scholarly journals Intersectionality, Identity, and the Riddle of Class

2021 ◽  
pp. 3
Author(s):  
Sandro Mezzadra
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Black Feminism ◽  
Original Formulation ◽  
Class Politics ◽  
Patricia Hill Collins

In this essay I discuss a specific notion that has become particularly influential in framing the discussion of identity and identity politics – intersectionality. I show that the original formulation of that notion was crucially intertwined with debates on class and class politics. After shedding light on the “prehistory” of intersectionality in black feminism, I discuss the original formulations of the concept in the works of Kimberlé Crenshaw and Patricia Hill Collins. A focus on the notion of “oppression” as well as on the tensions between “irreducibility” and “simultaneity” of systems of oppression in intersectional writings leads me to examine some of the pitfalls of identity politics today. An attempt to rethink the notion of class in the light of intersectionality closes the essay.

Kissing the Old Class Politics Goodbye

2005 ◽  
Vol 67 ◽  
pp. 54-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorothy Sue Cobble
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Economic Justice ◽  
Class Politics ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
Working People ◽  
History Of ◽  
Multiple Class ◽  
Alternative Reading

Verity Burgmann's call for a reinvigorated class politics and language is timely. This essay shares her goal of strengthening social movements in which class is taken seriously. It argues, however, that her efforts to resuscitate an antiquated class politics dressed up in identity clothes will not further that goal. This response offers an alternative reading of the nature and history of the “new” and the “old” social movements, of what can be learned about class and class-conscious movements from “identity politics” and from cultural theorists, and of what is needed to encourage future movements for social and economic justice. It calls for a class politics that recognizes the diversity of the working classes, embraces multiple class identities, reflects the fluid and multitiered class structures in which we live, and honors the aspirations of working people for inclusion, equity, and justice.

On the Proletarian Identity of “A Woman Dressed as an Enormous Beetle”

2005 ◽  
Vol 67 ◽  
pp. 22-25
Author(s):  
Mae M. Ngai
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
Racial Minorities ◽  
Radical Politics ◽  
Class Politics ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Antiglobalization Movement

A set of politics that uses rhetoric, imagery, music, and performance to promote interests that are distinctively and explicitly identified with the working class, Burgmann productively suggests, might revitalize the labor movement. Yet the effort to apply lessons from “identity politics” to “class politics” reproduces two problems in contemporary radicalism. First, by reducing the movements of ethno-racial minorities, women, and gays and lesbians to “identity politics” Burgmann underestimates those movements' claims to civil rights, human rights, socioeconomic improvement, and their general democratic nature. Second, the use of “class” to explain the antiglobalization movement is anachronistic and inadequate to the task of understanding radical politics today.

scholarly journals Metamorphosis of a butterfly: Neo-liberal subjectivation and queer autonomy in Xiyadie's papercutting art

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-263
Author(s):  
Hongwei Bao
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Rural China ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Chinese Art ◽  
Class Politics ◽  
Biographical Approach ◽  
China Today ◽  
Contemporary Chinese

Abstract Celebrated as 'China's Tom of Finland', Xiyadie is probably one of the best-known queer artists living in China today. His identity as a gay man from rural China and his method of using the Chinese folk art of papercutting for queer artistic expression make him a unique figure in contemporary Chinese art. As the first academic article on the artist and his works, this article examines Xiyadie's transformation of identity in life and his representation of queer experiences through the art of papercutting. Using a critical biographical approach, in tandem with an analysis of his representative artworks, I examine the transformation of Xiyadie's identity from a folk artist to a queer artist. In doing so, I delineate the transformation and reification of human subjectivity and creativity under transnational capitalism. Meanwhile, I also seek possible means of desubjectivation and human agency under neo-liberal capitalism by considering the role of art in this picture. This article situates Xiyadie's life and artworks in a postsocialist context where class politics gave way to identity politics in cultural production. It calls for a reinvigoration of Marxist and socialist perspectives for a nuanced critical understanding of contemporary art production and social identities.

scholarly journals Whose identity politics? – Lessons for emerging critical disability geography in Hungary

2013 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 171-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Timár ◽  
Sz. Fabula
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Social Model ◽  
Class Politics ◽  
Social Model Of Disability ◽  
Combined Use ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Protests ◽  
Impaired People ◽  
The One ◽  
Political Actions

Abstract. In response to the economic crisis in 2009, the Hungarian government reduced the level of support for the employment of impaired people. The withdrawal of this state support has not only resulted in a massive wave of dismissals, but has also transformed some peripheral settlements into spaces of resistance. The research presented in this paper was conducted to understand the nature of political actions organised in Békés County (one of Hungary's disadvantaged regions) in order to support the social employment of impaired people. By analysing these political actions we have highlighted certain contradictions of applying the concept of identity politics in a post-socialist context, and the advantages of a combined, biosocial model. On the one hand, the outline of the political and economic situation helped us understand that the analysed social protests only resembled identity politics. In reality, they may even have contributed to the reproduction of ableism. On the other hand, by integrating individual experiences into the social model of disability we could also reveal that according to our impaired interviewees, it is not only their impairments and/or disabilities that render daily life difficult. Their firm call for changes in both economic and regional policy suggests that the deliberate and combined use of identity and class politics would be particularly important. Overall, our results suggest that it is essential for scholars in Hungary to engage more strongly in critical disability geography and to thus help the approach take root and develop further.

