Getting to a Baseline on Identity Politics: the Marxist Debate (original) (raw)

There has been much debate in art, and other fields, about the efficacy of identity politics for advancing social justice and change. My contribution considers anti-racism, as a type of social analysis and political strategy, in the context of Leftist debates that also reoccur in relation to sex and gender politics. Pointing to how ideas articulated in art relate to politics, this essay identifies what makes a particular phenomenon a model, when specificities can be generalized, or from which concrete situations we can extrapolate abstractions. If we articulate the universal potential of identity politics, we can base solidarity on the intersection of class with other forms of identity-based, or ascriptive, politics.