Symbolic Struggles

Drawing on Bourdieu (1990, 2000, 2001), I describe “new” identity-based movements and the pushback against them—the #MeToo movement, LGBTQ and trans rights movements, Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), and the backlash against these movements—as examples of symbolic struggles. That is, examples of struggles to make a vision of social reality seen and believed (or rendered invisible and forgotten as second nature). I describe how the social world is organized according to a logic of significant distinction and explain how people internalize a practical understanding of social structure as cognitive and motivating dispositions (Bourdieu, 2000). These durably inscribed dispositions form the basis for a large portion of social action, becoming accomplices to the very processes that produced them. I expand Bourdieu’s ideas to make the case that social change comes from the ways in which intersecting identities motivate collective action in symbolic struggles to redefine the social order (or invest relatively empowered social group members in the status quo). I argue that it is no accident the #MeToo movement was founded years ago by a Black woman or that The Movement for Black Lives was founded by Black women (including a queer Black woman). Drawing on feminist theory, I argue symbolic struggles are often instigated by the disempowered—particularly those who experience intersecting group-based disempowerments—when there is a tension between what the social order tries to render invisible and what the disempowered see as reality in their everyday lives (hooks 2000). I elaborate the idea that “new” identity politics are not new at all but rather are the key feature of political life (cf. Swartz 2013).