An­gela Mitro­poulos, an Aus­trali­an aca­dem­ic and au­thor of Con­tract and Con­ta­gion: From Bi­opol­it­ics to Oiko­nomia, re­cently pos­ted a note on her blog about the ori­gins of the term “iden­tit­ari­an­ism.” This is something that’s come up at dif­fer­ent points in de­bates over the past few years, in­clud­ing the con­tro­versy sparked by the late Mark Fish­er’s art­icle “Ex­it­ing the Vam­pire Castle,” so I thought it might be ger­mane to treat the is­sue at great­er length. Mitro­poulos dir­ectly in­ter­vened in that de­bate against Fish­er, moreover, so it’s ap­pro­pri­ate to en­gage with her at that level as well.

“Iden­tit­ari­an­ism” is an un­for­tu­nate word, for sev­er­al reas­ons. First of all, it’s an awk­ward and off-put­ting con­struc­tion. Ugly neo­lo­gisms — phrases like “pluriver­sal trans­mod­ern­ity,” “phal­lo­go­centric on­to­theo­logy,” “de­co­lo­ni­al epi­stem­o­logy,” etc. — are these days sadly all too com­mon. Second, it’s a poly­semous ex­pres­sion, sig­ni­fy­ing more than one thing. Of­ten it refers to things which are not just dis­tinct from one an­oth­er but even op­pos­ite in mean­ing, a prob­lem I’ve writ­ten about be­fore. Lastly, it has both pos­it­ive and neg­at­ive con­nota­tions de­pend­ing on what’s meant and who’s us­ing it.

Hope­fully, this will be­come clear in what fol­lows. Re­turn­ing to Mitro­poulos’ entry, men­tioned at the out­set, we find:

Ad­orno coined the term “iden­tit­ari­an­ism” in Neg­at­ive Dia­lectics (1966), promp­ted by cri­tique of Kan­tian and Hegel­i­an philo­sophies.

The ar­gu­ment, very briefly, goes something like this: Like Hegel, Ad­orno re­jec­ted the man­ner of Kant’s dis­tinc­tion between nou­men­al and phe­nom­en­al forms. Put simply, Ad­orno gran­ted Hegel’s claim con­cern­ing the his­tor­ic­ally- and con­cep­tu­ally-gen­er­at­ive qual­it­ies of non-cor­res­pond­ence, but wanted to press Marx’s cri­tique of philo­soph­ic­al ideal­ism fur­ther against Hegel­i­an Marx­ism. Ad­orno re­mains a dia­lec­tician. But, un­like Hegel and more like Marx, he es­chewed the af­firm­at­ive, syn­thet­ic moves of con­scious­ness (i.e., philo­soph­ic­al ideal­ism) and ac­cor­ded epi­stem­o­lo­gic­al-his­tor­ic­al pri­or­ity to the ob­ject (mat­ter, ma­ter­i­al­ism) rather than the sub­ject (ideal­ism) in ex­plain­ing the course of this gen­er­at­ive, non-cor­res­pond­ence (or non-iden­tity). Iden­tit­ari­an­ism and the ideal­ist philo­sophies of Kant and Hegel are thereby con­tras­ted to a ma­ter­i­al­ist philo­sophy of non-cor­res­pond­ence, or what Ad­orno calls “neg­at­ive dia­lectics.”

How it happened that “iden­tit­ari­an­ism” came to be plaus­ibly used as a syn­onym for “iden­tity polit­ics” — or, more ac­cur­ately, co-op­ted by arch-iden­tit­ari­an Hegel­i­an Marx­ists against any em­phas­is on race, gender and/or sexu­al­ity, and in their de­fense of more or less ex­pli­cit ar­gu­ments that class is the a pri­ori or primary cat­egor­ic­al di­vi­sion of sub­stance — is a mys­tery to me.