scholarly journals An Introduction to the Special Issue on Identity Politics

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashok Kumar ◽  
Adam Elliott-Cooper ◽  
Shruti Iyer ◽  
Dalia Gebrial
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Class Politics ◽  
Socially Constructed

Abstract This special issue responds to ongoing debates around what has been termed ‘identity politics’. We aim to intervene in what are make-or-break questions for the Left today. Specifically, we wish to provoke further interrogative but comradely conversation that works towards breaking-down the wedge between vulgar economism and vulgar culturalism. Critically, we maintain that just as all identity categories are spatially and temporally contingent – socially constructed, yet naturalised – so too is this current bifurcation between ‘class politics’ and ‘identity politics’. Ultimately, we call for an intellectual and organisational embracing of the complexity of identity as it figures in contemporary conditions; being a core organising-principle of capitalism as it functions today, a paradigm that Leftist struggle can be organised through and around – and yet all with a recognition of the necessity of historicising, and ultimately abolishing, these categories along with capitalism itself.

Ethnic Inequality and the Ethnification of Political Parties

2015 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
John D. Huber ◽  
Pavithra Suryanarayan
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Party System ◽  
State Level ◽  
Ethnic Politics ◽  
Strongly Correlated ◽  
Ethnic Inequality ◽  
Class Politics ◽  
Indian States ◽  
Income Differences ◽  
Cross National

Why does ethnicity become a salient element of electoral politics in some places but not others? The authors argue that in majoritarian systems, ethnic identity is most salient to electoral behavior when there are high levels of inequality between ethnic groups. Theytest this argument in the Indian states and find that state-level party system ethnification is strongly correlated with economic inequality between groups, a pattern they also find in cross-national data. Theyalso show that in India, when income differences between groups increase, the groups tend to support different parties. The analysis reveals a strong class component to ethnic politics in India, underscoring the possibility that what scholars often view as identity politics can have an element of class politics in disguise.

scholarly journals Kierkegaard at the Intersections: The Single Individual and Identity Politics

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 547
Author(s):  
J. Aaron Simmons
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Structural Level ◽  
Single Individual ◽  
Intersectionality Theory ◽  
Human Equality ◽  
Patricia Hill Collins ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Critical Resources

Kierkegaard’s authorship is frequently charged with being so radically individualistic that his work is of little use to social theory. However, in this essay, I argue that Kierkegaard’s notion of “the single individual” actually offers important critical resources for some aspects of contemporary identity politics. Through a focused consideration of the two notes that form the little essay, “The Individual” (published with Point of View), I suggest that Kierkegaard does not ignore embodied historical existence, as is sometimes claimed, but instead simply rejects the idea that one’s moral dignity is determined by, or reducible to, such embodied differentiation. Instead, what we find in Kierkegaard is a rejection of the quantitative judgment of “the crowd” in favor of the qualitative neighbor-love of community. In light of Kierkegaard’s claim that it is the specifically religious category of the single individual that makes possible true human equality, I contend that we can develop a Kierkegaardian identity theory consistent with some aspects of the standpoint and intersectionality theory of Patricia Hill Collins and Kimberlé Crenshaw. Although Collins and Crenshaw operate at a structural level and Kierkegaard works at a theological level, they all offer important reminders to each other about the stakes of lives of meaning in light of the embodied task of social justice.

Epilogue

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip M. Gentry
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
Great Success ◽  
Class Politics ◽  
Broadway Musical ◽  
Self Actualization ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Political Divide

The book’s epilogue fast-forwards to a brief case study of contemporary music and identity politics. The Broadway musical Hamilton found great success just as the 2016 Democratic Party primary race between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders foregrounded a political divide between so-called identity and class politics. From their earliest days, identity politics have offered a model of solidarity and connectedness, a privileging, in the famous phrase, of the personal as the political. Hamilton does not rewrite history, but it does rewrite how it is felt and who gets to do the feeling. It is not enough simply to achieve some sort of psychological self-actualization, solely on one’s own, individual terms. The epilogue argues for a more nuanced understanding of identity politics as a particularly effective model for building solidarity, as our best chance for creating positive change.

Gender Politics and the Struggle for Equality in Turkey

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zehra F. Kabasakal Arat
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Gender Politics ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Gender Ideologies ◽  
Class Politics ◽  
Reform Era ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Progressive Reforms ◽  
Republic Of Turkey

Examining gender ideologies and politics since the establishment of the Republic of Turkey, this chapter follows a loose chronological order and analyzes policies and practices that discriminate on the basis of gender, struggles against such discrimination, and major progressive reforms under four periods: (1) the early decades of the republic, 1923–1945; (2) the multiparty era and class politics, 1946–1980; (3) identity politics and the reform era, 1981–2001; and (4) the AKP era, since 2002. While the focus is on domestic politics and actors, by highlighting important external connections and influences, the review contextualizes gender politics in an international context. The chapter intends to show that gender politics in Turkey have been volatile; adopted by male politicians under pressure or to achieve other goals, progressive policies remained limited and were not fully implemented; women’s political organization and mobilization were critical for progressive change; and, the authoritarian turn of the AKP threatens the advancements made before 2010 and has already caused damaging reversals in some areas.

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