Cross-posted at my FB page. Good discussion there.
..................................
There is an identity politics of the Left and an identity politics of the Right. The second kind became obvious to me when, after objecting to the tribalism of blacks, Hispanics, and other racial or ethnic groups, and after calling for a transcending of tribalism, I was countered by certain alt-rightists or neo-reactionaries who reject any such transcending and think that what is needed is a white tribalism to oppose tribalisms 'of color.'
While I reject the literally insane claims of left-wing tribalists, and understand the urge of 'alties' to oppose them with vigor, I don't want to go into reactionary mode if I can avoid it. The reactionary is defined by what he reacts against. I want to move in a positive direction. I want to reject identity politics of both the Left and the Right by transcending them both. To be identity-political is to take one's PRIMARY self-identification to be a tribal or group identification, an identification in terms of race, ethnicity, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, religion, disability, socio-economic class, or some combination of these.
That is not how I self-identify, and I believe that no one should self-identify in that way. I identify as a person, as a rational being, as a free agent, as a conscious and self-conscious SUBJECT. I do not primarily self-identify as an OBJECT in nature, a two-legged land mammal. Of course, I am an animal, a genetically human animal, essentially (not accidentally) Caucasian, and essentially (not accidentally) male, whence it follows, contrary to current leftist lore, that I cannot change my race or my sex. But while I am an animal, I am also a person, a spirit.
How personality and animality cohere in one unitary individual is a problem that has never been solved, a problem reasonably viewed as insoluble; but this is no reason to reject either personality or animality. My present topic, however, is not the metaphysics of the person, but a rather more practical political question.
Here is one problem I face. Our enemies on the Left reject this scheme which ultimately rests on a personalist and theist foundation. They are an existential threat to us, where an existential threat is not merely a threat to one's physical existence, but also, and more importantly, a threat to one's way of life as a spiritual, cultural, and historical being as opposed to a mere biological system for whom biological survival is the only value. There is no reaching these people with talk of persons and rights and the equality of persons and rights. That is to them just bourgeois ideology that serves only to legitimate the extant social order. They are tribalists who refuse to transcend their tribal identifications and see themselves as persons, as rational beings, as autonomous agents. But not only that, they are also race realists despite their obfuscatory talk of race as a social construct.
The problem, then, is that it is probably not possible to defeat our enemies -- who do not want coexistence -- except by going tribal ourselves, and race-realist, and engaging them in the way they apparently want to be engaged, with blood and iron. Either that, or we accept political dhimmitude.
Recent Comments