By Kate Carr
"Identity politics" emerged from British and US feminism towards the end of the 1970s. It developed in reaction to the failure of liberal feminism to adequately incorporate or acknowledge the differing experiences and demands of women of colour and lesbians. Identity politics, however, was also a reaction to the defeat and demoralisation of the left within Britain and the US during the 1980s.
This demoralisation had its basis in a much earlier defeat, the rise of Stalinism in the Soviet Union. From 1928, Stalin wound back progressive policies for women, implemented after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, in an attempt to reinforce the family system and his own rule. By 1936, abortion had again been banned, divorce had been made more difficult, and gay men and lesbians were jailed or persecuted.
Feminists consequently looked less to socialist ideas, because Stalinism had failed to address the demands of the feminist movement or other movements for liberation. This failing led supporters of identity politics to reject the centrality of the working class in achieving revolutionary change.
Retreat
Whilst identity politics may be progressive in its intent, in that it stems from a desire to address failings within "socialist" and feminist movements, in reality it represents an ideological retreat from the possibility of achieving fundamental social change. Despite its aspirations, identity politics offers an analysis which, by focusing on fragmentation, empiricism and individualism, precludes this possibility.
Feminist writer Nickie Charles argues that identity politics is focused upon culture and individual agency. This represents a shift from an analysis of oppression's origins within social structures to one which focuses primarily upon the relative differences in power and privilege between individuals, based on their ethnicity, sexuality and ability. The fewer oppressions an individual suffers, the argument goes, the more oppressive that individual has been socialised to be.
By ignoring the material basis of oppression within capitalist society, identity politics places the responsibility for its continuation on "privileged individuals". The solution, for proponents of identity politics, is for "oppressive individuals" to change their personal behaviour.
Feminist writer Maureen McNeil outlines the logical extension of this when, in Britain during the 1980s, men and white heterosexual women active in social movements went through psychoanalysis and therapy in order to learn to be "less oppressive".
Individualistic
The individualistic focus of identity politics is reflected by the theory of knowledge it adheres to. Proponents of identity politics assert that the more oppressed identities an individual can lay claim to, the closer to "truth" that person's experience becomes.
This rests upon the proposition that experience generates knowledge directly: if you do not have experience your knowledge is less valid and less complete. According to identity politics, the experience of reality is not mediated by theory or analysis; in fact, a theory of oppression is not needed at all, because direct experience of oppression is the only thing that can bind together individuals in the struggle to overcome it.
This fixation with the centrality of personal "experience" leads to the assumption that only those who experience a particular oppression have a legitimate right to speak on it. This is because, as outlined by Joni Lovenduski and Vicky Randall, "Only black women could understand the oppression of black women; only lesbians could understand the oppression of lesbians; and so on".
From this follows the belief that to disagree politically with a person whose oppression you do not share is to participate in perpetuating their oppression.
Ultimately this perspective leads to the position that the more oppressions an individual experiences, the more progressive and correct that individual is.
Certainly it is true that the experience of oppression can lead to political consciousness and action. But by directly linking the "experience of oppression" with "legitimacy", identity politics removes the movement's ability to examine the political perspective being espoused by any individual. Within this framework, Margaret Thatcher would be more "progressive" than Ronald Reagan because she is a woman. The fact that their political perspectives are similar is ignored.
Difference
One of the central problems inherent in identity politics is the basis upon which to form a movement for social change, if there is no common experience of oppression capable of uniting that movement. Those pushing identity politics would have the women's liberation movement fracture and further fracture, along infinitely diverse lines of women's individual experiences.
Identity politics shares much with postmodernism; it wallows in the same fragmentary vision. But whereas identity politics clings to experience as the only unifying factor, postmodernists take this fracturing to its logical extreme by rejecting all claims to the objective or the universal. In rejecting any "truth", postmodernists avoid the trap that identity politics cannot. For identity politics there is "truth", but this "truth" is revealed only through individual experience.
This poses irreconcilable problems for those with identity politics. If experience does generate knowledge directly, it is very difficult within this theory to accommodate differences of political perspective between individuals who suffer the same oppression(s). At this year's National Organisation of Women Students Australia (NOWSA) conference, a woman from a non-English speaking background, who did not subscribe to identity politics, was told by other NESB women who did that she should "examine who was defining her politics for her".
This anecdote offers an insight into the problems those adhering to identity politics encounter when faced with a differing perspective. There is no room within this political current to debate differences in strategy or perspectives — because the correct strategy is not determined by struggle or political insight, but by personal experience alone. The only option therefore for those with identity politics is to argue that opinions they do not agree with have been formulated by an "outsider", who has not "experienced their oppression".
Identity politics, despite posing as a critique of "universal" narratives such as Marxism, can only be reformist in application, at best. It cannot, by virtue of its very foundations, offer a critique of the structural basis of oppression, class society, and therefore can offer no strategy for achieving fundamental social change.
The challenge today is to incorporate the demands of oppressed groups into a movement that is strong enough to achieve them. Identity politics is counterposed to this aim.