The full thread title I would suppose would more accurately be "Intersectional Identity politics vs Liberation politics," but that is hardly as catchy as the Intersectional Idpol General - it's like poetry, it rhymes.
Thread rules for safest of space conduct:
- When conducting discussions on identity politics, tread carefully and respectfully. Most importantly, do not insultingly use identities as a substitute for arguments, pro or against. That also includes "ur a fookin wite male" jokes, and accusations of being an SJW or [insert equivalent political phrases, politically correct or incorrect].
- Don't be an arse, also for sake of time, generally avoid cursing in posts wherever possible. People, when defensive, will usually err towards reading a post in the most hostile way imaginable, so try to reduce leeway for hostile interpretations.
- Avoid the usage of "regressive." It gets very confusing to see multiple types of progressive all calling each other regressive whilst maintaining theirs is the true progressivism.
With that out of the way, this is what the thread is about:
“Identity Politics” and the Project of Liberation
Historically, the loaded term “identity politics” has been used to describe a range of ideas, behaviors and actions under the rubric of moving beyond a class-reductive analysis of power. From the Black Panther Party to Sisters Uncut, identity-based movements have helped to carve out spaces for self-organisation and for the development of a theoretical understanding of constructed identities as a category of power. This has been critical for movements of colour, anti-colonial revolutions, feminist struggles and queer liberation movements. In particular, these spaces have been vital in complicating wider movements; for example, during the struggles of the 1960s and 70s in the West, the creation of women of colour-only spaces intervened in the dominant feminist discourses, creating a more enriched, nuanced analysis of the intersectional nature of patriarchy, capitalism and white supremacy.
The moment at which we are making this intervention is one in which the language of “privilege baiting”, positionality politics, confession and “safe spaces” have come to dominate self-defined radical theory and praxis. Indeed, identity politics has taken on a negative valence recently – with many preferring to identify instead with “liberation politics” – due to the theorisation and organization along racial, gender or class lines having a tendency to reinforce the very identity categories activists and scholars are seeking to overcome. Critics of identity politics claim that it reduces political and radical collective action to individualism and that it effaces the possibility of solidarity and movement building. For many, this new construction of identity politics constitutes a problematic shift from intersectionality as an analysis of power and an understanding of oppressions as social relations to reductive essentialism and fragmentation. Perhaps more seriously, this conception has been read as a reproduction of the power of capital and the state, whereby focus on the individual – as a confessor, oppressor or victim – has come to replace the theoretical and political work of dismantling the structures of domination.
This is from an
open call for papers being done by Oxford, in an admirable attempt to reconcile a progressive academia which is currently in the process of self-consumption due to endless conflict between tumblr feminists, neoliberals and idpol, trigger warnings, safe spaces, smug e.t.c, with the issues concerned:
•Identity politics as/against neoliberalism
•Identity politics versus intersectionality/liberation
•Identity politics and its interaction with neoliberalism/nationalism/the state
•Privilege-baiting and identity politics
•The politics of innocence and the carceral/security state
•Anti-colonial/de-colonial struggles, and identity politics
•Tumblr feminism, online activism and confession as political work
•Radical critiques of cultural appropriation
•Queer liberation and identity politics
•Safe spaces and the politics of comfort
•Trigger warnings, trauma and the state
•Transnational gentrification discourses
•Recovering subaltern studies as anti-capitalist resistance
•Microaggressions and social relations
•Homonationlism
•Whiteness, white fragility and European fascism
•The future of radical movement building and solidarity
•Europeanness and economic crisis
•Victimhood, “safety” and power
•Trauma Exhibitionism
•Anti-Muslim racisms and the Left
Being altogether quite vast.
Each topic could itself own its own tumblr, but the overarching conflict is this; has identity politics and intersectionality gone horribly awry, to the point where it perpetuates the structures progressivism set out to destroy?
I myself no longer sincerely believe in or support progressivism, so I have no gut feeling on this, my days of instinctively understanding progressivism are a memory to me. So I went onto /leftypol/ and observed their discussions on identity politics, and their forum seems to focus on conflicts between 3rd worldism vs 1st worldism class struggle, and anarcho-feminism vs marxism sans idpol.
Taken from their discussions. Note, the soviet trash man had the caption: "reject divisive identity politics!", but upon uploading it to imgur it got lost due to transparency issues.
The Liberation(ers?) mocked identity politics for having gone far off the deep end, the meme they use to describe this phenomenon usually involves a picture of insane identity politics with the caption of "pure ideology" (ideology being of the Marxist definition, a collection of beliefs set by the bourgeoisie to get the proletariat to accept oppression). For example, I saw this used in a critique of "adultism," of how adults discriminate against children and oppress them by refusing them total agency in all matters, and to deny them such agency is to use the same logic used to justify slavery. Their response: this is PURE IDEOLOGY
Less joky and more serious of their arguments though, was how Western liberalism had become the face of smugness. Of how in the 50s the face of the left was the working class man, but steadily over time has grown to become wealthy, well educated and elite liberals, convinced of an intellectual superiority over the working class - who by voting against them, are voting against their own interests, and are only too "low information" to grasp that their superiors know what's best for them. If you followed the Brexit referendum, one of the things that was abhorrent was how in response to losing even in safe strongholds,
globally liberal media responded by slating the Leave victory as that of the poor, uneducated hateful, versus the wealthy, educated enlightened, completely ignoring that they lost in cities where the men clashed with Thatcher's police as the Unions were destroyed in the name of leftism before many of them were even born. "A movement once fleshed out in union halls and little magazines shifted into universities and major press, from the center of the country to its cities and elite enclaves." - Anonymous poster
They posit that these urban elites have fostered through identity politics, a system which does not aid class struggle, and instead enforces the ideology of the bourgeoisie. To quote two particularly passionate posters:
"This is the difference between, right wing extremists like pol, the alt right, neo nazis, at least they are honest. You know where they stand, you dont agree with them, but they aren't trying to be your friend. The SJW, the moderate, the gated community corporate liberal, they are the ones that wear the mask of the left, "oh, I love gays and blacks and trans people... Just don't move into my neighbourhood :
DDD" - Anonymous poster
On behalf of identitiy politics:
The Anarcho-Feminist perspective was pretty hard to find cos they just shitposted in other people's threads and didn't make their own, and they didn't seem to agree on much. But in regards to their idpol arguments, these ones didn't find adequate rebuttal in leftypol:
In mixed gendered marxism, women can often end up having a smaller voice than men.
Sometimes literally:"Consider volume. Men often actually SHOUT in discussions. I’ve seen conversations - not pub conversations, or even emotive conversations, just normal conversations - in which the men are bellowing loudly and the women are occasionally saying something quiet. Consider tone. Being abrupt, sarcastic, relaxed, angry, etc. are all modes of power which make statements about the strength of your argument. Hesitating, sounding nervous, looking around, etc., are all modes of weakness. You have easier access to the power modes as a man - consider not using them." But also in terms of political capital, access to media and most importantly - to ears.
Then there was the international intersectional argument, whose strongest one I saw I think speaks for itself:
There are considerably more arguments against identity politics in /leftypol/ than arguments for it, and they are so hostile to identity politics, that the detestation of it is itself, expressed through memes. Thus I cannot trust /leftypol/ to be providing the strongest arguments in favour of it, and my perusals of tumblr were altogether wasted time. It is simply impossible to talk to people who mentally breakdown at the mention of the words trauma, or find everything ableist or some other ism.
So anyone whose interested, whose case do you think is strongest, the Liberation Progressives or the Identity Politics Progressives?
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Topic: Intersectional Idpol General (Read 5586 times)