Identity Politics and Lifestyle Branding
I'm going to try something that I haven't done before. I'm going to start writing this essay without knowing how it ends.
I've lately come to realize that the Identity Politics that have come to dominate the political landscape of late, looks suspiciously like the Lifestyle Marketing that dominates the consumer culture.
What got me thinking about this was the excellent documentary series The Century of the Self by Adam Curtis.
While the series is largely about marketing, public relations and how psychoanalysis fit into that, he also addresses how politicians have used the same tools.
Consider for a moment car commercials. I remember growing up that car commercials at least mentioned what was in the car.
Now its difficult to determine what product exactly they are selling.
The reason is because they aren't selling a product. They are selling a lifestyle. Simply put, you are what you drive.
It's easy to dismiss this thinking, but the simple fact of the matter is that it works and we need to understand it.
We also need to understand how much further we've gone down this road.
First of all, we must define Identity Politics.
1. political activity or movements based on or catering to the cultural, ethnic, gender, racial, religious, or social interests that characterize a group identity.
There is a potentially positive role for identity politics. For instance, the civil rights movement of the 1950's and 1960's.
It was important for the African-American racial group to define themselves and form a movement to stop their discrimination.
This carried on with latinos, native americans, and women's rights groups in the 1970's. Then finally with the gay and lesbian community in the 1980's.
All these movements did positive things and expanded civil rights for everyone.
However, there is a natural limitation to what these groups can do, and even more importantly, there is a natural side effect from these movements: i.e. they are divisive by their very existence and definition.
What's more, they all exist on the liberal side of the political spectrum where there is more toleration for excesses.
And that's where the problem is, because the concept of the New Deal democratic tradition is based on a society of inclusiveness and working together for a common goal. Indentity Politics is incompatible with this idea.
Historian Arthur Schlesinger writes that "movements for civil rights should aim toward full acceptance and integration of marginalized groups into the mainstream culture, rather than...perpetuating that marginalization through affirmations of difference."
Todd Gitlin explained it this way.
MR. GITLIN: Okay. The other thing that I think a person of the left affirms is that values of solidarity, of social responsibility, of commitment to the common good are of great importance, and that among the most grievous forces that work against the realization of those values are the drastic inequalities in human society. Sosomebody on the left is committed to the undermining and opposition to those inequalities.MR. WATTENBERG: And you think the left now has taken their eye offthe ball. Is that more or less the idea?
MR. GITLIN: I think that many people, perhaps most on the left, or at least most who are visible, have gone down a path in which theyare obsessed with what differs between them and one -- one crowd and another. They are more obsessed with what divides them than what they have in common with the rest of humanity.
MR. WATTENBERG: Who would these groups that engage in identitypolitics be, for specifics?
MR. GITLIN: Many of them are so-called racial or ethnic minorities, or groups who are organized around their narrow group interest. They're not all on the left, by the way. I mean, there's also a right-wing version of identity politics, which is --
MR. WATTENBERG: I understand.
MR. GITLIN: -- obsessed with being white or being male or something like that. But the left-wing version of it takes an insight into the fact that certain groups have historically been kept down,and then it overplays what they think ought to be done as a result,so that you get this obsession with being marginal, this obsession with rewriting history to make it look prettier. You get an obsession with skin color and other forms of difference rather than what the society needs in common.
I think the obsession with differences is a very self-destructive movement overall. The left members of these Identity Politics movements commits all the same sins that the right commits in this regard in that it is absolutely convinced that they hold the absolute truth and that society must conform to their ideas.
You can see this on left-wing blogs where STFU is now considered an acceptable part of political dialogue. After all, if you are the holders of absolute truth then everyone else must be wrong.
And how can these holders of absolute truth be so certain? Because the absolute truth isn't contained in an idea - it's all about identity.
I think the more we’ve made the personal political, the more we define our social and political outlook with reference to what’s in our underpants or what colour our skin is, the more we experience every criticism of our beliefs as an attack on our very personhood, our souls, our right to exist. The problem here is the terrifying wrapping together of the biological and the political, the packaging up of the accident of your gender or race or sexuality with your political persona, to the extent that debate itself comes to be seen as a form of hatred, a ‘phobia’.
Identity politics is spreading, filling the chasm where the politics of ideas used to be...
It’s all inherently censorious. Because if your political activism is indistinguishable from your natural characteristics or cultural identity, then any criticism of your political activism will inevitably feel like an assault on *you*.
