Identity’s return in politics is not a return to traditional or 1960s formulations

Evidence

I return to the question of identity because the question of identity has returned to us; at any rate, it has returned to us in British politics and British cultural politics today. It has not returned in the same old place; it is not the traditional conception of identity. It is not going back to the old identity politics of the 1960s social movements. But it is, nevertheless, a kind of return to some of the ground which we used to think in that way. I will make a comment at the very end about what is the nature of this theoretical-political work which seems to lose things on the one side and then recover them in a different way from another side, and then have to think them out all over again just as soon as they get rid of them. What is this never-ending theoretical work which is constantly losing and regaining concepts? — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 176

Categorization

• DEFINE: Key distinction: identity has returned politically but is NOT the old identity politics — anti-essentialist identity as a different object.