The Classing Gaze: Sexuality, Class and Surveillance

Sexuality and the working class, two discursive constructs, share the same moment of birth during the second half of the 19th century.

This book focuses on Australian social reports and reveals how sections of society at that time were conceptually constructed as two distinct working classes. It questions what happened to the other working class: Marx's "lumpenproletariat" and Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables" and asks how 20th-century social theorists agreed that only one working class existed.

"The Classing Gaze" suggests that it is the notion of sexuality that holds the key to the appearance of both groups and the "disappearance" of one. Furthermore, it argues that it was the sexuality of women that occupied central stage in the classing process. It explains that underlying our modern social organization is the silent organizing discourse of sexuality.