Identity Politics

Identity politics is a term most frequently used in disciplines with strong roots in poststructuralism—feminist theory, queer theory, and multicultural theory, among others. During the second wave of feminism, and the 1970s and 1980s more generally, there was increasing attention given to those categories of people who had long been left out of the view of study. There was a concern to give voice to those who had long been silenced. Intersections of race, sex, class, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and nationality were among the many identities that began to draw the attention of social scientists. This focus on cultural identities represented a marked shift from the economic and political based analysis that had dominated the sciences to this time. This assertion of the individual, and especially of those individuals who were outside of the social norm, caused great instability in the comfortable split between the personal and the public, the family and the nation, and the state and the civil worlds.

Feminists were among the first to assert that “the personal is political.” They gave rise to a notion of identity politics based on the unique social locations of a given individual. The claim to identity was seen as a political assertion rather than a personal claim because identity also brings with it membership in community. In turn, membership demands equality with others in that group, and so those with identities that disrupt the status quo are seen as a threat to the hegemony of the ruling class. Allowing members of a social minority equal claim to social goods would call for a reshaping, often a radical reshaping, of societal values, norms, and even sometimes laws.

A culture of identity politics represents a multicultural approach calling for loyalty to various, and often multiple, categories of one's identity. This challenges the foundations of the modern nation-state, which, it has been argued, is supported by the existence of homogenous group identity. Who is to be included for membership has always been an important social question, but the dawn of the era of identity politics seems to usher in a new hope for those who [Page 394]have long been left out in the cold of the social world. Feminists, people of color, gays and lesbians, and ethnic minorities are among the many who have been eager to embrace such a politics in order to gain a voice and end their historical silence. At the same time, theorists have recognized the limits of identity politics and the view of personhood and community that it endorses. Identity politics, it is argued, promotes the notion of stable, essential identities and as such privileges difference over the reconciliation of difference. To counter this trend, some theorists have proposed a “relational” politics, which assumes that identity is always the product of relationship and therefore never an essential aspect of a person's identity. In contrast to an identity politics that seeks to assert individuality, relational politics aims to overcome the ever-present threat of interpersonal conflict by privileging the flux relationship and social “conversation” over the stability and privilege of identity.

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