"Though self-definition is the necessary starting point for any liberation movement, it can take us only so far. The most obvious drawback of identity politics is its logic of fragmentation into ever smaller and more particularist groups: the fracturing of the radical feminist movement along class and gay-straight lines (the racial divide having kept most black women out of the movement to begin with) is the sobering paradigm. What's at stake here, however, is not only the pragmatic question (crucial as it is) of how to avoid being divided and conquered, but our understanding of what it means to be a principled radical...Almost from the beginning, second wave feminism was a study in the limits of the identity politics it did so much to promote."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Ellen Willis Introduction to No More Nice Girls: Countercultural Essays (1992)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Identity_politics
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Identity politics
11 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Identity politics →
Related Quotes
"Far too often movements revert to a position in which membership and joint political work are based on a necessarily …"
"The contemporary Left claims not to exist. Whereas the Right sees left-wing threats everywhere, those on the Left esc…"
"There will be no economic or political justice for the poor, people of color, women or workers within the framework o…"
"Bill Clinton and his two treasury secretary enablers, Robert Rubin and Larry Summers, instituted a system of unregula…"
"The liberal class has retreated into boutique activism where issues of class, capitalism and militarism are jettisone…"
"Identity politics of all kinds do contain an inherent potential not only for victim-competition but for splintering m…"
"anti-Semitism has sometimes masqueraded as a disdain for identity politics."
"Seizing upon anything but class, U.S. leftists today have developed an array of identity groups centering around ethn…"
"I mentioned at the outset that I dislike the term "identity politics." This is because the phrase seems to suggest th…"
"I think the crucial point here is that we’ve got to be able to have a politics of solidarity. What I mean by that is …"