My main criticism of this piece is that I disagree with drawing a straight causal arrow from postmodernism --> identitarianism, because while I think the latter draws from the former in many ways, it also markedly departs from it. The way I see it drawing from postmodernism is that a lot of the tools of criticism of institutions and ideologies are largely the same between the two. The primary way that it departs is that in identitarianism, the individual self is held as an absolute, and for the most part, feelings and emotions are held to be the supreme sources of truth. So in that way, it actually bears more similarity to Romanticism and Transcendentalism. I think the author is probably confusing ideas from those movements with the ideas of Foucault and Derrida, and while the latter thinkers draw from those older philosophies I don’t think they can be equated with each other.
Judith Butler drew on Foucault for her foundational role in queer theory focusing on the culturally constructed nature of gender, as did Edward Said in his similar role in post-colonialism and “Orientalism” and Kimberlé Crenshaw in her development of “intersectionality” and advocacy of identity politics.
I mean when the author points out that many of the mainstream left’s thought leaders draw directly from Foucault, she isn’t wrong. That’s just noticing something that’s easily verifiable. I just think she’s missing a facet of how non-academic people have taken it and run with it, which draws on a larger philosophical heritage.
My main criticism of this piece is that I disagree with drawing a straight causal arrow from postmodernism --> identitarianism, because while I think the latter draws from the former in many ways, it also markedly departs from it. The way I see it drawing from postmodernism is that a lot of the tools of criticism of institutions and ideologies are largely the same between the two. The primary way that it departs is that in identitarianism, the individual self is held as an absolute, and for the most part, feelings and emotions are held to be the supreme sources of truth. So in that way, it actually bears more similarity to Romanticism and Transcendentalism. I think the author is probably confusing ideas from those movements with the ideas of Foucault and Derrida, and while the latter thinkers draw from those older philosophies I don’t think they can be equated with each other.
Do you have a specific example of that?
From the linked article:
I mean when the author points out that many of the mainstream left’s thought leaders draw directly from Foucault, she isn’t wrong. That’s just noticing something that’s easily verifiable. I just think she’s missing a facet of how non-academic people have taken it and run with it, which draws on a larger philosophical heritage.
Ah, I confused myself because I thought you were referring to the neo-right French Identitarian youth movement: https://www.generation-identitaire.com/