Date: Wednesday 19th October 2022
Time: 13:00 to 14:15 (Online)
Speaker: Alex Charnley and Michael Richmond
Title: Fractured: Race, Class, Gender and the Hatred of Identity Politics
Recording can be listened to HERE.
Abstract: “Identity politics” has been a smear for decades. The right use it to lament the loss of free speech, while many on the left bemoan it as the end of class politics. It has been used to dismiss movements such as Black Lives Matter and brought seemingly progressive people into the path of fascism. It has emboldened the march of the transphobes. Fractured tries to move away from the ahistorical temper of the identity politics debate. Instead of crudely categorising race, gender and sexuality as fixed and immutable identities, or forcing them under the banner of ‘diversity’, we must see these categories as inseparable from the history of class struggle under British and US capitalism. Through an appraisal of pivotal histories in Britain and the US, including Black feminist and anticolonial traditions on both sides of the Atlantic, Fractured questions the assumptions of the “culture war”. Instead it offers a way to understand how historical class struggles were formed and continue to determine the possibilities for new forms of solidarity in an increasingly dangerous world.
Speaker Bio:
Michael Richmond was a co-editor of the Occupied Times and of Base Publication. He has written for publications including OpenDemocracy, New Socialist and Protocols. He tweets @Sisyphusa.
Alex Charnley was illustrator and co-editor of the Occupied Times and of Base Publication. He tweets @steinosteino.
