Those being structurally oppressed by the state because of their identity often just want parity with those not being oppressed (rights) - I don't know where you get this idea they're all revolutionaries.
Identity Politics: the impasse, the debate, the thread.
- Thread starter danny la rouge
- Start date
Those being structurally oppressed by the state because of their identity often just want parity with those not being oppressed (rights) - I don't know where you get this idea they're all revolutionaries.
Athos
Well-Known Member
Athos
Well-Known Member
Oh... ok, then. I was genuinely trying to understand. But no matter.
I think that's talking about something different tbh. My mate isn't shunning being working class because of stigma - it's because he would feel fraudulent to claim it, because his parents have a nice house in Oxfordshire.
alsoknownas
some bloke
In my first post (which I'm now echoing) I did say 'if they are somewhat enlightened'. I am aware that many people fighting inequality are not trying to smash the system, hence things like a focus on Black entrepreneurship, etc. But I'm making the case that the immediate-term is very important if your basic rights are absent. I would phrase it something like - 'Thanks for the pamphlet brother, now would you just get your foot off my neck...?'.
ska invita
back on the other side
Could go back even farther - Marcus Garvey for example:
"He believed that the Communist Party wanted to use the African-American vote "to smash and overthrow" the capitalistic white majority to "put their majority group or race still in power, not only as communists but as white men" (Jacques-Garvey, 1969). The Communist Party wanted to have as many supporters as possible, even if it meant having blacks, but Garvey discouraged this. He had the idea that communists were only white men who wanted to manipulate blacks so they could continue to have control over them. Garvey said, "It is a dangerous theory of economic and political reformation because it seeks to put government in the hands of an ignorant white mass who have not been able to destroy their natural prejudices towards Negroes and other non-white people. While it may be a good thing for them, it will be a bad thing for the Negroes who will fall under the government of the most ignorant, prejudiced class of the white race" (Nolan, 1951).[24]"
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TruXta
tired
It's late and I haven't had enough sleep lately. I'll try again another day.
Athos
Well-Known Member
Cool.
ska invita
back on the other side
i see nothing in Danny's OP that answers my question. If its clear to you and you also see this massive difference then please help me understand it. How is the experience of a young Palestinian girl growing up in Jerusalem forming a personal identity different from a manifestation of identity politics in her? What is the difference? I really don't see one.I would define identity politics pretty much as Danny has.
Athos
Well-Known Member
You've acknowledged identity politics aren't the only way to tackle those inequalities; I think others are better.
I don't believe that uniting around a common feature is necessarily always identity politics. Take Marxist feminists for example.
The dangers of identity politics were set out in the op.
Fascist's have risked their lives to oppose the state on certain issues. There's nothing intrinsically socialist about doing so.
There's a danger though in focusing on identity alone that the groups you're supporting are anything but progressive. For example I'm supportive of black liberation groups but that doesn't mean I'd support nationalists or separatists.
Athos
Well-Known Member
Her identity is that she is a Palestinian girl (amongst other things). Her politics needn't be identity politics (as Danny described); she could be a Marxist, for example.
It's like comparing pity with pineapples; identity and identity politics are different classes of thing.
Everybody has an identity, but that doesn't mean everyone's politics are identity politics.
None of which is to deny that people's politics are informed by their experiences, of course.
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danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Well, what are you actually asking?
Identity is something we all have, or we wouldn't be functioning individuals. Identity isn't just one thing (being Palestinian, being into jazz, being short tempered), but the range of things that make you who you are. Nor is identity homogenous across groups. There is no such thing as one true way to be Palestinian, for example.
But that's isn't politics in and of itself; it's identity.
I presume you chose that example because there is oppression of Palestinians by the Israeli state. Yes, there is. But as I outline in the OP, it I said not necessary to resort to identity politics in order to oppose oppression. Indeed, I argue you're better not to.
Identitypolitics is about ignoring social structure and instead focussing on an appeal to recognise and validate an individual or a group identity. In that way structural challenges are pushed down the priorities and replaced by recognising individuals abstacted from their class position. An identitypolitics response in Palestine might be to try to get an individual Palestinian into an elevated business position, or to be on some committee the Israeli state can deal with, while lives for the mass of Palestinians remain unchanged.
An identitypolitics response to Leo Varadkar's elections in Ireland is to say "hurray! The gay son of an Indian immigrant is Taoiseach!" but not to inquire what his politics are and how the lives of gay people and children of Indian immigrants will be improved. It is seen as something worth celebrating in itself.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
I don't have a PPE degree and I understood it.
