Social Non-Reproduction in Michelle Obama’s and Zsuzsanna Orsós’s Autobiographical Narratives and Their Health Education Projects

Abstract

Chantal Jaquet, in Transclasses: A Theory of Social Non-reproduction (2014, 2023), creates a new philosophical concept, that of the trans-class. Trans-classes can be defined sociologically the transition between two classes but which do not reliably belong to either group. According to Jaquet, although class non-reproduction disrupts the regular process of social reproduction, it does not call into question the phenomenon of reproduction but rather reinforces it by showing the limits of the identity of the groups involved in the transition. The process of social non-reproduction is revealed in the life histories of trans-classes. Jaquet interprets the experience of trans-classes in terms of a complex network of political, economic, social, family and individual interests and goals, mainly in relation to autobiographies and auto-ethnography. This paper adopts Jaquet's notion of trans-classes to study Michelle Obama's autobiography Becoming and Zsuzsanna Orsós's autobiographical narratives in interviews made with her,  focusing on the role of race, class, gender, family, schooling in the process of their social non-reproduction. This essay establishes the determinants of the two narrators' trans-class positions and asks how being a trans-class plays a positive role in Obama and Orsós's health education projects.