搜尋結果
1. Kenan Malik: “At the heart of unconscious bias training is a controversial psychological technique called “implicit-association test”, or IAT. First introduced in 1998, IAT tests for the speed at which you associate particular categories, black people and white people, for instance, with “good” and “bad” attributes (“violent” or “intelligent”).
- Context
- Contextual Citation
- Description
- Characteristics of Identitarian Politics (1): Mark Fisher
- Characteristics 2: Common Cause Ottawa
- History
- Discussion
- Discussion 2
- More Information
This entry is not about the older movements such as the women's movement, civil rights for African-Americans in the USA, gay rights, etc... but more specifically about the practices and ideas associated with Group Identity Theory, and the 'fixation' of politics and subjectivities on external biological characteristics.
1. "It is not, then, that all politics is identity politics. It is that it has come to seem as if all politics can only be identity politics because the alternative, which formed the heart of the great, progressive social transformations over the past 200 years, has so badly eroded. As the universalist viewpoint has faded, largely as many of the so...
(the Vampires' Castle is Mark Fisher's pejorative concept to characterize identity politics) Mark Fisher: "The first configuration is what I came to call the Vampires’ Castle. The Vampires’ Castle specialises in propagating guilt. It is driven by a priest’s desire to excommunicate and condemn, an academic-pedant’s desire to be the first to be seen ...
The first law of the Vampires’ Castle is: individualise and privatise everything.
"While in theory it claims to be in favour of structural critique, in practice it never focuses on anything except individual behaviour. Some of these working class types are not terribly well brought up, and can be very rude at times. Remember: condemning individuals is always more important than paying attention to impersonal structures. The actual ruling class propagates ideologies of individualism, while tending to act as a class. (Many of what we call ‘conspiracies’ are the ruling class...
The second law of the Vampires’ Castle is: make thought and action appear very, very difficult.
There must be no lightness, and certainly no humour. Humour isn’t serious, by definition, right? Thought is hard work, for people with posh voices and furrowed brows. Where there is confidence, introduce scepticism. Say: don’t be hasty, we have to think more deeply about this. Remember: having convictions is oppressive, and might lead to gulags.
The third law of the Vampires’ Castle is: propagate as much guilt as you can.
The more guilt the better. People must feel bad: it is a sign that they understand the gravity of things. It’s OK to be class-privileged if you feel guilty about privilege and make others in a subordinate class position to you feel guilty too. You do some good works for the poor, too, right?
"In order to situate our critique, it is useful to consider some of the common practices associated with anti-oppression politics. Although a homogenous grouping of practices does not exist, there are dominant trends that can be observed. There are common customs and rules that constitute the lived practices of anti-oppression politics. The descrip...
Kenan Malik: "To understand the characteristics of contemporary identity politics, we need first to go back to the origins of modern politics, at the end of the eighteenth-century. This was when the distinction was first established between the left and right as we understand them. It was also when the distinction between identity politics and its ...
The differences between 'old' (civil rights) and 'new' identity politics
by Helen Pluckrose and James A. Lindsay: "It is vital to distinguish between universal liberalism and identity politics and recognize what they share in common alongside how they differ. Both see and oppose inequality and seek to remedy it, but they do so with very different conceptions of society and use different approaches. These differences matter. Universal liberalism focuses on individuality and shared humanity and seeks to achieve a society in which every individual is equally able to...
The Problems with Identity Politics
by Helen Pluckrose and James A. Lindsay: "The problems with the identity politics approach are: 1. Epistemological: It relies on highly dubious social constructivist theory and consequently produces heavily biased readings of situations. 1. Psychological: Its sole focus on identity is divisive, reduces empathy between groups, and goes against core moral intuitions of fairness and reciprocity. 1. Social: By failing to uphold principles of non-discrimination consistently, it threatens to damage...
We are not our identities
By CHRISTINE LOUIS-DIT-SULLY: "Black. Woman. Uneducated, working-class background. These are some of the identities that are supposed to define me, that are supposed to give me a particular perspective in life. These identities today are supposed to give you knowledge about my ideas, beliefs, and opinions before you ever even meet me or listen to me. These identities are supposed to tell you and me who my enemies are and who shares common interests with me. Can these accidents of birth, howev...
Class Theory Insights
1. "Leftist identity politics arose out of a quasi Marxist oppressed/oppressor dynamic, but crucially divorces the concept of class struggle from class itself, defined by Marx in terms of relations of production. Privilege and marginalization in identity politics become intrinsic characteristics of certain racial and gender identities, and so no means of resolving the contradiction via politics - through the creation of a democratic system of universal suffrage and individual rights or via ec...
Cornell West's Appeal
Cornell West: "dentity politics is supporting a politician based on the politician’s race or gender or sexual orientation. Some black supporters of former President Barack Obama, said West, were unwilling to criticize the Obama administration for a weak response to Wall Street entities culpable in the financial crisis of 2008. Some proud supporters, he said, opted to focus on Obama’s peace prize, but were not willing to criticize him for carrying out far more drone attacks overseas than Presi...
critiques of identity politics from the alt-left:Kenan Malik, excellent article on the changing nature of the dangers to free speech: https://kenanmalik.com/2015/08/13/free-speech-in-an-age-of-identity-politics/
