"Identity politics" is redundant. All politics is identity politics for no other reason than that political action must be conducted in a particular place and in a particular language. It's a non sequitur to say that identity politics per se is "reactionary" or "progressive" or "futile". Politics that turns inwards toward the service of a particular group, at the expense of everyone else, is reactionary. What is "progressive" about progressive politics is it's aspiration to universality. Marx thought the working class would be the agent of universal emancipation because it had no particular interest in maintaining itself as a class. It had no privileges to cling to. We've since learned that people cling to things other than privilege. Sometimes people cling to oppression, sometimes they cling to their own humiliation and debasement. Sometimes they just cling to the way things are because that's the way things are. So the class struggle theory turns out to have been a good guess, but not a sure thing. For those who are looking for a sure thing, identity politics is no improvement over class struggle. But for those who are looking for a more nuanced understanding of class struggle, a respectful analysis of identity politics is indispensible. And for activists who are looking to engage a constituency other than themselves, the tortuous path to universality begins on the hard-pan ground of identity. It's all very dialectical. ;-) Regards, Tom Walker, [EMAIL PROTECTED], (604) 669-3286 The TimeWork Web: http://mindlink.net/knowware/worksite.htm