How can you have a reasoned and enlightened debate with someone if the simple act of disagreement is a "personal attack on them"?
Obviously you can't. The natural response to a personal attack is emotional.
What's more, since you are the holders of absolute truth, and they are attacking you, then that person or group is not only defective, but sinful, evil, and acting with malice. Thus any reaction to that person or group is justified.
Coincidently, Lifestyle Marketing is all about fullfilliing "underlying emotional needs" that the consumer may not even be aware they have.
Whether we are talking about Identity Politics or Lifestyle Marketing, objective rational thought is not part of the equation. And that's OK in the field of business, but it's poison in the field of politics.
I personally can't help but notice how lifestyle marketing, how we identify ourselves by what we purchase, and Identity Politics, how we identify ourselves by voting, are both very similar and very artificial. Both are created by people you don't know, with intentions you are ignorant of, and are taken far too seriously in many cases.
The process of taking these things internally makes them lies. You are more than the car you drive. You are more than your skin color. You are more than your genitals. You are more than your nationality.
So by wrapping up your identity with these products and individual characterisitics, you are not just accepting a lie (i.e. the opposite of the absolute truth), but also putting an artificial restriction on your personality. Corporations and politicians want you to do this, but for their benefit, not for yours.
Comments
I'm looking for constructive criticism
I want to post this to DKos eventually, but not until its been tightened up. It needs to be smooth and complete because there will be plenty of people who will want to take it apart.
Wow, for me one of the most important issue
to write, research and discuss. I don't know about constructive criticism, I just started to do a little bit or research on this subject and have nothing constructive or critical to add. But the issue in my thoughts.
I think one should go into what makes up your identity.
First is the identity visible and unchangeable to your peers? You can't hide your race or ethnicity very well, but you can hide your religious affiliation, if you needed or wanted to, or you gender orientation, if needed or wanted to. Is the identity related to more of a personal and private nature (I personally would count religion and sexual orientation into that category) or is your identity related to your genetic make-up.
Gender identity is based on your genetic material, Transgender identity is an act of choice physically and is mostly claimed by those, who go through it, as not being a choice, but a necessity to live in their true gender identity. Sexual orientation is psychologically also not a choice, but a biological given, according to most accounts I heard, but it is an identity that is not unavoidably visible. Right?
Religion is a choice as of a certain age, considering that most are either grown up with religious customs, traditions or affiliations, but are free to leave those behind, if they don't want to follow them anymore.
There is the question about what kind of your self-proclaimed identity is.
Is it the self-proclaimed identification of your race or religion or is it the experience in your life-time, you went through, based on real lived through incidences that related to your race or religion. Or is it the passed on orally transferred stories of your ancestors, who you learn about through books and story telling. As a member of a "tribe", the descendent persons may feel its their moral duty to be attached to and fight for their rights that were not given to their ancestors. This is a fight based more on the intellect and the knowledge what had happened in the past and not do much on lived-through personal experiences.
Then there is the big question as to when does it become "a thing of the past" and when is it still a "lived through experience"? One generation, two generations, three generations? ( I myself put this mostly into grand and or great grand children's generation. After that, all is "book knowledge", unless the victimization is on-going and never changed. Often it's half/half. You don't have slavery anymore, but you have all the socio-economic inequality resulting from that time still going on. That makes it very hard to fairly judge identity policies and be critical about them.
I can't express myself, but I always felt there is the personally experienced trauma of being oppressed, discriminated and victimization or there is at least the experience you get as a child from what you observe and hear from parents or grandparents trauma. (think Jews who survived the holocaust and their children and grandchildren, who can't walk in the shoes of their parents or grandparents to feel the same trauma, but whose mind tries as hard as they can intellectually to fight against the horrible unjustice and victimization to ever come back.) You can also see the same pattern among Afro-Americans, Native Americans.
In a way it's a similar pattern, just the other way around, with the burden of the white people's sins of their parents and anchestors, being involved in the Holocaust and Slavery and genocidal activities of the Native Americans. They too have identities that are created by their linkage to their ancestors, who have been perpetrated atrocities actively, as bystanders or enablers.
