FROM STRUCTURAL RACISM TO INDIVIDUAL MORALITY: a jamesonian reading of "The Class"

Abstract

The alleged crisis of multiculturalism has become a central these in European politics over the past two decades. The Class is a fictional treatment of France’s education system through the lens of a multicultural classroom. It is symptomatic of deeper French anxieties over multiculturalism, assimilation, and national identity and what is seen as a contradiction between republican assimilation and ethnic diversity. Inspired by neo-Marxist aesthetic theory of Frederic Jameson, this work proposes to offer a Freudian influenced reading of the relationship of aesthetics and politics. It is argued that the courtroom-like disciplinary hearing, which forms a central part of the film, has the effect of displacing structural racism onto individual morality, thereby reinforcing middle-class moralism. The film’s naturalism serves to conceal its ideological function, obscuring economic disparities behind cultural debates. Unlike classic French school films, it lacks a class critique, thus aligning it with neoliberal discourses on education.