Talking to ... Catherine Liu

Imagining the Boomer world straying into suffocating moralism
during the Pop Revolution would have seemed like a grotesque, if
not outright ridiculous, mind game. Actually, it is a first-order
puzzlement how such a terror of virtue could take hold of our
political discourse and institutions. It is precisely this
question that cultural theorist Catherine Liu addresses with the
rise of the new ruling caste of the Professional Managerial
Class—also known as the PMC. This caste is characterized by how
it claims social privileges for itself in a sharp demarcation
against the lower classes – or the deplorables, as Hillary
Clinton referred to them. As an excellent stratagem, this hidden
class struggle makes excellent use of symbolic currency as the
capital Pierre Bourdieu so aptly described in his Distinction: A
Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. However, as ever-larger
sections of the population fight for positions, privileges, and
scarce resources, the question of how to succeed in the moral
economy is brought into relief. An excellent way out of this
dilemma is declaring oneself a victim or behaving as particularly
virtuous – a role description that Catherine Liu so aptly
analyzes in her Virtue Hoarders. What was so refreshing in our
conversation with her was that she never risks losing herself in
moral indignation – but instead carries out a class analysis in
good Marxist fashion. Thus, she reveals the basic features of the
moral economy while also showing the blind spots of this ideology
of domination.


Catherine Liu teaches film and media studies at the University of
California, Irvine, where she has also served as director of the
UCI Humanities Center. Her 2021 book Virtue Hoarders was widely
acclaimed, and she’s currently working on a book exploring the
significance of trauma for the moral economy.


Catherine Liu has published


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