Identity Politics: the impasse, the debate, the thread.

[Treacle Toes]

I can expand on my own comment but I'm not sure it's my job to explain

Right. So you are rejecting the explanation I have already given, after you asked for it and you are also refusing to explain your own points.

On top of that you have more questions for me to answer? Questions I have already answered no less.

Who are you talking about, when you talk about holding power? What kind of situation do you have in mind?

I've engaged with you here in good faith and have answered your question. You are now refusing to do the same thing.

What's the point?

 

[ManchesterBeth]

This is something I've thought on quite a bit wrt the liberation struggles against colonialism. Some kind of nationalism was needed, no? That many newly independent countries quickly went to shit was mostly to do with continuing colonial meddling - the likes of Lumumba never had much of a chance. But someone like Lumumba combined calls for national self-determination with calls for wider solidarity. They're not necessarily mutually exclusive.

No and yes they are.

The bolshevisation of official communism into an ideology of agricultural capitalisation and super-industrialisation and the subsequent alignments in foreign policy respectively very much had to do with it.

*I'm seeing maoism as a subset of marxism-leninism*

 

[mojo pixy]

Right. So you are rejecting the explanation I have already given

There was really no explanation, just an assertion that ''identitypolitics'' is a term thrown around by people who hold power in order to dismiss stuff.
Who? What power? What stuff?
That would be an explanation. So far it's vagueness.

 

[Treacle Toes]

There was really no explanation, just an assertion that ''identitypolitics'' is a term thrown around by people who hold power in order to dismiss stuff.
Who? What power? What stuff?
That would be an explanation. So far it's vagueness.

Nope. I disagree.

Nobody is saying that's 'bad' nor is it necessarily identity politics. It feels like you're still completely misunderstanding what identity politics is.

I think that's easy to do because the term is thrown around in any discussion that touches on sexism / racism / transphobia etc. Its often used as a smear without sufficient explanation.

In much the same way that people bemoan IDpolitickers doing it. It's about power.

It's about cognitive dissonance.

Maybe for some. Why not give an example? I was making a point about the power dynamic. The dismissal tactic is about power IMO. Who gets to decide what it is, where are the boundaries drawn? Again, power.

I've provided far more by way of explanation than you are suggesting. Also, more than you are willing to give. Accusing me of being vague given you've offered nothing more than a statement of fact with regard your own view is pretty rich tbh.

It's about cognitive dissonance.

Again what is the point? Just say you don't want to talk about it.

 

[mojo pixy]

Nope. I disagree.

I've provided far more by way of explanation than you are suggesting. Also, more than you are willing to give. Accusing me of being vague given you've offered nothing more than a statement of fact with regard your own view is pretty rich tbh.

Again what is the point? Just say you don't want to talk about it.

There is nothing by way of explanation in that exchange. Power is not an explanation. I'm asking who does this? Who has power? What power do they have? What are they dismissing? These are valid questions and you're blatantly evading them.

Cognitive dissonance comes into it because
when personal identity comes into conflict with structural inequality
say in the case of a wealthy, well-educated and economically comfy member of a minority
then where does politics lead?

Does it lead to a systemic analysis whereby access to wealth, education and eg healthcare is the main area for struggle?
Or does it lead to an identity-based analysis whereby you can be materially, financially, socially and healthily successful but still oppressed because of who you are?

As expressed elsewhere and better, there's a basic conflict of ideas there, which is really hard to resolve.

Cognitive dissonance appears.

 

[Treacle Toes]

There is nothing by way of explanation in that exchange. Power is not an explanation. I'm asking who does this? Who has power? What power do they have? What are they dismissing? These are valid questions and you're blatantly evading them.

Just as the arguments have been posited here that IDpolitickers dismiss others to 'control' debate, I am saying that it works the other way around too. That was clear from what was posted above IMO.

Using dismissal/accusing people of being identity politickers can also be about power. People on this very thread do this. I am not evading shit diddly.

Cognitive dissonance comes into it because
when personal identity comes into conflict with structural inequality
say in the case of a wealthy, well-educated and economically comfy member of a minority
then where does politics lead?

Does it lead to a systemic analysis whereby access to wealth, education and eg healthcare is the main area for struggle?
Or does it lead to an identity-based analysis whereby you can be materially, financially, socially and healthily successful but still oppressed because of who you are?

