9 ms·

Against Identity Politics

66 points by jeffreyrogers 8y ago

reifnir 8y ago
paywall
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
dcre 8y ago
A critical take on Fukuyama's new book: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/03/francis-fukuyama-postpones-the-end-of-history https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/03/francis-fukuya...
- neonate 8y ago
  Thanks, that's quite interesting. The best part is the section on Kojève.
- nerdponx 8y ago
  Fukuyama thinks he knows what that something is, and his answer is summed up in the title of his new book, “Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). The demand for recognition, Fukuyama says, is the “master concept” that explains all the contemporary dissatisfactions with the global liberal order: Vladimir Putin, Osama bin Laden, Xi Jinping, Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, gay marriage, ISIS, Brexit, resurgent European nationalisms, anti-immigration political movements, campus identity politics, and the election of Donald Trump. It also explains the Protestant Reformation, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, Chinese Communism, the civil-rights movement, the women’s movement, multiculturalism, and the thought of Luther, Rousseau, Kant, Nietzsche, Freud, and Simone de Beauvoir. Oh, and the whole business begins with Plato’s Republic. Fukuyama covers all of this in less than two hundred pages. How does he do it? Not well. Some of the problem comes from misunderstanding figures like Beauvoir and Freud; some comes from reducing the work of complex writers like Rousseau and Nietzsche to a single philosophical bullet point. A lot comes from the astonishingly blasé assumption—which was also the astonishingly blasé assumption of “The End of History?”—that Western thought is universal thought. But the whole project, trying to fit Vladimir Putin into the same analytic paradigm as Black Lives Matter and tracing them both back to Martin Luther, is far-fetched. It’s a case of Great Booksism: history as a chain of paper dolls cut out of books that only a tiny fraction of human beings have even heard of. Fukuyama is a smart man, but no one could have made this argument work. Oof, no thanks. This article alone makes me want to subscribe to the New Yorker, if only in thanks for saving me the trouble of reading this book.
robobro 8y ago
i'm very left-wing, hell i'm an antifascist activist and im not a big fan of "idpol" This is an essay with the same name from 2015: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lupus-dragonowl-against-identity-politics https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lupus-dragonowl-agai... and this is a politically incorrect drama about identity politics written by, err, the unabomber: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ-Upb4Szms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ-Upb4Szms
- dbrueck 8y ago
  That 2015 article is great, thank you. I think this part sums up the problem in a nutshell: "[identity politicians] deny that people exist as unique individuals at all; people are simply instances of spectres". In my experience at least this is true: anytime I've tried to engage in a discussion with someone who is into identity politics, I've been told that I may say one thing, but my actual intentions are nefarious, that I'm full of fear and hate, and that my view is meaningless since I'm a white hetero male. There is no need to talk to me because they already know everything about me and what a horrible (or at least very blind) person I am. I think the Left would do well to try to minimize "idpol" if for no other reason than strategically it's a disaster - it chases away tons of potential allies.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - happytoexplain 8y ago
    Excuse my ignorance, but does the term "idpol" have a more specific meaning than as an abbreviation of "identity politics"? If the article describes it, it's after the paywall, and a quick Google doesn't quite clear it up. The reason I ask is that it sounds like you're using it to describe a liberal movement I haven't heard of, but I could change the identifying nouns in your post and it would describe the sum of my anecdotal experience instead - the salient difference being not that I feel the opposite way that you do, but that I have always assumed that this experience of mine is not representative of broader reality, and that the problem is (at least similarly) pervasive on all sides of political divides.
40acres 8y ago
All politics is identity politics. After the revolution only rich white land owners could vote, elections and governing were based on the wills of a single identity: rich, white, men. Not much has changed in America since then but as more enfranchisement came to the population it is OBVIOUS that other groups would focus their politics on what would help them over what would help others. I'm sure that it's more likely that female voters would lobby for a sexual harassment bill than men; its already been shown that Asian voters gathering in opposition to affirmative action moves because they feel that their kids are targeted (see NYC specialized schools, Harvard). Even throughout the 2016 election and the postmortem most news outlets focused on the "identity" of the white, middle aged, "heartland" / rust belt voter who has been shafted by globalization. It seems to me the term identity politics and everything that comes with it is simply a backlash against groups that have been traditionally marginalized but who are now entering the political arena and making demands.
- forgottenpass 8y ago
  >All politics is identity politics If your definition of the two terms is identical, perhaps you should look for some subtlety that you might be missing but causes other people to differentiate. For example, maybe there is an attitude that acknowledges political interest groups tend to be made up of constitute group(s) that share more-visible property(s) than a political goal. But wants to de-emphasize those other properties compared to the political interests of the group and raise the importance of principled policy reasoning above surface-level characteristics. I dunno... just spitballing here. >Even throughout the 2016 election and the postmortem most news outlets focused on the "identity" of ... Election reporting is disappointingly focused on hot takes and the horse race. Does anybody actually find utility in the focus on the stories about Little Timmy falling down a well rather than a more systematic analysis?
- toasterlovin 8y ago
  > After the revolution only rich white land owners could vote, elections and governing were based on the wills of a single identity: rich, white, men. Not much has changed in America since then TBH, it's hard to take anything else you say seriously when you claim that nothing much has changed in America since the revolution 240 years ago. And, regarding your other points: the concept that people deserve certain inalienable rights because they are human, rather than because they belong to certain a group, is the moral foundation upon which women's suffrage, black emancipation, and the civil rights movement are all based. It would be really stupid to dismiss this idea in favor of a system where groups fight it out for political power. And it would be doubly stupid for members of less powerful groups to do so.
crooked-v 8y ago
I feel like I'd be more inclined to take critiques of identity politics seriously if those critiques didn't seem to only come up in opposition to historically mistreated minority groups.
- someguydave 8y ago
  It must be difficult to keep track of exactly which "critiques" arise from these third-party-opposers and which are just ideas from virtuous people.
  - iron0013 8y ago
    It's honestly not that difficult
- stcredzero 8y ago
  I'm from a historically mistreated minority group. Identity politics is just another form of toxic tribalism. Politics should be about principles and policy, not identity. Identity politics was exploited by Julius Caesar in his program of divide and conquer against the overarching Celtic cultural group. I think it is having a similar divisive affect on western society today.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
timwaagh 8y ago
i think this guy has better grasp on what is happening than 99.9% of the population. but he identifies as left wing (i think, since he talks about the direction of the left a lot). With these views there will be no place at all for him on the left. He will just be picked apart by the dogs. because this is not a message they will wish to hear. must be hard to grow old and see the side you identify with betray its old cause and grow into something else and just not know where you belong anymore. we all need an identity, after all.
- yourbandsucks 8y ago
  Fukuyama was an Iraq war cheerleader and one of the icons of the neocons. Doesn't mean he's wrong for disliking both identity politics and presumably Trump but he's no liberal.
  - timwaagh 8y ago
    so you say the language he uses, talking about the left as if he is a part of it is a mere rhetorical trick? could be. i'm more interested in how he sees himself than what he is.
throwaway45423 8y ago
Discussions like this one, where in some cases opinions supplant primary facts, are not very productive. It may help some of the readers here to consider a deeper explanation of terms, while resisting the urge to select self-reinforcing parts. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-politics/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-politics/

