Identity is a political claim to belonging, not a fixed trait

Evidence

The real questions are: what kind of differences are effective? And where do differences make a difference?… Such a politics would have to think about the mechanisms and modalities of belonging, affiliation and identification in order to define the places people can belong to, and the places people can find their way to. Identity becomes more of a political category to be mobilized and laid claim to, a matter of belonging to, the claim to be somewhere and hence, with someone. Challenging culture’s equation with and location in the form of identity as a difference may enable us to think about the possibilities of a politics that recognizes and is organized around the positivity or singularity of the other. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2696

Categorization

• DEFINE: Redefines identity as a political category of belonging and being-claimed, tied to place and companionship rather than static cultural essence.
• CANDY: “The claim to be somewhere and hence, with someone” is a crisp, quotable formulation of what identity politics is actually doing.
• XREF: connects to: Identity is now a matter of choice rather than inherited absolute truth — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 112; Activist identities must be reinvented as practice, not inherited as belief — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics: how Americans…, 1269; Identity’s political meaning derives from domination structures, not attachments themselves — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 2145 (+5 more)