This thesis is the story of working with multiple inheritances in the pursuit of a scholarship which might shift association, test out alternative genres and enable a more situated and responsible approach to writing working-class life. The thesis reflects this journey. Part One tells the story of encountering and accepting an inheritance of Billy Casper, Kes and Barry Hines and the active worlds which circulate around the 1968 novel A Kestrel for a Knave. Part Two follows, thinking through obligation and potential using the idea of ‘tekkin’ the jesses off’ (Cocker) where working-class flourishing might spiral out from notions of exceeding rather than escaping (Butler).
The writing spans three distinct but interwoven modalities of affective activity; contact, the processual, and pure potential (Seigworth, Deleuze, Spinoza). I work with them in active composition throughout the thesis, writing actively with Billy, Kes and Barry as well as with all kinds of other varied and constantly emerging attachments. I use a flat citational practice which places academic and ‘non’ academic knowledges on the same footing (Berlant and Stewart).
I work in relay (Haraway) with this central inheritance as well as those who have modelled a ‘capacity to tell big-enough stories’ (Haraway) about working-class life and the propensity for working-class scholars to thrive (Williams). Those who have invited me to be critically rigorous and take attachments seriously (Berlant). Those who have sparked the feeling of resonance, the quality of ‘lovely prizes’ on smooth green baize (Broad Oak Bowling Club members). Those who have allowed me to pay attention to and follow out worldings, tones, and atmospheres which circulate (Stewart). Those who have helped me to imagine an alternative approach to sensing the historical (family cinema trips, Berlant). All have helped me to engage with scholarship as an ongoing relay in which I am a part, inheriting and passing on in continuous and active procession (Stengers)
