Race Census Aff – mags compiled by Lenny Brahin Jaden Lessnick Jillian Gordners Brian Roche 1AC
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IdentitypermClinging to identity categories reproduces forms of violence and retrenches the logic of unityMadhu, 12 - Faculty Member, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, Inter University Centre for Social Science Research & Extension (P, ‘On Minority Politics’ http://ssrn.com/abstract=2075577 June 4, 2012 pp. 1-6)//jml The sufficient condition for identity politics is to have or concoct identities. The necessary condition for minority politics is to have creative-dissenting voices. Identity is neither necessary nor sufficient condition for minority politics. Identities are invented by grouping people of similar dissents. Dissents within identities pre-exist their formations. Therefore, identities are maintained by silencing dissents within by projecting external enemies. Dissents loom large once the enemy is dissolved. For this reason, having an enemy or victim out there is necessary precondition for identity politics. It is not that feminist movements all of a sudden discovered that there is a dissent within; it was there even before the identitarian movement. Once formed, to sustain identity groupings, identitarians have to have enemies outside. Identity politics is the politics of self vs. other. Minority politics, on the contrary, does not bank upon self-other dichotomy. However, identity politics share a thin ground with minority politics as both of them have something to dissent. Identities exist only within assemblages reinforcing their territorializations. The contention of minority politics is that majoritarian power is built upon shallow grounds of territorializations though their super structures appear unshakably grounded. Much like the majoritarian, identitarians attempt to build its own superstructure upon its shallow territorialities. Identarians focus upon sticking together within identities; minority politics on the other hand prepares the contenders to take off new lines of flights. Identity politics captivates beings into identity states; minority politics emphasizes on becoming, cracking, breaking off into a process of continuous variation. Identarians measure their power by their capacity to enter into and make themselves felt within the majority assemblage. Identitarian ‘becoming’ is ‘becoming the majority’ which is not a becoming at all (Deleuze 1987: 106). Identitarian becoming is a counter-evental becoming (Madhu, 2012). Contrarily, the matter of becoming-minoritarian is opposed to being majoritarian. Identities are claimed by reducing multiplicities into unified whole. Multiplicity of minority politics is irreducible ‘pure multiplicity’ that escapes the abstract opposition between the multiple and the one. The Multiplicity is not the numerical fragment of a lost unity or totality. It does not either represent a unity to come. They are not multiplicities of elements constituting a unity. The multiplicity is rhizomatic, libidinal, unconscious, inter-penetrative, molecular and intensive multiplicities. They are composed of particles that do not divide without changing in nature (othering); while vary, they vary other multiplicities; they constantly dissemble and assemble themselves in course of their communication with other multiplicities (Deleuze & Guattari,1987:36.-37). “Pure multiplicity” of minority politics tolerates no dependencies on the identical nor it allows any positioning of an essence as “what the thing is” (Deleuze1994: 191). On the contrary, the multiplicity of the identity politics is arborescent, extensive, divisible, molar, totalizable, hierarchiesed, essentialized and conscious. Identity politics, unlike minority politics, subscribes to one or other unitary, molar and totalizing paranoia against the countervailing identities. Nazis’ preoccupation with Aryan identity, Jewish claim of ‘chosen by God’ status, discounting disbelievers as ‘infidels’, claims of caste/race distinctions, nationalist identities and even gender based divisive identity claims are molar in character. Glued to the molar orientation one may seek a long trajectory of one’s identity vis-à-vis that of others projecting one’s identity claims based on imagined if not real objects in space and time. Molarists listen to the roar of the sea but care less for the sound of each wave. The molar perspective limits its holders from acknowledging multiplicities or recognizing the transformation of the identities. From the molar logic of identity politics, the world is mechanically divided into the identities they categorize: male vs. female, upper vs. lower castes, black vs. white etc. In its commitment to the centralized identities, Identity politics is committed to defend identities. Identity politics tend to individualize, self-identify, essentialize, totalize and generalize. Minor politics on the other hand de-individulize, de-essentialize, de-totalize and opens up one to the micro politics of everyday life (Foucault 2005: xv, xvi). Identities are individuated entities. The individual, self and identities