I believe to have observed that for certain groups, the closer the experience is to your own life, the less it is abused for identity political debate. I think for Veterans of WWII. Vietnam and Iraq/Afghanistan, who went through the real trauma, but rarely talk about it or use it as tool in a political debate. Their children might use it more than their parents. The further apart you may be from your ancestors' pain (so to speak) the more you feel obliged to use that pain (which you didn't experience yourself and might not even have lived through) as a political identity label and debate tool.
In addition it is very hard to know if the claimed identity politics one person uses to fight for or against, is for real or staged by a writer, who wants to do research and invents the "pain" story to back up his "victimhood" That is also one aspect which is hard to "deal with".
I look very much forward to your diary on that. Important issue. Especially on dailykos now.
https://www.euronews.com/live
Examples would indeed help
Thanks for the suggestion.
I should look around for a really good example and begin the diary with it. There are plenty of them.
You can find them in all the Identity groups where a leader has openly questioned some divisive language the group uses, and then the group turns on him/her.
I've come up with some other ideas as well.
Where does Identity Politics go from here? Nowhere significant that I can tell. It changes the language we use. It may change some minor laws. But one thing it is incapable of doing is overturning the status quo.
How could it? 1) The Identities in question were created by the Powers That Be. 2) The objectives and goals of the Identity groups are limited to their minority group.
Where does Identity Politics have the most influence? On fellow liberals, not on the people they are most likely to be oppressed by.
Thus you have that Identity group wasting a lot of time on "purity" (as we have seen on DKos).
Of course I would need to provide examples and links for these points.
To me identity politicking and purity divisions are
very discouraging. It actually causes lots of depression. I blame everything on the electoral college system, campaign finance and the way social network communications distorts what is important in real lives of people.
https://www.euronews.com/live
I thought of another element of Identity Politics
The narcissistic side of it.
I've made more than one diary about some event that concerns one of the chosen Identities and mentioned how this event also effects a much larger community beyond the chosen Identity. I then went on to mention how it would be in the best interest of the Identity group to make common cause with the larger community because its smart politics to have more allies.
Inevitably there will be multiple hostile responses to my suggestions.
"This event is about OUR pain, not anyone else's."
Well, if the pain of a minority was power enough, then that minority would never have experienced that pain to begin with.
So when you look at it, the narcissism of Identity Politics isn't about moving society forward. It's all about reaffirming and reliving what happened in the past.
Unlike the leftist politics of the 18th and early 19th Centuries, Identity Politics has no plan and no intention of moving society toward a brighter future. It has no vision because its focus is on where we've been, not where we are going.
And that is traditionally been the domain of conservatives, not liberals.
It's hard to write about it and to be fair.
my experience (anecdotal) and observations (on DK) is that those people, who suffer under personal pain the most, rarely talk about it.
There is the whole issue of the online communication as therapeutic tool though, and the charity of well-meaning people to help others with embracing words online. I felt myself often as a recipient of those and it is good to have this interaction going on as well. I think most readers realize after a while, when the "personal pain and victimization" is used as a tool in manipulating political cooperation among groups and when it goes beyond the personal.
I think it's a huge subject area and I think there are a lot of sub-issues to the overall "Identity Politics and Lifestyle Branding" theme. I will try to write something about it in future Open Threads. But I am very slow in pulling those things together coherently. It could be an ongoing conversation in the Open Thread section.
You are the writers. So, I always am looking forward to your diaries.
https://www.euronews.com/live
We've had decades of replacing Adult Values
with Adolescent Values done in mass-reach media. In the '70s I did typesetting, and many of our customers were world leading advertisers. We'd do their conference materials as well as their ads. They noticed teenagers were the segment most willing to part with their money; and on a whim as well. Of course, the political and propaganda machines, who have had revolving doors with advertising for over a century, also see the merit in people not having adult Values.
They were worried about the inner-directed consumer. They scoped out that the way to beat them is to play to their identity and appetites. So it was that at one point no cultural sophisticate in all the land would even think of having instant coffee. Then a product came out, instant coffee, but "with a touch of Old Vienna." Sold that shit out.
I've seen, a couple of years back when I watched some regular tv for a spell, that every single commercial was about how to get, or protect, from one's family and friends the 'desired object.' Done with a "this is humor" style, but the message was pretty clear. The TV shows do the same thing, especially the 'comedies.'
All of which leads to: How do you get people to voluntarily adopt an Adult perspective, when the whole world is telling them, and all the time, "the iMeMy is the sum and substance of life"?
