Transclasses: A Theory of Social Non-Reproduction

How people become "class traitors"

One is not born a worker or a boss. Social reproduction is not an iron law; it admits of exceptions that must be accounted for in order to measure its scope.

This book aims to understand the passage from one social class to another and to forge a method of approaching these particular cases which remain a blind spot in the theory of social reproduction. It analyzes the political, economic, social, familial and singular causes that contribute to non-reproduction, and their effects on the constitution of individuals transiting from one class to another.

At the crossroads of collective history and intimate history, Chantal Jaquet identifies class locations, the interplay of affects and encounters, and the role of sexual and racial differences. She invites us to break out of disciplinary isolation in order to grasp singularity at the crossroads of philosophy, sociology, psychology and literature.

This requires deconstruction of the concepts of social and personal identity, in favour of a concepts like complexion and the criss-crossing determinations. Through the figure of the transclass, it is thus the whole human condition that is illuminated in a new light.

Chantal Jaquet is a philosopher and professor at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. A specialist in the history of modern philosophy and the philosophy of the body, she is the author of twenty books on Spinoza, Bacon, and the body/mind relationship.