As expressed elsewhere and better, there's a basic conflict of ideas there, which is really hard to resolve.

Cognitive dissonance appears.

Oh look...you've finally conceded some level of explanation too. Progress.

 

[mojo pixy]

I always explain if asked. Always.

 

[Treacle Toes]

I always explain if asked. Always.

I asked a few times tbf.

 

[mojo pixy]

So? You still haven't answered my questions.

 

[xenon]

This is something I've thought on quite a bit wrt the liberation struggles against colonialism. Some kind of nationalism was needed, no? That many newly independent countries quickly went to shit was mostly to do with continuing colonial meddling - the likes of Lumumba never had much of a chance. But someone like Lumumba combined calls for national self-determination with calls for wider solidarity. They're not necessarily mutually exclusive.

The colonies had their existent burocracracies destroyed too. Look how they fail now their systym was gutted. Same trick again and again.

 

[kabbes]

To be honest I haven't thought a lot about the word 'identity' and when that arose - I guess I'm using it as a proxy for oppressed group / minority / etc. I do see that the word 'identity' is tied pretty closely to the individual rather than group and therefore fits neatly with a neoliberal outlook.

Identity is not a proxy for group membership, though. Identity is about what makes you an individual. It’s the story you tell yourself about who you are, as well as being how others perceive you via the story they tell themselves about who you are. It’s very much about the self, not the group. This is not my definition, by the way, this is the concept of identity as it is understood in the social sciences.

Maybe that helps explain the potential toxicity of identity politics. It is not the politics of the group. It is the politics of the individual. It is liberalism taken to its extreme. You have the freedom to write your own story of the self, substantially aided by a consumer society that directs you to construct that identity by collecting the trappings of pieces of ready-made identity, magpie-like. As part of that process, you construct a politics that is all about the defence of that identity against wider groups that would seek to weaken it.

None of that means it is bad to have the freedom to define oneself as one wishes, nor does it mean that individuals should be oppressed at all, let alone as a result of their self-definition. But the defence of the identity comes from a place of individualism not group solidarity, and that’s why it is the antithesis of a class analysis.

 

[Treacle Toes]

Identity is not a proxy for group membership, though. Identity is about what makes you an individual. It’s the story you tell yourself about who you are, as well as being how others perceive you via the story they tell themselves about who you are. It’s very much about the self, not the group. This is not my definition, by the way, this is the concept of identity as it is understood in the social sciences.

.

This doesn't make sense to me in some ways because unless we have others to mirror/compare to/reflect off/align or associate with or not there is no reference for the constructed 'self'.

My understanding is that it is very much about both ...of course depending on the where and who you are, to varying degrees, quite naturally and healthily. We still do have more 'community' focused cultures than the crudely described 'individualistic' West don't we? Even in the so called West there are more community based movements, ideas etc. Can you link me to something that argues that it's only ever about the 'individual perception of self' and not about the social group and intergroup associations please?

 

[ManchesterBeth]

I'm not saying that, danny. I can;t be as erudite as you but I agree that if someone dismisses a show of solidarity from soneone else because they aren't someone who has experienced the same shit. Well, that's just wrong and divisive as you say.

The writers you mention I have never heard of before. What I'm trying to say is there seems to be so much backstory and context to it all... you realise that not all of us (well, me certainly) aren't as well read as that?

It's comes across as grandstanding. And that isn't meant to be a harsh snipe at you but the ordinary person isn't always going to have all that knowledge to hand or be possibly inclined to read it. Do you see what I'm saying? You're a very clever poster and one of the most interesting on urban but there's room surely for those of us who are concerned about injustice but maybe not so well informed? Personally, I try to take on board what's said but these days its just too hard to follow.

That's my lot. I promised myself I wouldn't get too stuck into the politics threads anymore for various reasons. Thanks for trying to explain again. I get some of it, which is better than nothing. I'll bow out now.

Tbf given that the writers danny mentions are people of colour, this doesn't do much for your argument does it?

 

[kabbes]

This doesn't make sense to me in some ways because unless we have others to mirror/compare to/reflect off/align or associate with or not there is no reference for the constructed 'self'.

