'Identity Politics'

Jim heartfield jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk
Thu Sep 23 13:22:46 PDT 1999


Aren't all these attempts at policing the language precisely what the critics objected to as political correctness? I'm not sure any of us is in a position to 'retire' language that is in use.

In message <199909231748.NAA05361 at fn3.freenet.tlh.fl.us>, Michael Hoover <hoov at freenet.tlh.fl.us> writes
>> 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)

-- Jim heartfield



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list