Identity politics, in various forms, have become perhaps the political ideology of our time and place. I suspect this is true in many places. But I limit my scope in this post to recent politics in the United States. People sometimes toss around the related term ‘identitarianism.’
The trouble is that we don’t really know what ‘identity politics’ means. Or, perhaps worse, we all know what it means. It’s just that no one agrees on what it is they all know.
I’m going to define ‘identity politics’ and ‘identitarianism’ in this post. I don’t claim that my definitions are the right ones, or that everyone else’s are wrong. I’m just laying out how I’ll be using those terms in this blog. Hopefully you’ll find this both explanatory and helpful when looking at real problems and issues.
Definitions
I use the terms as follows:
‘Identity politics’ picks out any politics aimed at advancing the interests of a discernible identity group or groups.
‘Identitarianism’ picks out any politics or movement that reduces political issues entirely or almost entirely to issues of identity.
I hope it’s clear from this that I do not use ‘identity politics’ and ‘identitarianism’ interchangeably. Some people on the left may do that. [Note: the first link in that sentence, while mainly about these issues, also contains some bad discussion of trans issues that many trans readers may find upsetting). Others have done a better job than me of explaining the historical usage of the term ‘identitarianism.’ It turns out Adorno coined the term. Who would’ve known? It’s interesting, but the origins of words is not what concerns me here.
So, I have no real beef with the definitions others want to give to these terms.
What should also be clear is that identitarianism isn’t necessarily political at all. But, when it is, it takes the form of a narrow kind of identity politics. However, many (probably most) forms of identity politics are non-identitarian. And so, I define those terms differently because I think there are two distinct historical and philosophical movements at work here. They play out differently with respect to the broader left.
Political Implications of Identity Politics
I’m going to be saying a lot about this distinction in future posts. But we can begin with some political divisions. Identity politics are compatible with left-wing politics. But it’s not just that. Certain kinds of identity politics are essential to left-wing activism in our time and place.
People have spent a lot of time talking about the oppression of specific identity groups. They use this work to build coalitions with other groups. The best identity politics groups work with an eye toward the eventual unification of the left. Identity politics is a phase of getting clear about oppression that leads the way to coalition-building and eventual left-unification. This vision is something all of us can endorse and work toward.
Political Implications of Identitarianism
Identitarianism is something much different. It’s a full repudiation of the class politics of the left. The identitarian replaces class with one major form of identity (e.g., race-identitarianism) or all forms of identity (i.e., intersectional-identitarianism). For this reason, the movement itself is, by definition, not a left-wing movement. This is despite the fact that many identitarians use left-wing jargon. And even recruit from within the left.
Indeed, identitarianism rejects the most basic left-wing narrative about the world. In light of this, it can hardly be considered a left-wing view. Without the appeal to class, identitarians must re-biologize or re-naturalize (or somehow reify) race, gender, or other identities. They need to do this to make sense of how identities can meet such an explanatory burden.
In practice, identitarianism can be found on both the ‘left’ and the right. Trumpism itself is arguably a kind of right-wing identitarian view. It reduces politics to the fight against various affronts to the white and/or white male identity group. Without a grounding in class, identitarianism slides into a politics of promoting the interests of upper and/or upper middle income people and groups.
A Slide Into Nihilism?
One key contention of mine in this blog will be that identitarianism has become more popular, both on the political left and the political right, and that this is bad for all of us. In its less problematic forms, it promotes a politics of guilt, shame, and moral haranguing. In its more problematic forms, it promotes a politics of apathy, despair, directionless anger, or nihilism.
When I look into the political future, I see directionless anger and nihilism. I think that’s where we’re headed, and it’s a concern.
Leftist Responses
While fighting identitarianism on the left, we must embrace and advance certain forms of identity politics. Blanket left-wing condemnations of identity politics often fail to recognize that there’s a good model of identity politics within a broader class politics of the left.
This tension within the left between good forms of identity politics and bad appeals to identity is going to be central for a long time. It extends well beyond the realm of elections and into our grassroots activist work. And so, getting clear about this distinction is a first step toward resolving the tension in a way that helps all of us.
Postscript
This post is one of a series I’ve identified as central to my blog. You can find the others by clicking the ‘Foundations’ category. If you’re looking for other posts where the issues in this post are key, check out:
Mistaken Identity
Between Ta-Nehisi Coates and Touré Reed
Capitalism and Racism: Which is Prior?
Is Trumpism a Fascist Movement?
Second Postscript
I’ve recently published an eBook – A Primer on Trumpism – exploring some of the relationship between Trumpism and identitarianism, and I’m offering it at a very good price. So, you should go check it out!
Third Postscript – January 1, 2022
More than three years later, this is still one of the blog’s most-read posts. I get lots of comments on it, and I want to address one kind.
The way I define ‘identity politics’ above remains vague in one way – the phrase ‘discernible identity group.’ I don’t actually define ‘identity’ above, and people mean different things by it.
To some extent, I think that’s fine. The ‘identity’ of identity politics includes appeals to one’s self – one’s authentic self – shared by enough people to organize around it. In US politics, this almost always means traits like race or gender. I have those things in mind in the analysis of identity politics I provide in this and other posts.
We could have an identity politics, say, of being a NASCAR fan or a gamer. We could also have one of partisan identities. But that’s less common, and those kinds of identity politics require a new analysis. Usually one that appeals to sports metaphors – e.g., people who take on a partisan identity as a core feature of their selves tend to follow politics the way sports fans watch their favorite teams. That’s not the analysis I’m doing in this post.
Sold. I like your distinction.
I think my favorite retort to those who reject identity politics (in your sense) goes along these lines: IP is unavoidable because, historically, IP was built into legal and political structures explicitly (the Bill of Rights didn’t include YUGE portions of people, e.g.). So, those who advance IP primarily do so *in reaction* to those who framed their own power using identity. Now the indirect beneficiaries say, “We don’t want to hear about identity at all.” But that itself reinforces the disparity in power; it says, “We’re still not listening to you.”
IP will never go away. But you’re right to say that we should move past identitarianism; I think it should be resisted, minimally, on the grounds that singular explanations for human behaviors at any level are going to be insufficient.
Yeah, the fact that it’s built into legal structures is important.
Also important is that a lot of historical left-wing politics has been identity politics trying to pass itself off as ‘class politics.’ When groups fought for benefits only to white men working in skilled trades, they weren’t really engaging in full class politics. They were just doing a kind of identity politics of white men in industrial labor.
A lot of identity politics arose in order to push for more inclusion in the labor movement.