sftn:
sftn:
sftn:
a major reason I haven’t been active is because I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the pervasiveness of “identitarian” politics here and elsewhere – i.e., the belief that identities are pre-discursive (I have always hated this word but I don’t have another way of explaining it right now), the kind of politics that attach a moral status to identities, the subsequent construction of identities in terms of/against/contrary to identities considered inherently morally-reprehensible … which ultimately results in the necessity and maintenance of those morally-reprehensible identities + the power relations between those identities, and so on – like, identitarian politics are completely futile and harmful
it’s so overwhelming and I don’t know where or how to begin dissolving it since it’s such an important part of how people understand politics in general
Could you elaborate? I’m confused!
I don’t blame U, this post is super dense! let me try to unravel/elaborate it a bit (scroll to the bottom for the conclusion):
first of all, when I say “pre-discursive”, I mean taken for granted – like, it is taken for granted that certain identities exist, and certain things about those identities are taken for granted, too – like, certain things are always associated with a particular identity, and no one really wants to give any thought to why that is or why those identities exist in the first place (and for good reason; I’ll explain below)
two important things to understand about identities in general is that (1) they are necessarily exclusionary, in that if there are some people who are included in a group, there must be some people excluded from that group, which means there must be a set of rules governing the parameters for inclusion/exclusion, and subsequently (2) all identities must be constructed to some degree in terms of/contrary to/against those people that they exclude – like, who is excluded from an identity is just as important to defining that identity as who is included in it, if not more important
that is: there is always a binary formed where any identity is formed, e.g., us/them
especially in the realm of political identities, this is incredibly important, since these relationships between who is included and who is excluded are always defined by some imbalanced power relation between the two – i.e., one is understood as dehumanising the other, so one identity is the dehumanising party and the other is the dehumanised party, and their respective statuses in that power relation become integral to those identities and to the way people understand those identities
as a result a moral status is attached to belonging to either identity – the dehumanising identity is understood as morally-reprehensible, and the dehumanised identity is understood as morally-good
let’s take feminism and the hegemonic man/woman binary as an example, where it is commonly understood women are the subject of feminism, and that men are the dehumanisers and women are the dehumanised, and subsequently that those who fall under “man” are inherently morally-reprehensible and those under “women” are inherently morally-good
thus, in order for the category “woman” and its members to remain understood as morally-good, it/they must continue to be dehumanised by the category “man” and its members; in order for the category “man” and its members to be morally-reprehensible, it/they must continue to dehumanise the category “woman” and its members
see the problem? the category “woman” is necessarily constructed in relation to the category “man” and thus the imbalanced power relation between them must be maintained in order for the category “woman” and its members to continue to understand itself/themselves as morally-good
simultaneous problem: pre-discursiveness, which I explained at the beginning – what is a “woman”, anyway? what is a “man”? do these identities exist outside of their relation to each other, or outside of the social context they have relevance within? is anyone really a “woman” or a “man”? does everyone really fall neatly into one of these two categories? do the members of those categories even really belong to them completely?
that is: is “woman” always dehumanised and never a dehumaniser in any way? is “man” always a dehumaniser and never dehumanised in any way? is “woman” never capable of dehumanising “man”? is “man” never dehumanised by “woman”?
conclusion: when we become invested in a particular identity, we also become invested in the power relation it is situated within and in the maintenance of its moral goodness as the dehumanised party in that power relation – we become invested in a binary that could not possibly accurately represent the people who exist within it; identitarian politics are circular! they are not about transcending power relations! they make it necessary for those power relations to continue to exist so that people can continue to understand themselves as morally-good in terms of them
Thank you!
Okay like, identity politics are shit, but this critique of them is 100%, pure, dyed-in-the-wool post-modernism that’s strawmanning the concept of deconstructing identity. I’m not surprised OP hasn’t been active, because in OPs framework the popular classes are somehow inimically in favour of the maintenance of class society simply because the material relations of the world do indeed construct the dehumanisation of the working classes by the bourgeoisie. In such a framework there is no action to be taken by the us against the them i.e. by the popular classes against their oppressors, because simply accepting that there is an us and a them is somehow reifying their rule (as though the rule of the bourgeoisie would simply evaporate should we not identify them as a political, moral, cultural, and social other). We can’t kill the bourgeoisie with kindness and understanding that we’re all really the same, we kill the bourgeoisie with guns. Kindness and understanding within the confines of justice can come if they surrender.
I don’t mean to be rude but I simply do not understand how U could have derived this from anything in this post or anything I have posted on my blog; rather, I think U’ve misunderstood what I’ve said here and what I’m trying to get at
I’m not saying that identity itself is problematic, that there isn’t an us/them, that there aren’t power relations, or that it is inherently wrong to name an us/them or to name someone “oppressor”; I’m saying that there is something wrong with investing in the stability of a particular social identity that is necessarily located within a power-imbalanced binary – if U insist that the identity persist and remain stable, then U insist that the power imbalance must too; if U insist on deriving moral goodness from your position within a given power relation, then the power relation must persist and remain stable and continue to reliably generate the conditions that produce that moral goodness, i.e., dehumanisation; I’m also criticising the oversimplified way identitarian politics tend to understand power relations and social locations, i.e., if U belong to a particular marginalised identity, it is impossible for U to harm others or marginalise them
I’ve also not said anywhere here that forgoing identity is sufficient for the destruction of hegemony and capitalism! having a cohesive political group identity is necessary for a plethora of reasons that I’m sure I don’t have to list for U
again, the problem isn’t in mere naming or mere group membership! the problem is the moral component and in defining oneself and one’s politics primarily in terms of one’s social identity
How would you organise against capitalism without defining oneself (or more appropriately one’s class) primarily in terms of one’s social/material identity?
Also this is the first time anyone from tumblr has actually responded to a random thing I’ve critiqued so this is pleasantly surprising, thank you very much.
I guess one of the things going on here is that a lot of political activism uses an identity to describe the dehumanization that they’re experiencing and proclaims its final goal to be the end of that dehumanization, and thus the end of the need to identify with that identity. But that identity of ‘shared dehumanization’ is often tied to something real and inherent (or inherent for some) in humans.
For example:
feminism uses the identity of woman to describe the shared experience of dehumanization under the patriarchy. Its end goal is the abolition of the patriarchy, after which there will be zero differences in how men, women and others are treated and as such the social identity of woman will become entirely useless because it no longer signifies anything within society.
But unlike identities like ‘the proletariat’, the word woman is also used to describe gender variation and gender variation seems to some extend to be inherent.
In a post-patriarchial society men, women and others still exist and there will still be people who are transgender and people who are specifically attracted to one or more genders and everything. But in a real post patriarchial society that variation in human experience would be as socially relevant as liking apples or oranges so there would be very little need to have words for it.
But it is very difficult for many people to disconnect ‘woman’ as social identity that will selfdestruct once the patriarchy is destroyed, and ‘woman’ as a form of gender variation that will simply cease to carry the weight it does now once we stop oppressing people based on gender variation.
And since the complete end of the patriarchy is not likely to be reached any time soon, a lot of feminists accept that the identity ‘woman’ will probably be needed for most of their lifetime and they do not talk much about the endgoal of selfdestruction.
And then you get that really nasty, mean streak in people where they base their selfworth upon that identity and add moral values to it and pretend that a social power relation is absolute and identical to being a good or a bad peron. Which is petty and counter productive.
But does that automatically mean that those people no longer want to abolish the patriarchy? I don’t see any proof of that.
QueerAnarchism 