Out of all the buzzwords online and in the culture wars, I understand “identity politics” the least. I know it has a basis in theory but it seems like every individual person has their own definition of what it means. Chuds use it basically interchangeably with “woke”, libs use it as a cudgel against marginalized groups who call them out on their moderate-fascist bullshit, and for a while I was under the impression that it was a nonsense term only used by our enemies.
But I see leftists here and in the wild using the term and I lack a theoretical understanding of its meaning and what phenomenon exactly it’s describing.
It is a nonsense term and I am inherently skeptical of any leftist that invokes it. We already have terms like recuperation and cooptation that better describe what you are probably thinking of.
“Identity politics” was literally coined by reactionaries.
The leftist term is usually intersectionality.
To me, identity politics is intersectionality without material analysis. It often manifests as someone uses identity as a shield against criticism. Israelis use Judaism this way. Non-white liberals use it as a way to reject anti-capitalism, and non-white radlibs use it as an excuse to be “anti-authoritarian.” I see this a lot with queer rad/liberals as well. White, cis leftists tend to overcorrect and reject intersectional analysis and live up to ancestral crackerdom, but it doesn’t excuse the use of one’s identity as a way to reject accountability.
White, cis leftists tend to overcorrect and reject intersectional analysis and live up to ancestral crackerdom
This is now my favorite way of putting this lmao
From a leftist perspective, we argue that our perception of society is shaped by our material conditions. Marginalized groups experience different material conditions from non-marginalized people with the same class position. That means that we, as marginalized people, are able to recognize systemic flaws, oppressive structures and intersections of capitalism and racism, or patrirarchy and queerphobia, or ableism that more privileged groups do not notice (or do notice but deliberately or subsconsciously defend to uphold their relative privilege).
This both means that members of such marginalized groups can contribute a more comprehensive, wider perspective on the totality of capitalist reality, and that we are often more easily radicalized and less prone to act as labor aristocracy. Both isn’t necessarily the case, false consciousness happens in this area as well as it does under traditional class politics, examples being “pick mes”, respectability politics, black capitalism, rainbow imperialism etc. Experiencing marginalization does not automatically make one a comrade, just as being exploited as a worker doesn’t. But in general, it makes it easier to recognize how capitalism impacts us, where liberal democracy and rule of law fall short of their promises and so on.