Orwell: Where's the omelette?
Bingo!
You nailed it.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
I was thinking about the term "immature"
but it is such a loaded term that it is almost certain to set off a flame war. I'd prefer not antagonizing certain people even more than I'm already determined to.
Nevertheless, you noticed just like I did that a narcissitic approach to ideas/issues and an immature approach are often one and the same.
This self-centered, self-involved attitude toward all things has not just elements of immaturity, but also other characterisitics that you will also find with the immature when you mix it with conservative politics: a lack of empathy and a pride in ignorance.
When mixed with liberal politics you find glorification of victimization.
Another terrific comment
You and Jim P have really captured this perfectly. It is funny that the word narcissism was the word that passed through my mind when thinking about identity politics.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Typeset a Reprint of textbooks for High school
recently. Extremely prestigious publisher. One of the original chapters was about narcism as a psychological defect. The entire thing was revised to define it as a "character trait." Like generosity, or suspiciousness, or communicative or not. This is how deep the thing has been placed in our culture.
Orwell: Where's the omelette?
Wow!
I read this twice. First last night and then again this morning. One of my biggest gripes about the way our political systems have deteriorated is the use of identity politics to divide us against one another. Barack Obama's candidacy was no accident, and neither is that of Hillary Clinton. In both cases, the Democratic party has cast its lot with identity politics, especially with Hillary Clinton.
I have railed against the idea of identity politics for a long time because it pulls any discussion of the real issues off the table. We have seen this over and over with Obama. When we try to discuss the stuff he is doing as being Republican lite, we are accused of racism or hating the President because he is black. Identity politics has resulted in the infamous STFU or GTFO and the "white privilege" argument over the NSA as the way to kill any conversation over substance and replace it with optics.
If this gets posted over at GOS, be prepared for a heavy backlash from the identity purity brigade. But you know that and you can take it.
I want to read it one more time and then I may have more comments.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Exiting the Vampire's Castle
link
intersectionality theory
link
Still building this diary until it can stand on its own.
Brilliant!
Can't criticize this as you have expressed exactly what I 'feel' about identity politics. We live in a world that is all about life style here in so called western civilization. Success in our society is determined by those that know how and manage to slot themselves into Axelrod's 'world as we find it'. The investors and professionals who service the powers that be. Obama often talks about responsible people, what he means is the people who are not losers in this vicious free market unfettered capitalistic game. Too complicated to go into in a comment but you have nailed it as they say.
I read the Guardian daily as my main source of nuts and bolts news. I have noticed that they are becoming more and more a life style driven publication even when covering hard news. It's all about devise PC issues and plays down the humanistic ties that bind. It's really hard to avoid identity politics if you try to run around them your a racist, sexist, anti-science, white privileged, extremist or whatever. This mindset denies the reality of what we as human beings are dealing with. Human and civil rights are universal and not 'cultural'. They cannot be slotted into different categories that pit humans against each other ans say my rights take precedence over yours. All this does is play into the entrenched status quo that keeps humans globally on a endless wheel.
The Family of Man a book of photos my parents had helped form my take on humanism. To this day I do not believe in identity politics as they negate the family of man. Human rights and civil rights are inclusive and start with the principle that we are all human and possess inalienable rights that apply to all of us. FDR was a racist and MLK's truths only belongs to African Americans is just bs. We are after all is said and done only human.
Terrific comment!
This was the very issue that I found so offensive in bbb's diary last week. And that is that just because the Democrats are better on civil rights, we can give them a pass on economics. We cannot have one without the other.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
The politics of division
Age old. For the most part they work. Schumer heads the Senate. Clinton heads the ticket. They work and always to the advantage of the same thieves and murderers. Sadly, the rethugs and dems have indulged and fostered these divisions for so long now that I don't know how they will be transformed, at least in my lifetime. I'd love to be wrong!
Give us a heads up when you post on the other side.
In the '60s, the FBI started a deliberate
program of setting one identity-group against another. Easy enough when you could get someone by the shorthairs here; with money there. Divide-and-conquer has been a basic tool since the Assyrian Empire, after all.
