The Melancholia of Class: A Manifesto for the Working Class by Cynthia Cruz

The Melancholia of Class: A Manifesto for the Working Class Cynthia CruzRepeater, 2021ISBN-13: 978-1-9122-4891-9 Paperback228 PagesWhat does it mean to be working-class in a middle-class world? Cynthia Cruz shows us how class affects culture and our mental health and what we can do about it — calling not for assimilation, but for annihilation.To be working-class in a middle-class world is to be a ghost. Excluded, marginalised, and subjected to violence, the working class is also deemed by those in power to not exist. We are left with a choice between assimilation into middle-class values and culture, leaving our working-class origins behind, or total annihilation.In The Melancholia of Class, Cynthia Cruz analyses how this choice between assimilation or annihilation has played out in the lives of working-class musicians, artists, writers, and filmmakers — including Amy Winehouse, Ian Curtis, Jason Molina, Barbara Loden, and many more — and the resultant Freudian melancholia that ensues