Jeremy Stangroom

Rather, in practical politics, class is just an example of identity, and politics always works through people grouping around identities. What changes, though, is the relative salience of such identities. 2/

Well, I'm not inclined to think of it in terms of class. But there's a difference between a politics that seeks to break down distinctions between identity groups, emphasizing what binds people together, rather than what separates them... 1/

and perhaps uniting behind particular universal policy commitments - e.g., eradication of poverty, drive for equality, increased educational access - and a politics that seeks to preserve disparate identities, and valorizes those in political, moral & epistemic terms, making 2/

them the organizing principle of any political engagement. The first can aim towards hegemony in the Gramscian sense (i.e., it seeks to build a single unified movement that dominates the ideological terrain). The second will inevitably flounder precisely in the relations...

of inclusion and exclusion it fosters. The second is characteristic of identity politics. Hegemonic interventions don't have to be class aligned. For example, the sociologist Stuart Hall conceptualised Thatcherism as a hegemonic project (authoritarian populism).

And I don't think you're ignorant, by any means. It's just identity and politics is the subject of my PhD so I think I have the advantage. Sorry, but there you go.

And you obviously have loads more knowledge in that area. But we’re not having an academic discussion here, neither am I questioning your expertise. Also, your expertise in a discipline is separate from the discipline’s foundations. And I have a handy example...

...because my own PhD is in the area of economics that models the economy as a collection of perfectly rational agents with perfect foresight. I’d say I know a lot about such models. Yet, if an intelligent layperson questions the very foundations of that theory...