> Indeed. "Identity politics" was a passing fad of the '80s, marking the
> end (for the time being) of the struggle politics of the 1955-75. Rights
> for gays is NOT identity politics. Anti-lynching is NOT identity
> politics. The Black Liberation Movement, the Women's Liberation
> Movement, the Gay Liberation Movement, and so forth had nothing whatever
> to do with identity politics.
They also also didn't spring from the academy, although some of them were certainly absorbed by it. That absorption into identity politics stripped them of their class nature and whatever revolutionary potential they might have had. Identity politics is the gentrification of legitimate grievances.