A short primer of identity politics

A person is an X, where X is any type of person, iff he considers himself to be an X and represents himself as such to other persons.

Every person is a person of some type. Types of persons are demographical categories recognized by the state.

It is socially and political important what type of person one is, and so one should know it.

These identities are normally represented as incontestable matters of natural fact.

Oppression is defined as treatment recognized as adverse that a person suffers that is attributed to his type.

To claim social oppression or disadvantage is a social advantage in milieux that recognize it.

Such claims provide persons with opportunities to try to achieve social and political recognition, and to achieve benefits or limit harms from social institutions and the state.

Identity politics makes claims on the state on behalf of individuals considered as members of the social groups, and this membership as their identity.

American politics today is almost inconceivable without it. Historical reasons for this include the claims of the dissenting protestant groups that partly founded the early colonies, and slavery and its aftermath.

Marxist politics foundered partly because it understood capitalism as a war of classes, because the capital/labor dynamics were theorized as a social conflict between two social groups.

Capitalists and workers would assert their identities in order to further their interests. The working class could be managed more effectively in some cases if it identified as a subject and then sought its interests within the existing system. And so can you with your identity.

A symbolic politics, which may be defined as social contestations based or centered on claims for the use of concepts and statements, is a frequent concern today of people with university educations who are broadly part of the professional class, and frequently involved in the management of activities and persons. When involved with social struggles arising from or articulating non-symbolic claims, people in this class will tend to articulate them as symbolic ones. ‘Identity politics’ on the ‘left’ often arises in this way. (On the right, it is usually reaction to the claims of others).

Identities are conferred by language. And belong to extant ways of thinking. They are 'ideological'. States need citizens to have recognizable identities. And these then cannot be in question.

What is crucial is not whether or not the identity appears to be a characteristic of the person bodily, as it is (often, not always) with race and gender. What is crucial is the utility of its recognition, for the purposes involved, more than its obviousness or credibility.

Identities are always problematic and contested. They can even be refused. Perhaps it makes the most sense to consider them as part of a toolkit, usefully tactically sometimes.

Identity and symbolic politics are a trap for people on the left. They persist because they help people translate social problems into political claims.

When you wake up in the morning, do you know who you are? If you were awakened in your sleep by an intruding soldier and asked if you know who you are, you may have a problem, what is it?