Even deliberately inclusive identity spaces mute internal difference to achieve consensus
Evidence
In some ways, because camp leveled its participants’ relationship to Iranian identity for the sake of equity (recalling Mana’s speech: “I don’t care if you are one-half, one-fourth … alien”) it accepted the risk of excluding difference for the reward of consensus and community. Vectors of class, gender, religion, and mixed racedness were conscientiously muted in the controlled setting of camp, but they never went away. — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 517
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: A genuinely nuanced tension: the very solidarity-making that gives marginal identities a rest also requires flattening their internal diversity — a design problem every intentional community faces.
- XREF: Connects to exclusion-of-difference dynamics in intentional communities and to the general problem of consensus politics erasing internal heterogeneity. — connects to: Consensus-based truth theories cannot justify specific assertions — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 434; Consensus-based horizontal structures let tiny minorities veto prominent allies — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 266; Guaranteeing space for diverse identities can unite rather than fragment a movement. (+1 more)