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sophiaserpentiaNow that i've been introduced to the idea of "affinity politics," i am strongly tempted to say goodbye to identity politics forever.
The problem i've always had with identity politics is that it is based on an idea that can be twisted into something divisive. It works like this: people A, B, and C all identify as "X," and qua "X," they all have the same concerns. So they should band together!
It sounds great, but it is all too easily turned around. "You're not 'X' enough." "You're not a true 'X'." "I want to do W, but if i do, i'm not an 'X' anymore and my X friends will reject me." "I'm not X, but i'm Y, let's call this the 'XY' coalition." "Hey, i'm a 'Z,' you left me out."
Affinity politics does not parse the world in terms of how people identify themselves. It is still a form of Critical neo-Marxism, but the coalition is not based on how one identifies, but rather on where people find themselves in the web of oppression. The basis of affinity politics is the conscious formation of a coalition, rather than the realization of an identity within oneself. You are free to coalition with people who are like or unlike you; therefore it does not matter if everyone in the coalition shares a single characteristic, or performs that characteristic dutifully enough. No more being expelled if you aren't X enough or you want to do W.
It is the next step in consciousness raising beyond identity politics. Each of us begins in a state of unawareness of the web of oppression around us. Then you start to notice that everyone who is female, or who is gay, or who is black, is mistreated in certain systematic ways. You get together with other people who are female, or black, or gay, to talk about these things. So you start to think that everyone who is female, or black, or gay, has a unifying experience that makes you natural allies.
And then you're disillusioned to discover that this is not the case! So you're tempted to go back to step one and just give up on the whole thing. But a better next step is to form an affinity coalition. What binds the people in an affinity coalition is a similar point of view, and a similar desire for action, based loosely on having the same identity. An affinity coalition is inclusive in the same way that an identity group tends towards being exclusive.
My first encounter with such an idea was the use of the term "wo/man" by feminist theologian Elisabeth Schuessler Fiorenza:
The downside is that when you're forming a coalition you can find at times that the people around you make you very uncomfortable. Bernice Johnson Reagon gave the quintessential description of this in 1981:
Despite the difficulties, i think the future of radicalism is in affinity politics rather than identity politics. Let me give two examples of affinity orientations: "Women of color," and "Deep Lez."
Donna Haraway is often credited as calling attention to the idea of affinity politics in her Cyborg Manifesto. From that piece:
"Deep Lez," a concept put forward by activist and performance artist Allyson Mitchell, is envisioned as a renewal of radical lesbianism. Mitchell's description of Deep Lez, from an interview, carries the same "oppositional consciousness" noted above by Haraway.
The problem i've always had with identity politics is that it is based on an idea that can be twisted into something divisive. It works like this: people A, B, and C all identify as "X," and qua "X," they all have the same concerns. So they should band together!
It sounds great, but it is all too easily turned around. "You're not 'X' enough." "You're not a true 'X'." "I want to do W, but if i do, i'm not an 'X' anymore and my X friends will reject me." "I'm not X, but i'm Y, let's call this the 'XY' coalition." "Hey, i'm a 'Z,' you left me out."
Affinity politics does not parse the world in terms of how people identify themselves. It is still a form of Critical neo-Marxism, but the coalition is not based on how one identifies, but rather on where people find themselves in the web of oppression. The basis of affinity politics is the conscious formation of a coalition, rather than the realization of an identity within oneself. You are free to coalition with people who are like or unlike you; therefore it does not matter if everyone in the coalition shares a single characteristic, or performs that characteristic dutifully enough. No more being expelled if you aren't X enough or you want to do W.
It is the next step in consciousness raising beyond identity politics. Each of us begins in a state of unawareness of the web of oppression around us. Then you start to notice that everyone who is female, or who is gay, or who is black, is mistreated in certain systematic ways. You get together with other people who are female, or black, or gay, to talk about these things. So you start to think that everyone who is female, or black, or gay, has a unifying experience that makes you natural allies.
And then you're disillusioned to discover that this is not the case! So you're tempted to go back to step one and just give up on the whole thing. But a better next step is to form an affinity coalition. What binds the people in an affinity coalition is a similar point of view, and a similar desire for action, based loosely on having the same identity. An affinity coalition is inclusive in the same way that an identity group tends towards being exclusive.
My first encounter with such an idea was the use of the term "wo/man" by feminist theologian Elisabeth Schuessler Fiorenza:
I write "wo/men" in this way in order not only to indicate the instability in the meaning of the term but also to signal that when I say wo/men I also mean to include subordinated men. ... My way of writing wo/men seeks to underscore not only the ambiguous character of the term "wo/man or wo/men" but also to retain the expression "wo/men" as a political category. Since this designation is often read as referring to white women only, my unorthodox writing of the term seeks to draw to the attention of readers that those kyriarchal structures which determine wo/men's lives and status also impact the lives and status of men of subordinated race, classes, countries, and religions, albeit in different ways. The expression "wo/men" must therefore be understood as inclusive rather than as an exclusive universalized gender term. Jesus and the Politics of Interpretation, pp. 4-5, footnote.