My understanding is that it is very much about both ...of course depending on the where and who you are, to varying degrees, quite naturally and healthily. We still do have more 'community' focused cultures than the crudely described 'individualistic' West don't we? Even in the so called West there are more community based movements, ideas etc. Can you link me to something that argues that it's only ever about the 'individual perception of self' and not about the social group and intergroup associations please?

Of course we have communities and group action and all those good things. And those things are not identity politics unless they are explicitly about the defence of a specific identity. For example, identity involves many facets, including the construction of in-groups and out-groups. If your community project doesn’t define an out-group that is a good sign that it is not the politics of identity, but the politics of class.

I think one reason you are keen to defend identity politics is that you are assigning anything related to minority groups to this bucket. But this is a fundamental misattribution of the politics of identity. You have to keep coming back to what identity means.

 

[LDC]

Maybe that helps explain the potential toxicity of identity politics. It is not the politics of the group. It is the politics of the individual. It is liberalism taken to its extreme.

Good point, thanks.

And just to expand on that, it's the politics of the individual masquerading as the politics of a group to which they belong/claim to belong to. Common politics based on race, gender, sexuality, and ultimately nation.

 

[redsquirrel]

This I'd like to understand more about - what do you think happened 30-40 years ago to make this change?

That's a big topic in itself but I think the piece by Malick danny linked to earlier in the thread summarises things pretty well.

In the 1960s, the struggles for black rights and women’s rights and gay rights were closely linked to the wider project of social transformation. But as the labour movement lost influence and radical struggles faltered, from the 1980s on, so the relationship between the promotion of identity rights and broader social change frayed. Eventually, the promotion of identity became an end in itself, an identity to which an individual’s interests were inexorably linked.

I just read a book about partition (end of empire in India). The historian referred in passing to the Muslim League's movement to create Pakistan as identity politics. Was she wrong to use the term ?

Don't see how I can answer that without the context. But as I said back at the start of the thread identitypolitics is something that really arose in the last 30-40 years. While there are certainly connections to be drawn with earlier political organisation based on ethnicity/religion its not the same thing, kabbes' point about individualism is key here.

How do you think the issues seen prior to 30-40yrs ago that didn't equate identity with the fight for equality?

I don't understand what is wrong with organising with other people who suffer similar oppressions, that has been my experience of the nature of practical activism.

Sorry I'm not sure what you are asking in the first sentence. Regarding the second I agree with what LynnDoyleCooper and kabbes have made. There's nothing (necessarily) wrong with organising with people who suffer similar oppressions.

 

[Athos]

What do you mean by uniquely associated with a set of behaviours? And how would that come about?

The stuff I mentioned much earlier in the thread, which seems to be the sole preserve of the IDPol crowd, i.e.:

Some of the contrived offence-taking, the unwarranted no-platforming, the abuse of the idea of safe spaces, the rejection of facts/logic/truth in favour of experience, the smearing of opponents as bigots, tone policing, etc., etc.. Basically all the really shit stuff from US student politics which seems to have infected much of what calls iteself the left here (though I wouldn't describe it that way).

And you can add stuff like the whole social media 'die cis scum' and 'all white people...' (remember the tweet blaming white women for Nazism in the wake of Heather Heyer's murder, defended by people who claim not to support IDOol?!), all of which is hypocritical, counter-productive, and just plain daft.

It's causes are complex and go back a long way (and are touched on elsewhere in the thread), but the very recent explosion had been facilitated by social media, and fashions for doing politics in a certain way. I think a lot of the IDPol crowd just engage with politics at this superficial level, and probably don't even realise that they are IDPolitikers.

 

[LDC]

I think a lot of the IDPol crowd just engage with politics at this superficial level, and probably don't even realise that they are IDPolitikers.

Indeed, some of the stuff that's come out post-Bookfair is from the position of 'revolutionary identity politics' where people have been calling the bookfair 'liberals' etc. It's this weird confusion of militant liberalism that you see in bits of activism, and also comes from some elements of the 'insurrectionary anarchist scene' where they condemn 'social anarchism' for being reformist, complicit in oppression, etc etc..

