Growing Strong
C a n we recu p erate i d e nti ty p o li ti cs? by Amelia Mertha If identity politics was ever revolutionary, can we recuperate its radical politics? Or are the original intentions of the term forever lost, obscured by neoliberal and right-wing misuse? Admittedly, 800 words could never do such a variously understood and messy concept justice so I want to frame this piece mostly within feminism, at the roots of the term. Active between 1974 and 1980, the Combahee River Collective (CRC) was a Black radical feminist organisation based out of Boston, USA. Of course notions of “identity”, whether individual or collective, within and for political action, existed far before their Combahee River Collective Statement (1977) but any critique against or in favour of identity politics, needs to engage with this piece of writing. It is believed that the phrase “identity politics” was first used in their 1977 statement:
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This focusing upon our own oppression is embodied in the concept of identity politics. We believe that the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to working to end somebody else’s oppression. In the case of Black women this is a particularly repugnant, dangerous, threatening, and therefore revolutionary concept because it is obvious from looking at all the political movements that have preceded us that anyone is more worthy of liberation than ourselves.
The Combahee River Collective described their politics as anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist socialism, understanding that such a socialist revolution would also necessitate a feminist and anti-racist revolution. Their statement also tells us that, whilst flawed and not without internal issues, the CRC’s organising structure was based on a “collective process and a nonhierarchical distribution of power”. So then, identity politics in this key context was borne out of locating material, social and cultural oppression and violence in the lived experience of Black womanhood. It was vocalised as part of a critique of existing working-class and civil rights movements in which Black women were invisibilised by poorly analysed intersecting race, gender and class lines: “We realize that the only people who care enough about us to work consistently for our liberation are us.” In looking towards universal liberation, the CRC argued this was only possible in the liberation of Black womanhood (not an essentialist womanhood mind you). I think in many ways the term has met a similar fate to the second-wave feminist slogan, “the personal is political” — meaning that the personal and private experiences of women (i.e. the domestic sphere) are rooted in misogyny and other oppressions but misconstrued by third-wave feminism to mean that any personal action is inherently political or politicised. Similarly, contemporary identity politics precludes keeping one’s identity to oneself where
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