ARTICLECultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies • May 2003Scatamburlo-D’Annibale, McLaren • Centrality of Class The Strategic Centrality of Class in the Politics of “Race ” and “Difference”

This article argues against the radical displacement of class analysis and the decentering of capitalism within contemporary theoretical narratives, the political pusillanimity of post-Marxist “culturalist ” discourses, and offers a historical materialist critique of the “politics of difference. ” The authors argue that much of what falls under the rubric of “difference ” politics amounts to little more than a demand for inclusion into the club of “repre-sentation”—a posturing which they argue merely reinscribes the banality of liberal pluralism rooted in the ideology of free-market capitalism. The authors advance an approach to “difference ” and “race ” that seeks to reanimate these constructs by acknowledging their embeddedness in capi-talist social formations and material relations of power