'Identity Politics' and 'Universalism' in Social Movements Today

Since the election of Trump, the Brexit vote, and the re-emergence of right-wing populism in much of Europe, many social movement and other scholars have debated the relationship between the current rise of the right, on the one hand, and, on the other, the greater attention that has supposedly been paid by social movements on the left, since the 1980s, to issues of “culture” and “identity” relative to those of class and (economic) inequality. Albeit advancing very distinct arguments, and drawing differing conclusions, this question is addressed in: Nancy Fraser’s indictment of “progressive neoliberalism”; Arlie Russel Hochschild’s study of “the fear of cultural eclipse” (as well as economic decline) by those on the American right; Mark Lilla’s claim that a post-1968 rise in “identity consciousness” has corresponded to a decline in “political consciousness”; and Didier Eribon’s discussion of the abandonment of the working class in France by parties, movements and theorists on the left. This paper critically contributes to these debates. It refutes the frequent framing of “identity politics” as pre-occupied with *particular* rather than (purportedly) *universal* concerns, and argues that social movements invested in a progressive path out of the current political economic, social and ecological crises must develop a new form of identity politics, understood in two discreet senses that must nevertheless become urgently combined. The first must be geared towards producing a collective identity – through common practices and discourses – that allows all those whose (waged and unwaged) labour is exploited by capital (directly or indirectly) to recognize one another as such, and to affirm their shared interests. The second must challenge the ways that various axes of social difference produce particular forms of marginalisation and domination for some subjects, and in ways that are at once functional to capital accumulation while, nevertheless, not being reducible to this function. This paper addresses how this might be done, paying particular attention to the concrete histories – and the political rhetoric – of queer, feminist, anti-racist and anti-colonial social movements.