The un/methodology of ‘theoretical intuitions’: resources of generations gone before, thinking and feeling class

Class Matters, by Mahony and Zmroczek (1997), was an important
collection marking working-class women’s contribution to the
academy and society. In taking up the question of class, this
paper considers the ways in which a partial and particular
discourse reflected its author’s material circumstances, including
her preferred conceptual interests as well as her un(self)conscious
knowledge. In revisiting the way class ‘mattered’, and continues
to matter – we devised and enacted an exploratory dialogical
methodology to open up the original text to new meanings and
interpretations influenced by generationally and geographically
specific intellectual/theoretical vocabularies. The paper enacts this
multivocality with reflections from each author, connected by a
co-authored exploration of affect and the power and problematic
of the ‘autobiography of the question’.