Mitro­poulos dis­tin­guishes, in oth­er words, between the ho­mo­gen­eity as­ser­ted by lo­gic­al op­er­a­tions of equi­val­ence or iden­tity, which de­clare un­like things (A & B) to be alike (A = B), and the het­ero­gen­eity as­ser­ted by vari­ous iden­tity groups with com­pet­ing sec­tion­al in­terests, which de­clare them­selves dif­fer­ent from everything else. She in­dic­ates, quite cor­rectly, that the former was cri­ti­cized by Ad­orno in the six­ties, where­as the lat­ter has been cri­ti­cized by fig­ures like Ad­olph Reed, Wal­ter Benn Mi­chaels, Nancy Fraser, and Mark Fish­er over the last fif­teen or so years.

While I agree with the gen­er­al thrust of her dis­tinc­tion, the term “iden­tit­ari­an­ism” ap­pears nowhere in the Eng­lish edi­tion of Ad­orno’s Neg­at­ive Dia­lectics. “Iden­tit­ari­an” ap­pears as an ad­ject­ive in a few dif­fer­ent places throughout the book, but it’s nev­er el­ev­ated to an -ism. Even if one grants that this ad­jectiv­al use of the word does oc­cur, however, this is hardly a nov­el coin­age on the part of Ad­orno. An ar­ti­fact of trans­la­tion, rather, since Ashton renders Iden­ti­täts­phi­lo­so­phie as “iden­tit­ari­an philo­sophy,” Iden­ti­täts­den­ken as “iden­tit­ari­an think­ing,” and iden­ti­täts­lo­gisch as “iden­tit­ari­an lo­gic.” Per­haps he wanted to cap­ture a more sin­is­ter res­on­ance by hav­ing it echo “to­tal­it­ari­an.” But in my opin­ion these words would be bet­ter Angli­cized as “iden­tity-philo­sophy,” “iden­tity-think­ing,” and “iden­tit­ary lo­gic,” re­spect­ively.

So far as I can tell, “iden­tit­ari­an” as a short­hand or syn­onym for “iden­tity polit­ics” only began to show up in the 1990s. Gayatri Spivak, though of­ten seen as a pro­gen­it­or of sub­al­tern stud­ies and a post­co­lo­ni­al the­ory, sar­don­ic­ally men­tioned it in her 1993 book Out­side in the Teach­ing Ma­chine. “As a polit­ic­ally cor­rect Asi­an, I find that the aca­dem­ic in­sist­ence on a polit­ics of dif­fer­ence may be… com­pet­it­ive in in­tent. To a Lon­don audi­ence…eager to hear a speech on cul­tur­al value, it is im­port­ant that the speak­er’s iden­tity that af­ter­noon was ‘Asi­an’ with un­der­class dif­fer­en­ti­ations out of sight. Iden­tit­ari­an­ism can be as dan­ger­ous as it is power­ful.” For Spivak, then, “iden­tit­ari­an­ism” was an am­bi­val­ent cat­egory, power­ful yet po­ten­tially dan­ger­ous.

Ju­dith But­ler a few years later lamen­ted “the tend­ency to re­leg­ate new so­cial move­ments to the sphere of the cul­tur­al, in­deed, to dis­miss them as pre­oc­cu­pied with what is called the ‘merely’ cul­tur­al, and then con­strue this cul­tur­al polit­ics as fac­tion­al­iz­ing, iden­tit­ari­an, and par­tic­u­lar­ist­ic.” She was con­cerned that, in­creas­ingly, “iden­tity polit­ics is be­ing used as a derog­at­ory term for fem­in­ism, anti-ra­cism, and anti-het­ero­sex­ism.” Ex­pand­ing on these re­marks at a 1998 work­shop or­gan­ized by the journ­al The­ory and Event, But­ler con­tin­ued: “One of the ar­gu­ments that’s emerged over the last year is that cul­tur­al left­ism has some­how aban­doned the project of Marx­ism, … that the cul­tur­al fo­cus has splintered the Left in­to iden­tit­ari­an sects.” Here we are already ap­proach­ing this second sense of the term in­dic­ated by Mitro­poulos.

