There are No Queers: Jacques Ranciere and Post-Identity Politics (Critical Essay‪)‬

Progressive politics has entered what might be called a post-identity politics phase. And, like most 'post' phases, it is being defined by what it no longer is rather than by what it is now. There is good reason for this. The project of identity politics, which I will define broadly as politics grounded in particular posited identities (whether seen as essential or non-essential), has foundered. Although identity politics was grounded in an important insight--that not all political struggle is reducible to class struggle[1]--its trajectory took it to a place where each struggle was isolated from every other struggle, and political solidarity was lost.[2] We have seen the damage done by identity politics, and it no longer holds the imagination of many. Indeed, as early as the misnamed 'anti-globalization' movement, which was really an anti-neoliberalism movement, solidarity began to return to the scene in place of ghettoized identities. However, we have yet to develop a common theoretical framework, something that can play the binding role that Marxism once played without the Marxist reductionism that spawned identity politics.[3] Thus we remain in the phase of post-identity politics. Much of the discussion of homosexuality and homosexual rights in particular has centered on issues of identity. Is homosexuality natural? Are there genetic or other physiological predispositions for gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and others? Is homosexuality found in every culture and society? What characteristics, if any, are to be associated with homosexuality aside from attraction to someone of the same gender (and what do we mean by the term 'gender')?