I'm sorry if I didn't explain myself clearly; I didn't realise I wasn't. What in particular didn't you understand?
friendofdorothy
Solidarity against neoliberalism!
sorry Mr La Rouge - most of it. Maybe I'm just tired, will re read tomorrow.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
That's class as culture as opposed to class as structure. This is the issue of base and superstructure. They are related of course, but different things.
Yes absolutely - I guess my point was, that the identarianism has encouraged people to view class only as culture.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Maybe I didn't explain very well. I'm not offended!
It might also be that what identitypolitics is actually proposing is often pretty nebulous.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Yes, indeed. We're agreeing here - I'm just explaining my thinking aloud for anyone who is reading.
Yes, a difference for Marxist feminists is that their theory involved an expansion of the concept of production and described how the oppression of women, control over the reproduction of the labour force, could be made sense of in the context of capitalist exploitation. So an expansion of categories rather than fragmentation and division.
But I can swap identities like coats. Depending on quite a large range of positions, the most venal being, 'how does this benefit me', I can cheerfully bring my addict identity to the fore while dismissing this when I prioritise my parent identity...or a broader (and not uncontested) 'woman'. In some ways, I like to pretend I have more choice/power/agency than I probably do. How fixed or mutable is class though? I have certainly never meandered a centimetre out of working class range...and it isn't really as clear as economic material position either. God, I used to be so certain and now I am in the land of the vague.
Am going to bed to think hard...fairly sure something obvious is eluding me and my brain is a little numb.
Am going to bed to think hard...fairly sure something obvious is eluding me and my brain is a little numb.
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danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
ska invita
back on the other side
I chose that as an example because the oppression linked to identity is crystal clear and as good as inescapable for the hypothetical girl. Leaving the sexism she would experience aside for a moment, this hypothetical girl whilst forming her identity will inevitably have her politicised 'Oppressed-Palestinian' identity marked on her, whether she wants it or not. She cant choose not to have it.
The example you gave that an identity politics response necessarily = something like getting a Palestinian into an elevated business position <<<<is a very specific and shit thing. Thats not the way I understand identity politics though. If a Palestinian worked effortlessly to stop illegal settlements in what they understood to be Palestinian lands, that would fall under identity politics. It doesn't in anyway require thinking about larger social structure. Its still justified.
Fighting for token positions within capitalism is shit, clearly. But thats a complaint about something else. The goals maybe smaller than smashing capitalism, but there are fights there that still need fighting.
What I take from that piece is theres nothing wrong with "identity politics" per se - it was good and important in the 60s he seems to suggest, as it ran concurrently and overlapping with a wider struggle. Whats fucked is that the wider universalist liberation politics Malik talks about has faded and so this is all thats left, and within that vacuum it becomes problematic.
But whose fault is that? Whose fault is it that wider universal liberatory project isnt there enough? Is it the fault of gay men who continue to campaign against homophobia? Is it the fault of black communities who are fighting police prejudice? To me those are two examples of identity politics - people responding politically to oppression that they experience directly due to their identity - an identity they have no choice about.
To me the problem with the attack on identity politics is it seems to blame those already experiencing oppression beyond/additional to their class oppression for not doing something about The Grand Injustice of the Superstructure. Somehow being selfish and wrapped up in their own problems. Thats how it comes across. And usually the people complaining about it are not experiencing these particular oppressions themselves.
But having already had a secure and reasonably privileged upbringing, this does tend to give you a different set of expectations. I am not advocating some magical aspirational thinking - the universe is what you expect and make of it etc,..but it must be different for someone who has never gotten further than a council estate (social capital?).
In my efforts to devolve from personal experiential stuff...and take a wider structural viewpoint, I am somewhere feeling a bit erased myself to be honest.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Not sure anything's eluding you. Class is a tricky one as it's certainly fluid for a person through their lifetime, or can be. My take on that is that for political discussion, it's important not to think of, say, Alan Sugar as working class. That he has a working class background would be a better way to describe him, which is frankly irrelevant when considering his role and that of the class to which he now belongs in the workings of economies. Going the other way around, I used to have a neighbour, fifty-something, skint, with drink problem and some MH issues, just about getting by in a council flat, who spoke kind of posh and went to a private school. He had a middle-class or upper-middle-class background, but that certainly wasn't his status by the time I knew him.
Defining class is another huge can of worms. God help me I more or less agree with phildwyer on this one in that today, many people have a mixed relationship with the means of production, being to some extent both workers and bourgeois with potential for income from owning stuff. Easiest and clearest way to work out your economic class is to have a look at your bank account and see how much comes in every month, plus add-ons like stuff you own, stuff you might inherit, and social capital like education status or who you know.
