Stigma on steroids

[imomus]

In yesterday's entry I argued that the current Republican party sees itself -- and is trying to encourage America to see itself -- as The Other in a grotesque development from identity politics, which I described as 'narcissistic'. Someone posted the following comment:

You certainly love to use heteronormative references and structure in your arguments. You label blacks, gays and women as narcissistic when they are struggling for issues that are deeply personal to them. Why don't you shed your white male privilege for long enough to imagine yourself being the target of a national campaign to label you as "other" and to codify this status into law, and then imagine that this issue is validated, not only by the ones who really hate you, but also by the ones struggling to find a narrative that doesn't require any sacrifices of them. Then imagine what kind of mischief you can create when you refuse to conform to the heteronormative script so well developed by our media and start writing your own script with no clear ending...

Of course I abhor injustice and prejudice, and I'm sympathetic to the motives behind identity politics. I like the idea that we can re-write our social scripts and renegotiate our social roles. But there are big problems with identity politics.

Identity politics has been linked with deconstruction, because both are concerned with renegotiation of the 'repressed' terms of semantic binaries. In feminism, for instance, the 'repressed term' in the male/female binary is detached from its social semantics and renegotiated.



Now, society is syntagmatic, not paradigmatic -- that is, it works like a sentence rather than a list of nouns, or like a family rather than a barracks. Social power is the result of social elements working with elements unlike themselves. The basis of social power is the promise to work on behalf of others. Those who have social power are those who manage to convince many types of people with different interests that they will represent everybody's interests, not just their own. In other words, social power tends to go to those who at least pose as The Universal rather than The Other. Identity politics, though, is based on single-issues, and on self-identity as The Other. Historically it's a product of 'The Me Generation' of the 1970s. It consists in a narcissistic withdrawal from the social syntagm, the 'sentence' of society, and an alignment with the 'paradigm' of other similar elements. 'People don't like me, so I want to be with people like me.'

The obvious limitation of this strategy is that, although it can allow for a renegotiation of one's social value -- the third phase in deconstruction is re-insertion of the renegotiated binary back into the social sentence, just as the third phase in feminism is a fully-integrated superwoman -- the narcissism involved actually diminishes the social power of the actor. When I become The Other and act on my own behalf, according to the narrow interests of my category, it's hard to claim to act on behalf of a broader 'we' again. The best I can hope for is that my narcissism will be indulged with celebratory (and patronising) acknowledgements, symbolic reparations, token awards, policed language.

The fact is, one cannot renegotiate a social role based only on 'What we'll do for people like ourselves'. One can only renegotiate it based on 'What we'll do for everyone'. To some extent identity politics has succeeded in this 're-inscription'. But the problem for groups who self-identify as The Other is the same as the problem the US faces in Iraq: legitimacy. You need to persuade people whose interests are not your own that you have their interests at heart too, and to do that you have to pose as The Universal, not The Other.



There is nothing outside of society. Those who try to break off from it altogether wallow in disillusionment and neglect. Narcissism is an attempt to substitute with pumped-up self-love the love which can only come from others. Narcissism can also become a vicious circle. Trying to escape the stigma of our social roles, we become a parody of them, 'stigma on steroids'. It's fine to 'go on strike' to renegotiate one's social value, but one shouldn't turn a strike into unemployment. One must go back to work eventually within the social syntagm, not stay in one's paradigm with isolated social elements like oneself. Isolation and narcissism are the way to become disempowered, not empowered.

There are two further problems with identity politics. The first is that as social groups withdraw one by one from the mainstream to renegotiate their value based on single identity-related issues, everyone is encouraged to see themselves as a minority, even the powerful. The effect is a narcissized and fragmented society of single-interest groups. And at that point, it seems clear that the richest and most powerful single interest group will win. It's a truly terrible scenario when the conservative white male sees himself as an embattled minority, a victim, and starts basing his actions only on his own narcissistic interests. This is what has happened with the US right. The powerful have taken on the mantle of the ultimate victims, and their power seems to them to be 'empowerment'. They act for no-one but themselves, and if they speak for anyone else, it's a half-hearted lie. This appalling situation is a perversion of identity politics (call it 'steroids on stigma' rather than 'stigma on steroids'), but it's a logical progression from it; the final stage, the death rattle.



There's another problem with identity politics. Let's call it 'the azza problem'. It's not just society itself that's fragmented, we also have increasingly fragmented personal identities. Do I react to something as a white man, as a person with a visual handicap, as a Marxist, as an exile, as a musician, as a non-motorist, as a person in a cross-racial relationship, as a poor person with no savings, as a Japan-lover? I have many possible hats, and many possible -- and possibly conflicting -- interests. How many clubs and organisations do I have to join? How many political parties campaigning on single issues can I vote for? What does 'identity' mean if I can switch roles and alliances so quickly? The closer I get to a single-issue, identity-based group, the more I feel I'm neglecting all the other identities within myself.

Comments

[imomus.livejournal.com]

There's a lot in there, and a lot I accept. But I want to focus on this:

Your talk of the Other also brought this up in my mind... Feminism and queer theory are completely entangled to me.

Do you accept that the current Republicanism is also tied to feminist and queer theory? I know it sounds odd at first, but reading accounts of how Bush and Rove bonded when they first met, it struck me that it was a hatred of the permissive 60s that they shared. And I think the whole 'Iron John' thing in the 90s is a direct appropriation by men of the women's movement. Men were keen to stop embodying some kind of universal justice and rationality and get in touch with their 'primal man' (and their fathers) the same way women were getting in touch with the sisterhood (and their mothers). The idea of solidarity around the shared values of a microculture with common interests cuts both ways -- conservatives can play that game too. And their 'consciousness raising' sessions produce things like 'The Project For The New American Century'.

[andypop.livejournal.com]

the whole 'Iron John' thing in the 90s is a direct appropriation by men of the women's movement

Yes it was...

Men were keen to stop embodying some kind of universal justice and rationality and get in touch with their 'primal man' (and their fathers) the same way women were getting in touch with the sisterhood (and their mothers)

... but that era has passed. Iron John was an attempt to dig up some kind of elemental, 'essential' masculine identity, but many within gender theory/queer theory/feminism since the 80s have been working hard to torpedo the very idea that there is any essential, natural identity for anyone at all. Just as you pointed out recently regarding the supposed authenticity of the recording techniques used on the Devendra Banhart album, the Iron John persona is entirely a modern construct, as are all 'identities'. Your comment about the "third stage" of feminism hardly applies to most feminists (and feminisms) today. Much current feminism could be accurately described as an anti-identity politics.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Oh, of course. I file the 'Iron John' thing under 'moronic authenticity' and 'fake folk'. It's a construct. The important thing about it is the renunciation of responsibility, the end of the claim to be 'Universal', the lack of interest in the representation of other people's interests rather than just one's own. This is the limitation of postmodern identity politics of all kinds. It's all me, me, me. One becomes The Other in order not to have to think about others.

[andypop.livejournal.com]

Yes, point taken.

'moronic authenticity' and 'fake folk'

I quite like these as names for genres. "And here's the latest fake folk record on the Moronic Authenticity label..."