The downside is that when you're forming a coalition you can find at times that the people around you make you very uncomfortable. Bernice Johnson Reagon gave the quintessential description of this in 1981:
I've never been this high before. I'm talking about the altitude. There is a lesson in bringing people together where they can't get enough oxygen, then having them try to figure out what they're going to do when they can't think properly. ...
I wish there had been another way to graphically make me feel it because I belong to the group of people who are having a very difficult time being here. I feel as if I'm gonna keel over any minute and die. That is often what it feels like if you're really doing coalition work. Most of the time you feel threatened to the core and if you don't, you're not really doing no coalescing. [emphasis added]
Despite the difficulties, i think the future of radicalism is in affinity politics rather than identity politics. Let me give two examples of affinity orientations: "Women of color," and "Deep Lez."
Donna Haraway is often credited as calling attention to the idea of affinity politics in her Cyborg Manifesto. From that piece:
It has become difficult to name one's feminism by a single adjective -- or even to insist in every circumstance upon the noun. Consciousness of exclusion through naming is acute. Identities seem contradictory, partial, and strategic. With the hard-won recognition of their social and historical constitution, gender, race, and class cannot provide the basis for belief in 'essential' unity. There is nothing about being 'female' that naturally binds women. There is not even such a state as 'being' female, itself a highly complex category constructed in contested sexual scientific discourses and other social practices. Gender, race, or class consciousness is an achievement forced on us by the terrible historical experience of the contradictory social realities of patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism. And who counts as 'us' in my own rhetoric? Which identities are available to ground such a potent political myth called 'us', and what could motivate enlistment in this collectivity? Painful fragmentation among feminists (not to mention among women) along every possible fault line has made the concept of woman elusive, an excuse for the matrix of women's dominations of each other. For me - and for many who share a similar historical location in white, professional middle-class, female, radical, North American, mid-adult bodies - the sources of a crisis in political identity are legion. The recent history for much of the US left and US feminism has been a response to this kind of crisis by endless splitting and searches for a new essential unity. But there has also been a growing recognition of another response through coalition - affinity, not identity.
Chela Sandoval (n.d., 1984), from a consideration of specific historical moments in the formation of the new political voice called women of colour, has theorized a hopeful model of political identity called 'oppositional consciousness', born of the skills for reading webs of power by those refused stable membership in the social categories of race, sex, or class. 'Women of color' ... constructs a kind of postmodernist identity out of otherness, difference, and specificity. ...
Sandoval emphasizes the lack of any essential criterion for identifying who is a woman of colour. She notes that the definition of the group has been by conscious appropriation of negation. For example, a Chicana or US black woman has not been able to speak as a woman or as a black person or as a Chicano. Thus, she was at the bottom of a cascade of negative identities, left out of even the privileged oppressed authorial categories called 'women and blacks', who claimed to make the important revolutions. The category 'woman' negated all non-white women; 'black' negated all non-black people, as well as all black women. But there was also no 'she', no singularity, but a sea of differences among US women who have affirmed their historical identity as US women of colour. ...
Sandoval's argument has to be seen as one potent formulation for feminists out of the world-wide development of anti-colonialist discourse.... Sandoval argues that 'women of colour' have a chance to build an effective unity that does not replicate the imperializing, totalizing revolutionary subjects of previous Marxisms and feminisms which had not faced the consequences of the disorderly polyphony emerging from decolonization.
"Deep Lez," a concept put forward by activist and performance artist Allyson Mitchell, is envisioned as a renewal of radical lesbianism. Mitchell's description of Deep Lez, from an interview, carries the same "oppositional consciousness" noted above by Haraway.
Deep Lez is a social experiment. I want to know, can you will a movement into happening with art and ideas? Deep Lez is about rescuing lesbian and radical feminism from being forgotten or discarded. There are some amazing principles and practices that i don't want to get lost. I think that queer people are constantly having to reinvent the wheel. ... A lot of people are too dismissive of lesbian feminism. ... There is a deep set misogyny in these sentiments. I want to call attention to this misogyny and at the same time tweak lesbian feminism into an inclusive contemporary urban context that could really use a lot of its principles right now.
The deep of Deep Lez is this radical feminist root. The Lez of Deep Lez is the reclaiming of lesbian, the opening up of the identity to be inclusive of anyone (regardless of gender or sexuality, race and or ethnicity) or any practice and theory that fits under the organic hemp umbrella that is Deep Lez. Which is more about practices than figuring out who "belongs" in or out of an identity.
Deep Lez was birthed at a Value Village shopping trip. The term comes from one of my very best fag friends, Andrew Harwood. We were looking at a macrame owl wall hanging that was covered with things like wooden beads and dried nuts. Andrew said, "Oh, my god, that's so deep lez." And i was like... ok... epiphany... The discarded handcraft from another era became a metaphor and a warning sign or, mory Deeply Lez, an omen.
... My activism has always been about sharing the tools of cultural production not hoarding them. As well, my activism has been about trying to redefine "loser" identities as cool (whatever that means). I felt like a loser for most of my life because i'm fat. ... I want people, regardless of how they identify, to say, "Deep Lez? What the hell is that? Gimme a piece of that!"