66 points by jeffreyrogers 8y ago

reifnir 8y ago

paywall

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

dcre 8y ago

A critical take on Fukuyama's new book: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/03/francis-fukuyama-postpones-the-end-of-history https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/03/francis-fukuya...

neonate 8y ago
Thanks, that's quite interesting. The best part is the section on Kojève.
nerdponx 8y ago
Fukuyama thinks he knows what that something is, and his answer is summed up in the title of his new book, “Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). The demand for recognition, Fukuyama says, is the “master concept” that explains all the contemporary dissatisfactions with the global liberal order: Vladimir Putin, Osama bin Laden, Xi Jinping, Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, gay marriage, ISIS, Brexit, resurgent European nationalisms, anti-immigration political movements, campus identity politics, and the election of Donald Trump. It also explains the Protestant Reformation, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, Chinese Communism, the civil-rights movement, the women’s movement, multiculturalism, and the thought of Luther, Rousseau, Kant, Nietzsche, Freud, and Simone de Beauvoir. Oh, and the whole business begins with Plato’s Republic. Fukuyama covers all of this in less than two hundred pages. How does he do it? Not well. Some of the problem comes from misunderstanding figures like Beauvoir and Freud; some comes from reducing the work of complex writers like Rousseau and Nietzsche to a single philosophical bullet point. A lot comes from the astonishingly blasé assumption—which was also the astonishingly blasé assumption of “The End of History?”—that Western thought is universal thought. But the whole project, trying to fit Vladimir Putin into the same analytic paradigm as Black Lives Matter and tracing them both back to Martin Luther, is far-fetched. It’s a case of Great Booksism: history as a chain of paper dolls cut out of books that only a tiny fraction of human beings have even heard of. Fukuyama is a smart man, but no one could have made this argument work. Oof, no thanks. This article alone makes me want to subscribe to the New Yorker, if only in thanks for saving me the trouble of reading this book.

