Arash wrote:
>
> Joanna wrote:
>
> >The reason why everybody is playing the label/identity game is first
> >because this has become the (degraded) language of politics since the
> >seventies and two, because we are so drained of any kind of identity
> >that we hysterically hang on to whatever is thrown our way in order to
> >feel that we have some kind of meaningful existence.
>
> I think it's wrong to go so far in embracing an identity that you forget
> your common humanity, but don't people have a right to see themselves in
> terms of an identity if it speaks to their experience?
>
People have a "right" to do about any damn thing they can get away with, and in terms of how one views oneself I suppose what one can get away with is extensive.
But identity politics (in the original and narrow sense) has little to do with personal sense of identity -- it is a _political_ theory REPLACING class politics (as well as women's liberation and black liberation) with politics as the sum of various competing identities. It was a way of reconciling oneself to the ebbing of political activity and the beginning of the counter-offensive of capitalism in the mid-'70s.
BUT since then many people have applied the phrase "identity politics" to the struggles against racism and male-supremacy in the '60s and early '70s. For example, some idiots and/or racists have claimed that all-black political caucuses or organizations (e.g., the BRC) are instances of "identity politics." I have even seen references to SNCC and the Black Panthers as being instances of identity politics. And that is pure nonsense.
Carrol
> Arash
>
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