But­ler’s part­ner, Wendy Brown, seemed to bet­ter grasp iden­tity polit­ics as an his­tor­ic­al byproduct of polit­ic­al de­feat than. In spite, or per­haps be­cause, of the fact she’s the more Marx­ist in this power couple, Brown is less well-known than But­ler. Rather than as­sign iden­tity polit­ics caus­al ef­fic­acy of its own, Brown in­stead con­strues it as the res­ult of a long pro­cess of so­ci­opol­it­ic­al frag­ment­a­tion. As she wrote in her 2001 book, Polit­ics Out of His­tory,

to the ex­tent that iden­tity polit­ics are in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized — in aca­dem­ic pro­grams and in polit­ic­al caucuses or oth­er polit­ic­al or­gan­iz­a­tions — they are sus­cept­ible to the pro­foundly de­pol­it­i­ciz­ing lo­gic of lib­er­al in­sti­tu­tions: his­tor­ic­al con­flicts are rendered as es­sen­tial ones, ef­fect be­comes cause, and “cul­ture,” “re­li­gion,” “eth­ni­city,” or “sexu­al­ity” be­come en­trenched dif­fer­ences with en­trenched in­terests. But pre­cisely be­cause ef­fects of power have been dis­curs­ively con­ver­ted to es­sen­tial­ized en­tit­ies, their in­terests can­not be ad­dressed with­in that dis­course. To put this prob­lem an­oth­er way: iden­tit­ari­an polit­ic­al projects are very real ef­fects of late mod­ern mod­al­it­ies of power, but as ef­fects, they do not fully ex­press its char­ac­ter and so do not ad­equately ar­tic­u­late their own con­di­tion; they are symp­toms of a cer­tain frag­ment­a­tion of suf­fer­ing, and of suf­fer­ing lived as iden­tity rather than as gen­er­al in­justice or dom­in­a­tion — but suf­fer­ing that can­not be re­solved at the iden­tit­ari­an level. It may be easi­er to see this dy­nam­ic in dis­courses that es­sen­tial­ize con­flict in places such as North­ern Ire­land, the Middle East, or South Africa. To for­mu­late the prob­lem in those re­gions as one of Cath­ol­ics versus Prot­est­ants, Ar­abs versus Jews, or blacks versus whites, rather than un­der­stand­ing the op­pos­i­tion­al char­ac­ter of these iden­tit­ies as in part pro­duced and nat­ur­al­ized by his­tor­ic­al op­er­a­tions of power (set­tler-co­lo­ni­al­ism, cap­it­al­ism, etc.), is a pat­ently de­his­tor­iciz­ing and de­pol­it­i­ciz­ing move — pre­cisely the sort of move that leads to mor­al­iz­ing lament or blame, to per­son­i­fy­ing the his­tor­ic­al con­flict in in­di­vidu­als, castes, re­li­gions, or tribes, rather than to po­tent polit­ic­al ana­lys­is and strategies.

Richard Sey­mour came quite close to But­ler’s ret­ro­grade for­mu­la­tion of the prob­lem in the con­clu­sion to his 2015 po­lem­ic Against Aus­ter­ity. “A cer­tain emer­ging type of cri­ti­cism of the con­tem­por­ary Left from with­in is that it has spent too much time on trendy ‘iden­tit­ari­an’ con­cerns, from anti-ra­cism to Ga­za, and not enough time fo­cus­ing on class,” he wrote. “We have to break with a lim­it­ing as­sump­tion about iden­tity. It is of­ten as­sumed that iden­tity polit­ics is a form of ‘par­tic­u­lar­ism’ whose polit­ic­al ra­di­us ex­tends no wider than the spe­cif­ic group or sub­cul­ture iden­ti­fied… Yet iden­tity is a much more slip­pery concept than this would im­ply. Iden­tity polit­ics is a ‘polit­ics of loc­a­tion,’ cer­tainly. But where one is situ­ated in the so­cial form­a­tion has con­sequences for how far one can see. Such is the ba­sic pro­pos­i­tion of the fem­in­ist no­tion of ‘in­ter­sec­tion­al­ity’.”

