Politicized identity groups invest deeply in their own powerlessness to ground their existence

Evidence

However, the main point of Brown’s essay was to diagnose the psycho-libidinal origins of an identarian political formation which has become even more deeply embedded since she wrote the essay in the 1990s. Drawing on Nietzsche’s account of resentment in On The Genealogy of Morals, Brown wrote of a political subjectivity which “becomes deeply invested in its own impotence, even while it seeks to assuage the pain of its powerlessness through its vengeful moralizing, through its wide distribution of suffering, through its reproach of power as such.” — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1935

Categorization

• DEFINE: Fisher is introducing and distilling Wendy Brown’s concept of ‘wounded attachments’ via her Nietzschean framing.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interests in grievance politics, moral panics, and the performative dimensions of victimhood. — connects to: Politicized collective identity requires power struggles reaching beyond immediate antagonists — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4395; Politicized identity converts a group from thing-in-itself to actor-for-itself; Social identity theory underestimates how readily disadvantaged groups justify their own oppression — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2961 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Social identity theory underestimates how readily disadvantaged groups justify their own oppression #corroborates (0.78) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2961
• Identity politics presumes identity guarantees politics when it is actually forged through struggle #complicates (0.78)
• Oppressed groups internalize dominant categories and police their own members to gain acceptance #expands (0.76) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 717
• Politicized identity converts a group from thing-in-itself to actor-for-itself #expands (0.75)
• Identity politics in one domain can stabilize oppression in another #exemplifies (0.74) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 293
• Identity forms only by struggling against its own structural self-destruction #expands (0.74) — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 233
• Powerlessness creates doubt while privilege naturalizes itself through justifying ideologies #corroborates (0.73) — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 289
• Politicized collective identity requires power struggles reaching beyond immediate antagonists #corroborates (0.72) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4395