'Identity Politics'

Michael Hoover hoov at freenet.tlh.fl.us
Thu Sep 23 10:48:54 PDT 1999



> I think the term 'identity politics' (as well as 'political correctness')
> should be retired from use at least in conversations among leftists.
> Yoshie

Agree on both counts. What politics isn't identity politics? I recall reading something that someone wrote more than fifteen years ago about a 'class in-itself' becoming a 'class for-itself.' While post New-Left social movement theory has expressed the principle that 'identity' should be both the vision and practice of politics, an identity oriented paradigm is indeterminate - radical ecologists and anti- abortionists (I refuse to use latter's euphemistic self-identifier), for example.

Re. 'political correctness,' only guerrilla dramatists and monkey- wrenchers propose political stuff they think is politically incorrect. Metamorphosis of the term's meaning from signalling a person's adherence to a particular political line to being an ironic comment on a person's sectarianism to becoming a derisive description of 'the left' is an interesting study in power politics. Term did not gain popular currency through mainstream media until right-wing picked it up. All because feminism (among other political ideas) is the radical notion that women are people too.

For a politically correct critique of political correctness, Michael Hoover (who may be going over limit today but I've been away for awhile and trying to catch up)



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