marv - " The contradictory nature of identity politics has been reflected in the disputes within Marxism about whether it is fundamentally a healthy and progressive development or a regressive form of false consciousness... I suspect we would be divided on this list" /////////////////////////////////////////
Is Intersectionality Just Another Form of Identity Politics? January 11, 2015 feminists fightback .... "we need to define what is meant by identity politics. The term is most frequently used as shorthand to describe the feminist/anti-racist/gay liberation movements that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s in a moment when the more traditional Left and trade union politics fell into decline in the West. Identity politics are therefore commonly seen to have emerged in response to a ‘failure’ of class struggle, but what does this mean? Many have argued that identity politics rushed to fill the vacuum left by the Marxist Left and the labour movement, implying that, for want of something better, people turned to identity politics in a moment of defeat. What such an analysis conveniently ignores, however, is that the ‘failure’ of the Left during this period was in part due to its incapacity to understand and reach out to the diverse groups that made up the working class. Women, Black and Queer workers turned to feminism, antiracism and gay liberation, not because they couldn’t find a trade union or a Marxist group to join, but because existing forms of politics (predicated upon the white male subject) failed to respond to their needs as workers. Of course, there were many complex reasons why worker militancy went into retreat from the 1970s onwards, but the notion that this was due to all those selfish, feminist and gays preoccupied with their identitarian agenda is ridiculous. The rich, multiple and various currents of feminist/anti-racist/Queer politics that have emerged over the last forty years or so should not be viewed as a threat to class struggle, but, to the contrary, as a way to make struggles around class and labour at the point of production more effective, more widespread and more powerful. It is important, therefore, not to confuse a very particular manifestation of ‘equality’ politics – that seek merely to fight for the individual rights of women, or people of colour within the existing capitalist system – with those movements which, in taking account of differences within the working class, have ultimately sought to make class struggle better. Intersectionality, we think, needs to be acknowledged as such." -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#31898): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/31898 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/107980589/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
