Conversation

I am not for "identity politics" because outside of reactionary tendencies for cisheteropatriarchal, racial, ethnic, national, and religious chauvinism, there is no "left" or "socialist" identity politics. It does not exist. Liberal identity politics may exist, but not socialist or anarchist identity politics. Working people who are engendered, racialized, or otherwise excluded or subalternized may be oppressed on the basis of identity, but we do not fight for common dignity and liberation on the basis of identity, but on the basis of *affinity*, on the basis of *solidarity*. This is the opposite of identity politics; this is the basis of liberatory and intersectional politics.

In this sense, intersectionality is not "identity politics" but rather the tool by which common affinities are constructed. My liberation is totally tied up with the liberation of trans people, of women, of Indigenous people, of Palestine, etc. Intersectionality shows us how different but interrelated systems of domination intersect, and therefore shows how the liberation of one is tied to the liberation of all—the basis of affinity and solidarity.

Socialist- or anarcha-feminism, for example, unite people of diverse gender and sexual identities on the basis of common affinity against cisheteropatriarchy. They may have identities, but the basis of unity is still affinity for common liberation. Hence this is why socialist- and anarcha-feminism are trans-inclusive while the identity politics of second-wave feminism is transphobic and gender essentialist.

Queers for Palestine, for example, may initially present itself as identity-based, but such a reading tells more about how right-wing commentators perceive identity politics, since the chauvinism of the right wing has always been based on identity. Rather, queers for Palestine is very much unity on the common basis of affinity, that being the liberation of Palestine as part-and-parcel to a common basis of liberation.

I am, however, against the anti-idpol because they are the enemy of unity and solidarity on the basis of common affinity for liberation. Through deliberate erasure of intersectional oppression in favor of simplistic class reduction, the anti-idpol thereby erases the basis of affinity by which liberatory politics is grounded upon. If you erase or obscure, for example, transphobia or indigeneity, you break down your affinity by which trans people or Indigenous people fight for common liberation alongside their class.

If you want to read more, Donna Haraway's "A Cyborg Manifesto" is instructive in this regard.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/donna-haraway-a-cyborg-manifesto

Public

Notices

Feeds