David Garcia on Fri, 26 Oct 2018 10:56:07 +0200 (CEST)


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Re: <nettime> Identity and difference


The emphasis on class and class struggle as the universal category often seems to 
operate differently to the cultural politics of an expanding, fluid multiplicity of struggles 
around identity and the demands to have specific identities recognised and respected. 
Sometimes called the politics of recognition.

There has been a longstanding suspiscion in these identitarian movements   
of the so called 'grand narratives' based on -universal categories, principles or experiences. 
A suspicion based on a history which sees adoption of these universals as subsuming or 
marginalising the specifities of community and community solidarity on which these 
movements depend for their heft. 

This is a fault-line goes back to the enlightenment’s unquestioned belief in ‘reason’ as the universal 
solvent for all injustice. Whose limitations we might recognise in David Cameron’s infamous mode of 
address when chiding Angela Eagle in UK parliament in 2011 with the words “calm down dear”..



On 26 Oct 2018, at 06:32, Patrice Riemens <patrice@xs4all.nl> wrote:

> In a French philosophy class 50 yrs ago this thread would have provided a fantastic 'baccalaureat' exam subject, since it encapsulates the no 1 issue of French philosphy, as expressed in the title Vincent Descombes' awesome overview of the same: Le Meme et l'Autre (The One and the Other) being the question whether there is an identity between identity and difference, or a ... difference.
> 
> It also epitomize the emptinesss of discussions of identity, this time illustrated by a member of Bilwet's famous, but totally vacuous phrase "rather a complex identity than an identity complex", completely overlooking that the latter is a consequence of the former, not its opposite.
> 
> Alterity is just as bad a carrier of progress as identity.
> 
> This being said: The Winter Is Coming ...
> 
> Cheers all the same, p+2D!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 2018-10-26 01:36, Johnatan Petterson wrote:
>> i have seen isabelle stengers in brussels in 1994 who was dissing
>> "economy" as the "real enemy" of movements
>> she was connected with.
>> the leftish dream of labor never became aesthetic or economic, one
>> does not contradict the other.
>> on what basis would economy and aesthetic contradict one another?
>> economy seems in ari's post like metric.
>> spinoza seemed opposed to metric (measurement) in his quest for
>> aesthetic freedom.
>> how would you plug metrics into the aesthetic (creative) understanding
>> ?
>> Le ven. 26 oct. 2018 à 01:07, Alice Yang <alice.lan.yang@gmail.com> a
>> écrit :
>>> Identity politics _is_ class struggle. The nostalgic leftish dream
>>> of labor became aesthetic because it did not include women and the
>>> racially oppressed.
>>> On Thu, Oct 25, 2018 at 6:47 PM ari <ari@kein.org> wrote:
>>>> The primacy of identity has transmorphed class struggle into
>>>> ressentiment politics. Generation identity is the bastard child
>>>> of the
>>>> failed alterglobalisation movement. If at a time when poverty is
>>>> the
>>>> source of wealth you insist on denying the economy matters, you
>>>> sure
>>>> inhabit culture, but it's a culture of denial.
>>> --
>>> Alice
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