Dig where you stand

A position on positionality

The idea of questioning who are you in order to make work is not a new one. It’s something marginalised folks have been talking about for decades. Do they use the specific terminology ‘positionality’ OFC not! New academic language and middle class gaze uses terms and words, redefines them, packages it to exempt Dialogue around class bias. It is not a new phenomena. This idea of value those who know. Look to native cultures, look to the phenomenal book from 1978, Dig where you stand by Sven Lindqvist. Basically we should value the knowledge of workers, of those with experience. Absolutely we should. Except now in its all consuming neoliberal business minded way this concept has been eaten by institution and middle classes as a way to look at who gets to do work and guess what? That’s right to exclude class from the equation.

For many working class folks they haven’t seen someone like them make images and especially not of people like them. I feel the discourse around class is getting louder but much worse. Class consciousness has been forced to such an underground level that people do not know what class they are from, working class people are ashamed to identify due to stereotypes and representations. They want to prove their worth.

Writing in my very first essay on my foundation degree, feeling like a fraud, I talked about an infamous fashion photographer going to the Midwest of the US, photographing what they could not understand, other-ing the subjects. That was 2012 and class was dismissed as something that didn’t matter. I’m exhausted, tired and really bored of the lack of actual progressive discussions in terms of class. When will we as a society listen to those whose position is at the bottom? Is it destined to only be a movement when from the middle or above?

When I say don’t talk to me about ‘Positionality’ what I really mean is don’t talk down to me about what I’ve lived my whole life knowing, and what you’ve been taught in a book.