Cards you can use vs. Identity Politics

Identity politics require a narrative of moralizing redemption through an acceptance of hard truths – that produces a reactionary drive for power as the ascetic priest ascertains their moral superiority over the Others to gain recognition Armstrong ’11 (Jennifer Armstrong has a Ph.D. in African Studies THE IDEOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF IDENTITY POLITICS)

The term, "vice", has an entirely different resonance in terms of identity politics as compared to shamanism. In general, identity politics borrows much from Platonism to drive its system of redemption. As such, it invoke s an equivalence between moral goodness and an ascetic's embrace of difficult truths: That which constrains idealists of knowledge, this unconditional will to truth, is faith in the ascetic ideal itself even if as an unconscious imperative — don’t be deceived about that — it is faith in a metaphysical value, the absolute value of truth, sanctioned and guaranteed by this ideal alone (it stands or falls with this ideal). F Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, III, 25 As Nietzsche points out in the above passage, there are those who hold that truth has an absolute value. It is considered to be an indispensable means for moral redemption. To embrace the truth is, in essence, to be redeemed, according to the formulation. The reason why such redemption is guaranteed should be obvious. Implicitly, a monotheistic deity is invoked. This deity stands behind reality acting as guarantor that if one only embraces "the truth" (a singular ideological concept), one will also improve morally and thus acquire redemption as one of those who embraces "the Good". Thus, identity politics is based on a Platonic formulation that implicitly promises redemption in the form of higher moral standing for those who choose an ascetic's path by embracing difficult truths. The particular difficult "truth" that Westerners urge other Westerners to embrace, as they move along the ascetic's path, is the link between whiteness and oppression. There are various levels of sophistication or amateur reasoning with regard to this link. In some cases, one's whiteness is implicated in oppression by means of an argument that raises some genuine historical facts. In other instances, the equation made is much more essentialistic, so that fashionable modes of speech come into play far more than intellectual analysis. Identity politics thus takes the form whereby one is always guaranteed to win any rhetorical battle -- either by posing as "holier than thou" or by demanding that others recognise their status as "oppressors". Once one has learned to play this game, no matter what else one may do in life, one's morally superior status will hardly be in doubt. The path to redemption -- through admitting one's guilt or "sin" -- is

hereby made into a path to power. Submit oneself to the truth by admitting one's guilt and thou shalt gain moral and social justification. The ascetic's goal is to gain recognition of his or her righteousness within the larger body politic: his, or her society. The very fact that this goal is within reach indicates the relatively elevated, at least middle class status, of those who advocate for a system of morality based on identity.

Identity group construction implicitly accepts liberal autonomy of the economic – this produces political deadlock and false problemsKatz 2k (Adam Katz, Postmodernism and the Politics of ‘Culture,’ Westview Press, 2000, p. 39-40)

Both the economic and the cultural-ideological aspects of social domination are recognized here but in a way that separates them in an absolute manner and makes it impossible to theorize the relations between them. The two possible courses of action posited by this passage are either to reflect an already existing collective will that is to be found in the economy or to fashion a new collective

will. The very notion of the econ omy as something that one could “get a hold of” presupposes the eco nomic reductionism that Hall is presumably contesting : That is, it accepts the notion of the economic as something self-contained and independent . In this case, as soon as the contending classes step outside of the econ omy, they are no longer classes in any meaningful sense but rather posi tions struggling for power in relation to political, moral, intellectual, cul - tural, ideological, and sexual questions. This rigid antinomy is reproduced in the choice between reflecting an already formed collective will and fashioning a new one. The possibility of constructing a new collective will out of the contradictions situated in the economic structure, contradictions that are articulated in relation to other cultural structures where the elements of such a will are emerging as a result of differentiated arenas of struggle, is excluded here. Instead, the collective will can be fashioned through a synthesis of positions immanent in these specific struggles themselves. This becomes more evident in Hall’s concluding chapters to The Hard Road to Renewal. There, he argues that electoral politics—in fact, every kind of politics—depends on political identities and identifications. People make identifications symbolically: through social imagery, in their political imaginations. They “see themselves” as one sort of person or another. They “imagine their future” within this scenario or that. They don’t just think about voting in terms of how much they have, their so-called “material interests.” Material interests matter profoundly. But they are always ideologically defined (1988, 261). Once again, there is a reference to the importance of material, ultimately class interests, and Hall also mentions that people have conflicting interests as well as conflicting identities. However, the claim that both the economic and the ideological are important—by itself, a commonplace observation—can lead in one of two fundamentally opposed directions. One possibility is to theorize the material interests of social classes and engage in an ideological struggle to clarify the contradictions that structure the ideologies and