Yep,littlebabyjesus, I did that political popquiz on here and despite my (last minute) education (which I longed out for years), I am still depressingly firmly wedged in the precariat.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
That crams a lot into a short space. What evidence is there that 'the communist party wanted as many supporters as possible, even if it meant having blacks'? In the 1920s and 30s, there was support for various black activists in the States from the Soviet Union, as I understand it because they saw black Americans as those who would drive a revolution there. Not as an add-on, but at the core.
What Happened to the Dream of a "Separate Negro State" in America?
alsoknownas
some bloke
Very much my own experience of it.
Treacle Toes
Time
Surprise, surprise, mine too.
I have arrived at the point that I believe that because of their own 'identitypolitics' and lack of those experiences, some people can't imagine what it's like. Others simply aren't interested in trying to understand.
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Puddy_Tat
naturally fluffy
I must admit to some confusion over this.
I've considered myself fairly 'left' (actual party allegence has moved about a bit) since I started giving active thought to such things (somewhere around late primary school / early secondary school years) which was at the time of what was dismissed by many as 'loony left' with ideas like opposing racism and homophobia and so on as well as standing up for groups of workers under attack by the bosses / thatcher government, and i have been a trade union member (and at times activist) for most of my working life.
At its simplest, i suppose the 11-ish year old me saw it as a choice between siding with the overgrown playground bullies in the form of the bosses, the racists etc, or standing up to them.
As a trade union member, there's the old adage about 'an injury to one is an injury to all' - so i believe that unions and their political parties should come to the defence of whatever group of workers is under attack - whether that's workers in one sector, of one employer, or across the workplace structure if it's workers under attack because they are whatever minority.
to me, the working class i recognise includes people from ethnic minorities, people who are lesbian / gay / bi / trans (and so on), people who are disabled - and some who are any combination of these.
and by 'working class' i mean the 'workers by hand or brain' (to quote the old clause 4) - the "you're not working class enough to be in our gang" approach of some far left types suits the divide and rule of the tories and their tame press very nicely.
Have I been doing it wrong all this time?
Am I really just a soggy liberal?
As I said on the other thread, some of the the noises coming from left (or at least some of the the white, straight male bits of it) seem to be saying that those pesky minorities should just shut up.
And that challenging racism / homophobia / trans-phobia and so on is 'divisive'
And then you get some people who claim to be 'left' celebrating Trump's election win over 'liberal identity politics' hilary clinton.
Seriously?
Challenging prejudice is divisive, coming out with it isn't? Bollocks to that.
Pretending to talk to (some of) the working class by scapegoating other bits of it? Bollocks to that as well.
Having said that, there's a lot wrong with the new labour style of 'left' (and it's equivalents in other countries) and just shouting 'racist' at people or calling them 'deplorables' for being taken in by right wing bullshit doesn't seem to be the best way to do the agitate / educate / organise thing...
I've considered myself fairly 'left' (actual party allegence has moved about a bit) since I started giving active thought to such things (somewhere around late primary school / early secondary school years) which was at the time of what was dismissed by many as 'loony left' with ideas like opposing racism and homophobia and so on as well as standing up for groups of workers under attack by the bosses / thatcher government, and i have been a trade union member (and at times activist) for most of my working life.
At its simplest, i suppose the 11-ish year old me saw it as a choice between siding with the overgrown playground bullies in the form of the bosses, the racists etc, or standing up to them.
As a trade union member, there's the old adage about 'an injury to one is an injury to all' - so i believe that unions and their political parties should come to the defence of whatever group of workers is under attack - whether that's workers in one sector, of one employer, or across the workplace structure if it's workers under attack because they are whatever minority.
to me, the working class i recognise includes people from ethnic minorities, people who are lesbian / gay / bi / trans (and so on), people who are disabled - and some who are any combination of these.
and by 'working class' i mean the 'workers by hand or brain' (to quote the old clause 4) - the "you're not working class enough to be in our gang" approach of some far left types suits the divide and rule of the tories and their tame press very nicely.
Have I been doing it wrong all this time?
Am I really just a soggy liberal?
As I said on the other thread, some of the the noises coming from left (or at least some of the the white, straight male bits of it) seem to be saying that those pesky minorities should just shut up.
And that challenging racism / homophobia / trans-phobia and so on is 'divisive'
And then you get some people who claim to be 'left' celebrating Trump's election win over 'liberal identity politics' hilary clinton.
Seriously?
Challenging prejudice is divisive, coming out with it isn't? Bollocks to that.
Pretending to talk to (some of) the working class by scapegoating other bits of it? Bollocks to that as well.
Having said that, there's a lot wrong with the new labour style of 'left' (and it's equivalents in other countries) and just shouting 'racist' at people or calling them 'deplorables' for being taken in by right wing bullshit doesn't seem to be the best way to do the agitate / educate / organise thing...
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