Identity politics needs supplementing by wider solidarity-directed struggles

Evidence

The way in which a transgressive politics in one domain is constantly sutured and stabilized by reactionary or unexamined politics in another is only to be explained by this continuous cross-dislocation of one identity by another, one structure by another. Dominant ethnicities are always underpinned by a particular sexual economy, a particular figured masculinity, a particular class identity. There is no guarantee, in reaching for an essentialized racial identity of which we think we can be certain, that it will always turn out to be mutually liberating and progressive on all the other dimensions. It can be won. There is a politics there to be struggled for. But the invocation of a guaranteed black experience behind it will not produce that politics. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 293 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Identity redefinition succeeds only where mobilization outpowers sedimented resistance. — Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Nick Hopkins, Social identity and the dynamics of…, 106; Political solidarity, not natural affinity, must ground feminist sisterhood; Italian food couriers build solidarity through informal collectives and a politicized class identity — Donatella della Porta et al., Mobilizing Against the Odds: Solidarity…, 71 (+12 more)

Broader Connections

• Identity politics in one domain can stabilize oppression in another #complicates (0.72) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 293