The reason identify-politics was used, like in the Civil Rights movement, was that it provided a specific focus to get people present and active. These were the days when News Reporting would cover protests. So it was a very quick and effective way to 'get the word out' and, hence, for organization.
btw, I do think people need to see Century of the Self. It is a real eye-opener. We've really been trained, going on for generations now, to take our appetites as our identity. Here is where people can either watch or download the whole series: https://archive.org/details/TheCenturyOfSelfThereIsAPolicemanInsideAllOu... (some reason the link goes to the 3rd of the 4 parts, scroll up a bit and start with #1)
It's worth noting that a Russian visitor said after visiting the US in the late '20s that the population was so befuddled by advertising they mistook flies for elephants and elephants for flies.
Back to the main theme: Human Rights. Period. Identity politics is our doom. Every human deserves a certain minimum as birthright. The question is how do we make Human Rights, every identity-faction allied with every other (except the nut-wing, of course) to make sure we're all covered.
Orwell: Where's the omelette?
Thanks for the link...
I'm going to watch that tonight, and welcome Jim, glad to see you made it here. I look forward to your great diaries. Kick back and make yourself at home. Thanks!
Thanks for the invite. I might have
to go around trolling the members of the site; bring a little flavor of DKos here.
Orwell: Where's the omelette?
Please do
we would all greatly appreciate it. Thanks, Jim.
"Social Clubs in Drag Disguise"
sang Dylan, the "drag disguise" being as political groupings. Actually, in practice, Politics becomes a secondary, even tertiary, concern. There's the problem we'd have in shifting to the bigger "Human Rights for Each and All" frame. People feel a need to belong to something, that's just human nature.
Moreover, the nature of people in organizations is to perpetuate the organization. Largely unconscious, but the actual purposes of the organization at its start ends up getting a fraction of the energy as self-preservation does. If I were to form a political group, I'd insist that there be a guaranteed date of dissolution. People would be more focused, and effective, in such a place.
Orwell: Where's the omelette?
thank you from me as well, I start watching them now,
it's very much on my mind and I am glad to find people who know so much about it and can offer their links and opinions.
https://www.euronews.com/live
Awesome post (n/t)
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Identity Politics quotes
“I believe that in ways large and small, peaceful and sometimes violent, that the biggest threat to the future of our children and grandchildren is the poison of identity politics that preaches that our differences are far more important than our common humanity."
- Bill Clinton, link
'Beware of identity politics. I’ll re-phrase that: have nothing to do with identity politics. I remember very well the first time I heard the saying “The Personal Is Political.” It began as a sort of reaction to the defeats and downturns that followed 1968: a consolation prize, as you might say, for people who had missed that year. I knew in my bones that a truly Bad Idea had entered the discourse. Nor was I wrong. People began to stand up at meetings and orate about how they felt, not about what or how they thought, and about who they were rather than what (if anything) they had done or stood for. It became the replication in even less interesting form of the narcissism of the small difference,* because each identity group begat its subgroups and “specificities.”'
- Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian
[note: *Freud was brilliantly right when he wrote about “the narcissism of the small difference”: distinctions that seem trivial to the visitor are the obsessive concern of the local and the provincial minds.]
"I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the systems of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash, but I don’t think that it will be based upon the color of the skin."
—Malcolm X
"Identity politics enabled many formerly silenced and displaced groups to emerge from the margins of power and dominant culture to reassert and reclain suppressed identities and experiences; but in doing so, they often substituted one master narrative for another, invoked a politics of separatism, and suppressed differences within their own 'liberatory' narratives."
- Henry Giroux
"I'm not a big fan of identity politics and sort of picking one thing and defining yourself with it."
- Andrej Pejic
So, 70 people at the 1st meeting of an anti-nuke
group. To stop a plant being built. Early 1970s. We've two hours in the Community Center space lent us. Mixed crowd, all sorts of politics and incomes and whatnot, but against nukes.
So, someone comes in from another group -- I'm not making this up -- Black Lesbians for Peace and Against Nuclear Power. (I'm thinking: What! They'll let in Left-Handed ones!?) They have a flyer they want to put up, and get our endorsement.
The meeting is run by white new-agey people. They insist that we go around the room, each one of us expressing our feelings about the proposed flyer. I suggest a show of hands and a count. But, no, the purpose here is that everyone should agree, and express themselves. So 25 minutes later, we endorse the flyer.
Nothing gets done, except a lot of feelings get expressed on votes about proposals that mean nothing.
2nd Meeting of Group: about 25 people showed up. All the conservatives, people with families, they didn't have time to piss away going nowhere.
Orwell: Where's the omelette?