 

[danny la rouge]

Its another standard term in political textbooks though, dating back to the 1860s according to wiki Self-determination - Wikipedia
By my understanding the self bit refers to the wider group of selves who identify with the nation. Maybe it should be Selves-determination. But it isnt.
I dont think it means a nation to have a self. I think it means Selves to have a nation.

too hard for a monday night!

The thing about reaching for dictionaries, or in looking for how long a term has been used, is that that doesn't always take account of the way a term is used now or the way it is understood in every context.

In the 19th century, the way that the dominant culture (which writes the dictionaries) thought of the nation-state was not the same way that socialists used to view the nation-state. Today, there are many on the self-identified left who are not interrogating the way the word "self" is used in the first component of self determination; they are eliding the individual and the group.

We need to ask ourselves: who will be doing the determining?

A similar question is to ask oneself whether, when we think of the actions of the current UK Tory government: "do I see this action as something I have done?", "Do I refer to this government as 'we'?", "Is there an 'us' at work here, or a 'them'?"

The problem we are encountering here is analogous with the one that presents an advance for managerial class women as an advance for all women.

That is at the heart of the issue here.

 

[bimble]

Last couple of pages have been really helpful.
Maybe in part the thinking and behaviours being discussed are to some extent a (fumbling and mistaken) reaction to the atomisation and consumer-individualism of the last few decades - so young people ardently defining the self by what in-group they belong to, in a zero sum game type vision of the world, is a substitute for actually feeling part of something real and shared with the people who live next door.

 

[TruXta]

Identity is not a proxy for group membership, though. Identity is about what makes you an individual. It’s the story you tell yourself about who you are, as well as being how others perceive you via the story they tell themselves about who you are. It’s very much about the self, not the group. This is not my definition, by the way, this is the concept of identity as it is understood in the social sciences.

Maybe that helps explain the potential toxicity of identity politics. It is not the politics of the group. It is the politics of the individual. It is liberalism taken to its extreme. You have the freedom to write your own story of the self, substantially aided by a consumer society that directs you to construct that identity by collecting the trappings of pieces of ready-made identity, magpie-like. As part of that process, you construct a politics that is all about the defence of that identity against wider groups that would seek to weaken it.

None of that means it is bad to have the freedom to define oneself as one wishes, nor does it mean that individuals should be oppressed at all, let alone as a result of their self-definition. But the defence of the identity comes from a place of individualism not group solidarity, and that’s why it is the antithesis of a class analysis.

Try social identity theory or any number of sociological theories of identity for a different take on what identity is and how it develops and what it means for how individuals and groups behave. Your points aren't necessarily wrong, just incomplete.

 

[newbie]

Is nationality an identity within the meaning of this thread?

 

[redsquirrel]

Some who have posted seem to think so. And certainly the identity politics of the hard right would argue it is.

 

[kabbes]

Try social identity theory or any number of sociological theories of identity for a different take on what identity is and how it develops and what it means for how individuals and groups behave. Your points aren't necessarily wrong, just incomplete.

Would you say that is what being projected in identity politics?

 

[kabbes]

Is nationality an identity within the meaning of this thread?

Nationality is classically one of the core parts of identity. The nation forms an imagined community

 

[TruXta]

Would you say that is what being projected in identity politics?

I don't understand your question.

 

[kabbes]

I don't understand your question.

You brought up other interpretations of identity — I’m just interested in your thoughts as to the implications of these other interpretations with respect to the subject at hand.

 

[newbie]

Nationality is one of the key components of division between class analysis left and blood and soil right. It affects every single person in a more far-reaching way than any other identity, assigned or self-identified. Yet it has not been explicitly discussed nor listed within the identities that are core to this discussion. Why is that?

 

[kabbes]

Nationality is one of the key components of division between class analysis left and blood and soil right. It affects every single person in a more far-reaching way than any other identity, assigned or self-identified. Yet it has not been explicitly discussed nor listed within the identities that are core to this discussion. Why is that?

It has been explicitly discussed, though, early and often. For example, the discussion that began here. One of the critiques of the nature of the politics of identity is that that has been mentioned on a number of occasions is that the identity politics of the right is nationalism.

Fascism is (a form of) identity politics tbf.

 

[redsquirrel]

Have you read the thread? It's been mentioned a number of times. EDIT at newbie