, firecat has a pretty good write-up of the panel with more details about who said what.

I think I might have monopolized too much of the conversation, though. Bad me. I'm also kind of in awe about some of the amazingly good and insightful stuff that Alexis said. For example, her discussion about consensus models versus conflict models of class. A consensus model might be, for example, the view that we're all playing different roles in an enterprise (labourers, managers, etc.) for the collective good -- she quickly suggested, though, that this is a bit of an idealized view of the class system. She also really simply and coherently talked about the way some people (who we're not going to name) misread Marx when they say "it's all class" -- instead the capitalist system constructs classes of people with an eye to answering the basic question, "who does the work?" And in some cases, that "class" is "women" or what have you. She was absolutely excellent about articulating this so clearly.

After the panel, I went to a room party and had a good time until I could feel my eyelids openly rebelling against me. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

Comments

[wild_irises]

Alexis is amazing. I was on a related class panel and didn't get to yours, and now I'm sorry.

Else-DW, I recommended to someone that if they wanted a better panel experience at WisCon, following Timmi, Alexis, Liz Henry, and Ian around was not the worst strategy.

[futuransky]

Aww, stoppit, both of you, I'm all blushing now! Thank you. <3

I think that "following Debbie and BC" is also a good panel strategy. I didn't make it to any Debbie panels this con, but thankfully there was this great speech... ;)

And I was coming into comments to say that I was in awe of all BC's great and insightful comments on this panel too. It was a honour to share a mic with you! :)

[bcholmes]

...if they wanted a better panel experience at WisCon, following Timmi, Alexis, Liz Henry, and Ian around was not the worst strategy.

I totally get what you're saying, but I continue to roll this comment around in my head because one of the things I've been pondering a lot since coming back from WisCon is Liz's comment about "killing all rock stars."

A way of reading what you're saying is, "Timmi, Alexis, Liz and Ian" are some of the WisCon rock stars: I totally get why you say that, but I'm still formulating my ideas about Liz's rock star comment.

[metalana]

You are quoted as having some great observations in here:

BC: If we say the definition of class is too complicated, we imply there could be one true definition. Many conversations have that as a goal; if you talk about the complexities people get nervous. They want the class markers definitions to line up; if they don't, the system is broken. How much money, what kind of work do you do? Both are viewed on a spectrum from bad to good. But people get angry if money doesn't line up with the goodness of the job. My partner is salaried but makes a low wage. Bus drivers are considered greedy money grabbers. People say "it has to be fixed." The anger about noncongruence feels like being a trans* person. Or like when people can't tell what your gender is. The gender world has more language about this. Genderfuck is normal. In class world...we are flailing.