identities of oppressed groups, thereby making the production of oppositional class consciousness possible. The other possibility is to construct images and identities that are immediately accessible and intelligible within the framework of those contradictions, thereby resecuring subordinated sub jects’ consent for the social order that produces them . This latter possibil ity becomes the unavoidable consequence if politics is defined as “a strug gle for popular identities ” (Hall 1988, 282). In addition, this possibility is inevitable given Hall’s reductive understanding of material interests as little more than income levels (“how much they have”), rather than in terms of the reproduction of all of the social and institutional conditions of the production of effective subjects.

Identity groups are designed by capital to fracture political solidarity—identity production always confirms and operates according to existing labor structuresKatz 2k (Adam Katz, Postmodernism and the Politics of ‘Culture,’ Westview Press, 2000, p. 163)

In that case, far from being the ground of border-crossing politics and pedagogy, voice, identity, and so forth are actually pretexts for

the production of an independent realm in which revaluation takes place. Thus, what is at stake in postmodernist politics is the seizure of the (modern) means of authorization, of the means of producing social authority (i.e., subjectivities) that have been released as a result of the hegemonic crisis of post-1960s capitalism

and that are presumed to hold the key to a redis tribution of power and hence more democracy . As long as the indepen dence of these means from the direct control of the main contending classes (that is, the relative autonomy of the petite bourgeoisie) is as sured, then a high degree of pluralism will be legitimate, as with any relatively secure regime of private property. The privileging of heterogeneity

represents the minimum level of agreement necessary for this system of class practices because it guarantees the independence of the discursive terrain of revaluation from the oppressed class

and therefore its corporate possession by the border-crossing petite bourgeoisie. Within the framework of this agreement, various forms of postmodernism, with marginally different political commitments, are possible. A Left postmodernism supports this notion of pluralism and democracy by refusing to establish or theorize a hierarchy of struggles (which

requires an inquiry into the material conditions of social transformation), thereby ensuring that politics will not go beyond the arena of the exchanges of discourses and identities and that it will continue to require the diplomatic practices of postmodern pedagogues. The identities organized by a Left postmodernism, then, would best be characterized as neoidentities, since they are posited as identities that are in principle exchangeable within the system of circulation established by the counterpublics themselves. And it is the border crossers, who can participate in many counterpublics, who will

have access to the means of exchange. That is, just as the availability in principle of private property to any individual in fact se cures its possession by the capitalist class, so the liberation of the means of authorization in fact guarantees its possession by the class whose posi tion within the social division of labor provides it with privileged access to those means.

Academic identity politics are liability cover, not genuinely emancipatory – they restrain their own radical potential in acquiescing to macro-structuresKatz 2k (Adam Katz, Postmodernism and the Politics of ‘Culture,’ Westview Press, 2000, p. 49-51)

Postmodern philosophical and theoretical categories and presuppositions have been essential to the constitution of what I will call “mainstream” or “appreciative” cultural studies. I understand postmodernism as consisting of all those discourses and practices governed by the assumption that reality is constituted by an unbounded plurality of heterogeneous forms. As with cultural studies, though, I do not limit the field of postmodernism to those discourses that openly support this assumption or refer to themselves as “postmodernist.” Rather, I understand postmodernism as being constituted by a political economy of competing positions that reproduce the legitimacy of those areas of knowledge and practice governed by the presupposition and privileging of heterogeneity. I would include within the category of postmodernism, then, discourses that consider themselves indifferent to or even hostile to postmodernism. I would cite, for example, Jurgen Habermas’s attacks on postmodernism, which are based on his understanding of communicative rationality and the project of modernity. By situating these attacks within the framework of how one adjudicates between different forms of established knowledge and discourse, Habermas simply reproduces the terms of the debate as consti-tuted by postmodernism—a debate, that is, that is actually a struggle over the terms of a new mode of liberalism adequate for a late-capitalist global order in crisis (and over who will “possess” those terms). Habermas’s discourses fulfill this function by understanding the conditions of possibility of communication as immanent to specific and autonomous communicative situations