robobro 8y ago

i'm very left-wing, hell i'm an antifascist activist and im not a big fan of "idpol" This is an essay with the same name from 2015: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lupus-dragonowl-against-identity-politics https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lupus-dragonowl-agai... and this is a politically incorrect drama about identity politics written by, err, the unabomber: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ-Upb4Szms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ-Upb4Szms

dbrueck 8y ago
That 2015 article is great, thank you. I think this part sums up the problem in a nutshell: "[identity politicians] deny that people exist as unique individuals at all; people are simply instances of spectres". In my experience at least this is true: anytime I've tried to engage in a discussion with someone who is into identity politics, I've been told that I may say one thing, but my actual intentions are nefarious, that I'm full of fear and hate, and that my view is meaningless since I'm a white hetero male. There is no need to talk to me because they already know everything about me and what a horrible (or at least very blind) person I am. I think the Left would do well to try to minimize "idpol" if for no other reason than strategically it's a disaster - it chases away tons of potential allies.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- happytoexplain 8y ago
  Excuse my ignorance, but does the term "idpol" have a more specific meaning than as an abbreviation of "identity politics"? If the article describes it, it's after the paywall, and a quick Google doesn't quite clear it up. The reason I ask is that it sounds like you're using it to describe a liberal movement I haven't heard of, but I could change the identifying nouns in your post and it would describe the sum of my anecdotal experience instead - the salient difference being not that I feel the opposite way that you do, but that I have always assumed that this experience of mine is not representative of broader reality, and that the problem is (at least similarly) pervasive on all sides of political divides.

40acres 8y ago

All politics is identity politics. After the revolution only rich white land owners could vote, elections and governing were based on the wills of a single identity: rich, white, men. Not much has changed in America since then but as more enfranchisement came to the population it is OBVIOUS that other groups would focus their politics on what would help them over what would help others. I'm sure that it's more likely that female voters would lobby for a sexual harassment bill than men; its already been shown that Asian voters gathering in opposition to affirmative action moves because they feel that their kids are targeted (see NYC specialized schools, Harvard). Even throughout the 2016 election and the postmortem most news outlets focused on the "identity" of the white, middle aged, "heartland" / rust belt voter who has been shafted by globalization. It seems to me the term identity politics and everything that comes with it is simply a backlash against groups that have been traditionally marginalized but who are now entering the political arena and making demands.

forgottenpass 8y ago
>All politics is identity politics If your definition of the two terms is identical, perhaps you should look for some subtlety that you might be missing but causes other people to differentiate. For example, maybe there is an attitude that acknowledges political interest groups tend to be made up of constitute group(s) that share more-visible property(s) than a political goal. But wants to de-emphasize those other properties compared to the political interests of the group and raise the importance of principled policy reasoning above surface-level characteristics. I dunno... just spitballing here. >Even throughout the 2016 election and the postmortem most news outlets focused on the "identity" of ... Election reporting is disappointingly focused on hot takes and the horse race. Does anybody actually find utility in the focus on the stories about Little Timmy falling down a well rather than a more systematic analysis?
toasterlovin 8y ago
> After the revolution only rich white land owners could vote, elections and governing were based on the wills of a single identity: rich, white, men. Not much has changed in America since then TBH, it's hard to take anything else you say seriously when you claim that nothing much has changed in America since the revolution 240 years ago. And, regarding your other points: the concept that people deserve certain inalienable rights because they are human, rather than because they belong to certain a group, is the moral foundation upon which women's suffrage, black emancipation, and the civil rights movement are all based. It would be really stupid to dismiss this idea in favor of a system where groups fight it out for political power. And it would be doubly stupid for members of less powerful groups to do so.

crooked-v 8y ago

I feel like I'd be more inclined to take critiques of identity politics seriously if those critiques didn't seem to only come up in opposition to historically mistreated minority groups.

someguydave 8y ago
It must be difficult to keep track of exactly which "critiques" arise from these third-party-opposers and which are just ideas from virtuous people.
- iron0013 8y ago
  It's honestly not that difficult
stcredzero 8y ago
I'm from a historically mistreated minority group. Identity politics is just another form of toxic tribalism. Politics should be about principles and policy, not identity. Identity politics was exploited by Julius Caesar in his program of divide and conquer against the overarching Celtic cultural group. I think it is having a similar divisive affect on western society today.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

timwaagh 8y ago

i think this guy has better grasp on what is happening than 99.9% of the population. but he identifies as left wing (i think, since he talks about the direction of the left a lot). With these views there will be no place at all for him on the left. He will just be picked apart by the dogs. because this is not a message they will wish to hear. must be hard to grow old and see the side you identify with betray its old cause and grow into something else and just not know where you belong anymore. we all need an identity, after all.

yourbandsucks 8y ago
Fukuyama was an Iraq war cheerleader and one of the icons of the neocons. Doesn't mean he's wrong for disliking both identity politics and presumably Trump but he's no liberal.
- timwaagh 8y ago
  so you say the language he uses, talking about the left as if he is a part of it is a mere rhetorical trick? could be. i'm more interested in how he sees himself than what he is.

throwaway45423 8y ago

Discussions like this one, where in some cases opinions supplant primary facts, are not very productive. It may help some of the readers here to consider a deeper explanation of terms, while resisting the urge to select self-reinforcing parts. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-politics/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-politics/