A properly progressive politics recognizes there are lanes, and that some lanes have it easier than other lanes, but it wants to break down the lanes, and to create a superhighway where identity isn't destiny.
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"Stay in your lane" - the perfect slogan for an identity politics that aims to build a highway filled with hermetically sealed lanes, where the "marginal" lanes enjoy moral & epistemological privilege over the "oppressor" lanes, and identity is destiny.
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Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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Hypothesis: "Oppressor" lane users created "Marginal" lanes in the first place, in order to keep people they disapproved of strongly from sharing "their" space -> "Identity Politics" is a natural reaction to oppression initiated by majority groups.
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Not sure how the word "natural" is functioning there - but certainly I think identity is fostered in opposition, including opposition forced upon a group by their systemic exclusion/exploitation/denigration. (Indeed, this is one reason identity politics is fatally flawed.)
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By 'natural' I meant 'biological'. As animals, if we feel threatened, we stick close to our peer group, seeking safety in numbers. But can you explain 'fatally flawed' (which suggests 'design', surely not involved here?), and in what sense forming/showing identity is negative?
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Identity *politics* is designed - well at least in the sense that it seems to be a conscious choice on the part of its advocates (even if the processes driving it are not designed). The dangers of identity is in large part the topic of my PhD, so can I just direct you to that!
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Isn't there an elevator version of your PhD? You should always have an elevator version. Also, I wouldn't mind betting that the very term 'identity politics' was conceived (and is largely used) as a pejorative label intended purely to add insult to injury!
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There's certainly a pejorative aspect to the label now, but that's not how it originated. Also, it doesn't follow from the fact that it emerged as a consequence of oppression that it's thereby virtuous. The Islamic revolution was born in terror, but it was far from virtuous.
End of conversation
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