Political movements require moments of popular identification to form.

Evidence

There’s no politics without identification. People have to invest something of themselves, something that they recognize is of them or speaks to their condition, and without that moment of recognition … Politics also has a drift, so politics will go on, but you won’t have a political movement without that moment of identification. So, of course, it matters to me profoundly what strikes the popular imaginary. What is not necessarily a political theory or a political doctrine, but what appeals to the imaginary and in the imaginary unlocks something which isn’t usually unlocked elsewhere. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 1134

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘identification’ as the constitutive moment linking conjunctural analysis to political mobilization — the reader’s affective investment in a politics as their own.
• XREF: Connects to Hall’s earlier articulation (in this volume and elsewhere) of ideology as interpellation, and to his account of Thatcherism’s ‘authoritarian populism’ as operating through just such appeals to the popular imaginary. — connects to: Political movements require private indignation to coalesce into collective identity — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 20; Political movements must rewrite history before they can mobilize people around a new cause — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the…, 260