Of dinosaurs and divas: is class still relevant to feminist research? Co-Editor of Subjectivity: presentation given as the Opening Lecture at the Centre for Feminist Research, Goldsmiths, University of London, October, 2016 and reproduced as part of the 10th Anniversary issue of the journal Subjectivity

摘要

So opens Ken Loach's famous 1966 docudrama, 'Cathy Come Home', about a working-class young woman who leaves the provinces to go to London. As the story-line reveals, Cathy meets a man, they get married and rent a flat, but he has an accident while driving a work van and is off work, with no money paid by his employer. This means that they cannot pay their rent. The couple have children and, as the film develops, their housing situation gets worse and worse, through terrible accommodation to the family finally being split up, time in a hostel and losing the children. The issues raised in the film-homelessness and insecurity-are just as terrifyingly familiar today. I am starting here because I want to think about the significance of class from this period onwards. Cathy's desire to move away from small-town life to the excitement and freedom of the metropolis is very familiar to me and, I expect, at differing historical periods, and for different reasons, also to many here today.