are products of power as Foucault point out (Foucault 2005: xv). Power is the force that prevents the truth games from collapsing. As Foucault observes, ‘de-individualizing’ dismantle identities (Foucault 2005: xvi). Identity politics unlike minority politics has models to imitate. Heroes and heroines of identity politics are reified, idolized and worshipped by the Identity ideologues. Models developed at one site of identity is customized and used in other sites. Unlike the identitarians, ‘A minority has no model, it’s a becoming, a process’ (Deleuze 1995: 173). Minority politics traverses through unknown terrains. The future is opaque. The process of minority politics is creative and singular, irreducible and non-totalisable. Identity politics on the other hand has no unknown terrains: the path is known, enemy is identified and even enemy’s conspiracies are deciphered! The distinction between minority and identity politics is sometimes blurred. For instance, queer politics is also represented as sexual-minority-politics. The heterosexual occupies the position of majority within the queer discourse not because the heterosexual is more numerous than children, non-whites, homosexuals or women, but because (s)he forms the qualitative standard against which these others are measured (Deleuze & Guattari 1987: 105). Ethnic nationalism, cosmopolitan internationalism, autonomist demands and other forms of identity politics of race, caste, gender, religious, linguistic kinds occasionally share minoritarian ethos (Guattari 1995: 3). Minority politics do not share ground with identity politics in taming multiplicities, managing internal dissents, conforming to identitarian norms or being meshed within the identitarian narcissus. Unlike identity politics minority politics have no self-interest to protect. Also, minority politics, does not require any permanent body of activists or intellectuals strategizing its agenda. Minority politics is a political expression of persons in diverse life condition challenging all sorts of fascisms, narcissisms, control mechanisms and molar stereotypes that tend to block free flow of life. Identity politics tend to use identity as the cultural asset. For minority politics, the cultural asset of minorities is not identity, but creativity (Gilroy 2005: 434). Identity politics does not cease to be identitarian by imbibing majoritarian ways. It has no ethical guard against their conversion into micro-fascism. Deleuze writes, It is not the marginals who create the lines; they install themselves on these lines and make them their property, and this is fine when they have that strange modesty of men [sic] of the line, the prudence of the experimenter, but it is a disaster when they slip into the black hole from which they no longer utter anything but the micro-fascist speech of their dependency and their giddiness: ‘We are the avantgarde’, ‘We are the marginals.’ (Deleuze & Parnet 1987: 139) The crux of minoritarian politics lies in recognizing that the majority is an abstract and empty representation of an ideal identity that is linked to particular systems of power and control. The processes of minoritarian-becoming will always trigger the unbecoming of the majoritarian by collapsing its legitimizing territorializations and triggering new creations. Deleuze observes, ‘The creation … calls for a future form, for a new earth and people that do not yet exist’ (Deleuze & Guattari 1987: 108). The becoming of minority politics is creative liberation the future from the majoritarian corruptions; it is also liberating the present from the futuristic majoritarian desire. Deleuze warns, that a minority borrows majority ways only at the risk of stifling minority creativity, ‘drying up a spring or stopping a flow’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 276). Minority politics cease to be minoritarian when majoritarian ways are borrowed. For the identitarians, the ‘other’ is invariably the one frozen into the identity of the enemy camp. No true dialogue is possible with the others. Altogether differently, from the perspective of minority politics the majoritarian politics as corrupt and alienated. The majoritarian fascism is corruption misrecognized. Becoming minority is shedding off the historically and situationally acquired corruption. Majoritarians are not fated for ever to be under the spell of majoritarian territory. Majoritarian corruption does not shut off one from the minoritarian breakaway event. Deleuze puts it, “A people is always a creative minority, and remains one even when it acquires majority’ (Deleuze 1995: 173). Majority and minority are not mutually exclusive two poles. A majority breaks away into events of minoritarian politics; similarly, a minority can acquire territories and be absorbed into majoritarian counter-event. Becoming is only becoming minority. Becoming minority is to spurt into events. “There is no becoming-majoritarian; majority is never becoming. All becoming is minoritarian” (Deleuze &Guattari 1987: 106). Deleuze prophesizes majoritarian ideology has but to go when the corruption is recognized widely (Deleuze & Guattari 1987: 469). ‘Ours is becoming the age of minorities’ (Deleuze & Guattari 1987: 469). What distinguishes identity politics from minority politics are the majoritarian tendencies of the former: narcissus, conformity to identities, static representation of identities, and its tendency to territorialize. Exposing the systems of dominations in the claims of race, caste or gender instead of conceiving them as dominated vs. dominating identities and deconstructing the purity claims within the discourses of dominance and letting off the identities go minoritizes the identity politics (Deleuze &Guattari 1987: 379). The contention of minority politics is that the majoritarian power is built upon shallow grounds of territorializations though their super structures appear unshakably grounded. Minority politics deterritorializes the majoritarian claims. Deterritorialisation ‘strips the half of the majoritarian assemblages. It is the politics of annihilating the transcendental underpinnings of the majoritarian territorializations. It suspends the majoritarian ‘trajectory’ guiding the history of the marginalized. It suspends the majoritarian train from laying its rail (Bourdieu 1980: 57). It is taking a line of flight from the given history (Deleuze &Guattari 1987: 254). The dissenting lines of deterritorializsation of minority politics form assemblages outside the circuits of the existing territorialities. The nomadic waves or flows of deterritorialization go from central layer to periphery, then form a new centre to the new periphery transforming the epistrata towards increased deterritorialization and destratification (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987:60). Identity politics, instead holds territories and strata for a sense of epistemic security and tend to prevent collapse of reified identities. Minority politics is fundamentally a politics of deterritorialization and destratification. It is the politics on one un-becoming of oneself, challenging the intimate narcissus. Baliber writes, “We are, always narcissistically in search of images of ourselves, when it is structures that we should be looking for’ (Balibar 2002: 100). It is politics of transcending sense of dominance and fascism. Deleuze writes, ‘Non-white: we all have to become that, whether we are white, yellow, or black’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 470). Identity politics, contrarily, fixes its holders to ideological mold of the prescribed identity-self. Identity ideologues take identities as sui-genesis entities. They overlook the virtuality of identities. Identities are assemblages involuted into what they are processed by historically emergent territorializations. Identities are assembled, dissembled or ensembled according to the contingent territorializations, deterritorializations and counter territorializations. Identities vanish or acquire different dimensions with reifying or de-reifying current territorializations. The disposition of Identity politics is to cling to identities. Clinging to identities blinds them to politics beyond identities. Identity claims are molar and monadic. From the monadic epistemology they find it difficult to recognize the monad-cracking multiplicities, diversities and contradictions. For the identity ideologues identity explanation is the ultimate panacea. For them the hurdle for their progress or wellbeing is unquestionably the intentional agency of others of other identities. There ends their explanation. It was evident in Hitler’s presentation of Jews as those responsible for the German suffering. The ‘clash of civilization’ of the American neo conservatives is another telling tale of identity ideology. Contrary to that, minority politics is always anti-fascist, antiessentialist, deterritorializing & counter-narcissus. It problematizes the assemblages and its territorial grip over its elements. It exposes the micro-politics of territorialization. It distinguishes events from counter-events. Its object is not persons bearing one or other identities. It probes into unacknowledged conditions and open to unintended consequences while also meticulously map conscious, unconscious, tacit operations of dominance and fascism and exposes them to facilitate de-territorialziation of the oppressive or fascist assemblages. Minority politics exposes the historical and situational ontology of assemblages towards unwinding them. Minority politics is a means to a higher form of freedom and revolution. It is revolution in the sense of winding back the majoritarian corruption towards ‘becoming nomad’ i.e. reconstituting free-flowing-unrestrained-nomadic social relations in smooth space (Deleuze & Guattari 1987: 36; 1994: 88). It is a move towards undoing the oppositional dualism of majority vs. minority, destabilizing all identities. Minority politics is fundamentally ethical in the sense it is a politics that avoids ‘becoming fascist’. Identity politics on the contrary is not guarded from fascist tendencies. Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 0.87 Mb. Share with your friends:
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