Life of Puja: The Symbolic Fetishism of the Liberal Elites

 Any form of economic order rests on physical assets, so does the the contemporary world running on algorithms. Its manifestation might be virtual but its moorings are deeply real and tangible.

 It’s become nearly impossible to be isolated from the digital world and this world has now become a driver of everything humans know to us, be it symbolic aesthetic pleasures or material imminent needs. While the real remains real, the virtual becomes a gateway to the real.

 In such a world, even social justice is governed through algorithms which steer content and its creators.

 Liberal Upper Caste gentry gets to have a niche relevance in the debates centred around social justice and themes of justice, inequality, welfare and the politics of recognition.

 Their relevance holds value in real time and dictates the terms of discourse which are then followed in the academic and social world that today hinges on ideas of public policy, diversity, inclusion and representation etc.

 And that has been clear in the recent incident involving two content creators life of puja and otherwarya.

 Otherwarya’s distasteful comments about life of puja were no doubt the anxieties of the liberal elites in full display where they are worried of class homogenisation and having to share the same space with working and labouring castes.

 The E Lafda that ensued after Otherwarya’s distasteful remarks over a working class content creator by the name of life of puja, as I have mentioned already clearly made it visible the insecurity that hounds the liberal elites but little to no attention has been paid to the other half of the liberal elites who were busy defending life of puja and dissing Otherwarya.

 What I would like to iterate here is the fact that both halves, those who were critical of Otherwarya and those who were defending Life of Puja are situated in the same bracket of liberal upper caste gentry. This time they seemingly have a contrasting approach towards their imagination of working class but they were structurally working towards the same class consciousness usually associated with the liberal elites. This contrast just makes it difficult for a lay observer to get confused and take side with the half that defended life of puja for their compassionate and moral approach of supporting a rural working class woman content creator who is being mocked and ridiculed and delegitimised by Otherwarya.

 Further sociological enquiries into this incident clearly point towards what I call a symbolic fetishisation of the working class, which the liberal elites indulge in order to steer the fight away from material needs while shifting the discourse towards ideas of representation, recognition and a language that is morally ethical and politically sensitive and sympathetic.

 A section of liberal elites were busy rallying for the rights of the working class and how they deserve to show their life’s reality as it is on social media. They sound progressive and also end up praising her for battling a life with meagre resources and still being able to create content that is both palatable to their taste and yet originally symptomatic of that wretched poor identity of being rural, unsophisticated, unpolished and raw.

 This is what happens when the liberal elites indulge in a symbolic fetishisation of working class lives. Much like commodity fetishisation as explained by Marx, symbolic fetishisation can be explained as an idea where symbolic things like ideas of language, representation, diversity etc take the centre stage as  relations between antagonist classes, while the material basis of class conflict takes a back seat.

 A vocabulary of political correctness becomes a sign of discourse with meanings being attached more to signs, symbols and representations of such meanings whereas the quest to materially transform the relations of production is sidelined.

 Here, symbolic recognition becomes the primary goal and material structural change a matter of neglected ideals. It helps the liberal elite in morally posturing themselves as concerned for the working classes while materially the working class remains embedded in the same precarious economic order.

 While the liberal elites passionately support creators like life of puja they don’t dwell much on how even in content economy, it is them who are able to create capital based on their existing social and cultural capital, while creators like life of puja remain part of the same structure without any hopes of escape. It gives an illusion of choice, a hope of recognition to the working class and thereby manages even critique not as a radical push but as a calculated gesture of absorbing it in order to opiate the masses.