and forms themselves. In fact, the legitimation and hegem ony of postmodern culture studies within the arena of culture critique de pend upon the existence of a range of competing positions that , as in the logic of the market as studied by Marx, “ average out” in “the long run.” The discourses of postmodern cultural studies are unable to theorize in a rigorous way the politics of the institutions in which they are situated. Therefore, the incoherencies and contradictions of these discourses are most evident in relation to the question of devising a politics of resistance to these institutions, in particular the academy. So, for example, Grossberg, Nelson, and Treichier acknowledge from the start of their introduction that the volume they are presenting emerges at the height of a “cultural studies boom” (1992, 1) of international dimensions. Later, they contend that “it is the future of cultural studies in the United States that seems to us to present the greatest need for reflection and debate” (10). This is understandable because, as they argue earlier, the “boom is especially strong” in the United States and has “created significant investment opportunities” (1). However, they go on to contend, the “threat is not from institutionalization per se, for cultural studies has always had its institutionalized forms within and outside the academy” (Grossberg, Nelson, and Treichier 1992, 10). Rather, the “issue for U.S. practitioners is what kind of work will be identified with cultural studies and what social effects it will have. . . . Too many people simply rename what they were already doing to take advan-

tage of the cultural studies boom” (10—11). Thus, it is not the institutional situation—with its limits and possibilities—

that is at stake but policing the intellectual property and copyright of the new (non)discipline. The “multi-,” ‘non-, and even “anti-” disciplinary character of cultural stud ies, on this account, enables the formation of a site of accumulation of in stitutional capital whose “unfixity” also frees it from accountability to cri tiques of its institutional positioning. As far as its social effects go, we have already seen that these are wholly contingent and therefore cannot be theorized or critiqued in any systematic way. Grossberg, Nelson, and Treichler do not consider the possible uses to the institution of the free-floating, unfixed character of culture studies.

They do not see that the “extra-” and “cross-” disciplinary location of culture studies they celebrate actually allows the academy to provide a space for radical discourses, without exerting any pressure to transform the existing disciplinary structure . The question that needs to be raised here is not, of course, in regard to the legitimacy and necessity of working within late-capitalist institutions (such as the university). Rather, the issue is the identification of institutionalization with institutionality in postmodern cultural studies, along

with the institutional and ideological forms that support and naturalize this conflation. Put another way, there is a difference between working within and against dominant institutions and becoming an, inte gral part of the functioning of those institutions. Working against dominant institutions from within requires the contestation of the various institu tional forms that reproduce institutional power and authority; becoming institutionalized entails fulfilling the need of the institutions for new ways of reproducing their power and authority . The relation between cultural studies and the existing disciplines proposed by Grossberg, Nelson, and Treichler is inadequate in this context because of its ultimately laissez-faire approach to institutional forms and their uses. In contrast, I would argue it is necessary to occupy positions within the disciplines and exploit the contradiction between their claims to universality and their specialist partiality in order to challenge their very separateness and legitimacy. (For a more extended discussion of this issue, see Chapter 4.)

New subjectivities are produced and commodified by capitalist expansionKatz 2k (Adam Katz, Postmodernism and the Politics of ‘Culture,’ Westview Press, 2000, p. 134-135)

However, this is not the case: Marxism develops a critical standpoint by theorizing the contradiction between the forces and relations of produc tion, which is to say by aligning itself with the most progressive possibili ties implicit in the productive forces that are restricted, concealed, and prevented from realization due to the outmoded nature of the relations of production. Such an analysis is grounded in the category of material pro duction that is material not in the sense of physical but in the sense of de termining and extending the interchangeability of practices and subjects in the production process. It is this materiality , then, that determines the combinations, articulations, and transformations in the conditions, means, needs, and subjects that are associated in the labor process . The category of commodification is ultimately limited in analyzing transformations in material production because it tends to identify interchangeability with the structure of the commodity, whereas this is only one possible form taken by this process of the development of the production forces. Insofar as transformations in material production under what Jameson calls “multinational capitalism” take the form of collectivization, the conflation of this process with commodification determines a nostalgic resistance to the development of the productive forces, precisely from the

standpoint of “Nature,” “Desire,” or “Culture.” On the contrary, from a Marxist position, these processes represent the most advanced aspects of the productive forces in that they entail reductions in required labor time , the production of new needs, and , above all, the production of new types of subjects capable of managing new modes of material production and hence transformations in the apparatuses committed to the reproduc tion of labor power. The cultural logic of late capitalism would, in this case, be located not in postmodernism (which articulates this logic within bourgeois discourses

that abstract the crisis from social contradictions) but in the contradiction between the need for this type of subject (and the needs and capacities of this type of subject) and the maintenance of pri vate property and the subordination of all institutions to its reproduction, which requires that the working class be “just as much an appendage of capital as the ordinary instruments of labour” (Marx 1906, 628).