By Richard Thompson Ford

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Identity politics is nothing new. In a sense—apologies to the late Tip O’Neill—all politics are identities; all identities, political. Of course, when we use the phrase “identity politics” we mean something more specific. We don’t mean to evoke people who identify as Democrats, Republicans, Leftists, Conservatives, Libertarians, even when these identifications are an all-consuming obsession as often enough they are. Identity politics suggests a political orientation built around a (pre-existing) social identity. This seems to imply that the identity comes before the politics: we begin with identities whose shape and character are, or at least could be, pre-political and then we opt to get political about them.

Stated this way it’s clear what the argumentative next move is. Of course this can’t be right; the identities don’t precede the politics, they are a product of politics, social identities are inherently and irreducibly political, existence precedes essence, the personal is political, is always already political, [insert your favorite postmodern, critical, existentialist or phenomenological catch phrase here]. And hence it can’t be right to single out “identity politics” for scrutiny; in fact, the whole category must be abandoned, we should bludgeon, jail or at least chastise and mercilessly ridicule anyone who ever uses the term again, etc., etc., blah, blah.