Conclusion: Precarity

Abstract

The conceptual framework this book lays out offers a tool to better understand the social construction and representation of class matters and economic deprivation. Lemke sketches the contours of the precarious aesthetics that invites middle-class readers or viewers to connect or even bond with, albeit vicariously, the Other of class. Interdependence is integral to the art that engages with America’s precariat, but at the same time its quintessential ambiguity and indeterminacy unsettles our engagement with the other of class. By introducing the social scientifically-based “holistic narrative of poverty,” Lemke deconstructs the encumbered binary between the culture-of-poverty and the systemic narrative of poverty. Her multi-facetted contribution bridges disciplinary divisions to calibrate the emergent transdisciplinary field concerned with continued precarity.