Violence as a Currency in the Neoliberal Order – Challenging the Literary Commodification of Lower-Class Masculinities in an Economy of Privilege

Abstract:

This chapter brings two seemingly very disparate books into conversation to discuss different forms of violence and their interdependency with class. In Alan Hollinghurst’s novel The Swimming-Pool Library the affluent gay protagonist Will pursues a lifestyle of leisure and casual sex. In a pivotal moment of the book, Will becomes the victim of a skinhead attack. This scene is mirrored in a passage from DJ Stalingrad’s Exodus , a skinhead-autobiografiction, where the narrator-protagonist beats up his unsuspecting victim. Despite the similarity, the shift in perspective complicates the seemingly apparent victim/attacker dichotomy. The skinheads in Hollinghurst and DJ Stalingrad disrupt a neoliberal system that disadvantages lower-class subjects and continues to displace (literary) lower class identities. In both cases they do so, unapologetically, with violence. This chapter argues for a critical reading that makes the multiple forms of violence within these texts visible and illustrates how they intersect with the logics of neoliberalism.