Over the last fif­teen years, “iden­tit­ari­an” has ac­quired a some­what more af­firm­at­ive tinge among de­co­lo­ni­al the­or­ists and far right Euron­a­tion­al­ists. George Cic­car­i­ello-Ma­h­er has made it a point to “un­der­line the dia­lect­ic­al im­port­ance of iden­tit­ari­an struggles in for­ging the uni­ver­sal.” Markus Will­inger, young spokes­man of the right wing Ger­man Iden­tit­ari­an Move­ment [Identitäre Be­we­gung], sim­il­arly de­plores En­light­en­ment uni­ver­sal­ism: “But you want to save the world. To bring the world demo­cracy, hu­man rights, and cap­it­al­ism. You try to mod­ern­ize the world, to force your false mod­ern­ity and ar­rog­ant no­tions of pro­gress upon every­one you en­counter. Noth­ing in­sults and of­fends the proud and an­cient cul­tures of In­dia, China, Rus­sia, Per­sia, and so many oth­er lands more than your cru­sades to teach and ‘im­prove’ them. We, your chil­dren, can ima­gine their hate quite well, for we too know the feel­ing of be­ing up­rooted and set adrift. So it is that we un­der­stand the peoples who des­pise you and re­ject your ‘pro­gress.’ For we are gen­er­a­tion iden­tity.” Re­ac­tion­ary forms of “res­ist­ance” to cap­it­al­ism pos­sess new­found ap­peal as the tide turns against the glob­al neo­lib­er­al or­der. As Moishe Po­stone ob­serves, re­flect­ing on re­cent polit­ic­al de­vel­op­ments,

phe­nom­ena like Don­ald Trump, some wings of the sup­port­ers of Bernie Sanders, the Brexit move­ment, the right in France are no longer ex­pres­sions of the tra­di­tion­al re­ac­tion­ary classes, but ex­pres­sions largely of the de­clin­ing in­dus­tri­al work­ing classes. It is not enough for the Left simply to call them ra­cist, xeno­phobic, and small minded — even though they really are ra­cist, xeno­phobic, and small-minded. And it would be a ter­rible mis­take to op­por­tun­ist­ic­ally ad­opt their mind­set, even if one takes their misère ser­i­ously. In that case one is not ad­equately con­front­ing the crisis of in­dus­tri­al cap­it­al. In­stead, we need an­oth­er way of view­ing the world, bey­ond iden­tit­ari­an polit­ics of the Left as well as the Right. As mem­bers of a cos­mo­pol­it­an con­fig­ur­a­tion, we can­not simply say that mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism is cool be­cause we en­joy walk­ing through the streets of a city like Lon­don, which is a true met­ro­pole, and ex­per­i­en­cing in a thou­sand small ways the glob­al­ity of it all. We can­not just write off every­body in the North of Eng­land. The fact that they have made a mis­take does not mean that there were no good grounds for them to feel rad­ic­ally dis­sat­is­fied. So, the new danger of fas­cism, and I am us­ing “fas­cism” now in a very loose sense, is gen­er­ated by the pain and misère caused by the dy­nam­ic of cap­it­al.

Per­haps it would be wiser to re­cog­nize “iden­tity as ideo­logy” — as Siniša Malešević has put it, draw­ing on the Balkan ex­per­i­ence — rather than re­ify the vari­ous iden­tity-form­a­tions handed down from the past or in­ven­ted in the present. Malešević iden­ti­fies “iden­tity talk,” or iden­tit­ari­an­ism, as “a lead­ing ideo­lo­gic­al paradigm of our age.” He con­tin­ues: “Un­der the guise of ‘need to be­long’ iden­tity of­ten be­comes a mys­tic­al phrase, a new name for the old Her­deri­an Volks­geist, a praise for ‘roots’ and an ima­gined acon­flic­tu­al so­cial or­der… Des­pite all the talk about iden­tity polit­ics, the cel­eb­ra­tion of cul­tur­al dif­fer­ence, and self-ac­tu­al­iz­a­tion, iden­tity is in ana­lyt­ic terms a pro­foundly de­pol­it­i­ciz­ing concept.” It is in fact Ad­orno, as Mar­cel Sto­et­z­ler notes in his cri­tique of But­ler, who bet­ter un­der­stands the so­ciohis­tor­ic­al con­text in which iden­tity at­taches to de­term­in­ate pre­dic­ates as in­her­ent and in­vari­ant qual­it­ies throughout time. For “if men no longer had to equate them­selves with things, they would need neither a thing-like su­per­struc­ture nor an in­vari­ant pic­ture of them­selves, after the mod­el of things.”