Origin Of The Term Identity Politics Cultural Studies Essay

Origin Of The Term identicalness element Politics Cultural Studies probeA Contested Term. The origin of the term identicalness politics is sometimes traced to the 1960s Civil Rights Movement that it was articulated by women of burnish in their 1977 Combahee River Collective Statement.The term refers to collective aggroup identities comparable race, ethnicity, sex, morality, caste, intimate orientation, physical disability as the stand for political synopsis and action.Its main objective is to empower individuals to articulate their discrimination and invisibility through spirit raising and action.Identities and MovementsIt is important to debate this term and its politics as it has been the basis for several actions as well as an ideological ch anyenge to vivacious analytical frameworks and explanations.In the 1980s, on that point was a cultural and spectral revivalism in the form of ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka, Hindu communalism in India and world- extensive Isla mist fundamentalism. In the 1990s, there was the wildness and tragedy of former Yugoslavia, hightail itments establish on tribal identities in Rwanda and Sudan. Many countries especially in the European conglutination saw right file name extension movements in the context of immigration and patriotism with debates on Britishness or the banning of headscarves in France.Currently, scholars nourish seen its re-appearance in the presidential contest between Obama and Hillary Clinton in the USA i.e. pitching their campaigns around the beginning woman president or the first black president.Making of an IdentitySome identities come with birth handle the black, caste or spectral ones. Or they can be acquired want national ones, sexual preferences or interest groups.Identities ar fluid, multiple and unstable. They may be blurred or erased over a period of time. That they may be created as the identity of being Indian was propagated after Independence from British colonialism. Multipl e identities flirt with that they argon competing with each other often resulting in conflicting loyalties like a woman may during a communal riot have to choose between her religious group identity and that of her gender.Often there is strong societal resistance to crossing identity boundaries like in the case of sexual identities. Social norms and institutions do not allow community to step out of their prescribed identity.Causes for Identity MobilisationsWhy have identity movements emerged during this conjuncture of history? Theoretical explanations constitute unitedly the cultural, political and economic.The global escape valve of capital has spread industrialisation all over the world. World wide trade and communication has created a homogenization of culture and politics. Young mint in most small-arms of the world argon familiar with the one C and Jean culture, American films and TV serials. However the impact of the economic litigate has been uneven. There is a polar isation between the rich and the poor in a country and between nations of the North and the South.Gender relations are also changing as more(prenominal) women are joining the manpower often when men are unemployed creating resentment and competition. Women are more mobile and visible. And the patriarchal family structure is weakening.Bitter SweetThere is a section of people who are benefiting from the globalised world market. entirely the aspirations and hopes of many are belied. Descending social and economic groups resent their loss of privileges. So there is a public outburst in UK that Indian doctors are victorious over the British medical system or that outsiders are winning over jobs which should rightfully belong to Marathi speaking people in Mumbai.The barrage of Westernisation and its value due to globalisation has created a reaction of orthodoxy. Right wing Muslim, Hindu and Christian groups have called for cultural re-assertion and pride in ones identity. twin to the sweeping cultural, political and economic changes and identity ground movements was the rise of impart modernism in academia. As a critique of Marxist federal agency in theory, post modernists gave culture a significant place in analysis and shifted the focus to power relations, identities, construction of gender, class, race and so onThe tog up of Identity Movements Used in Womens MovementIdentities are all-powerful sources of consciousness and militarisation as they make an individual conscious of his/her identity and bring them together for political protest and demands through violent or other means. At present there are large mobilisations based on identities likeWorld wide Islamist MovementsHindu right wing movementsRegional egotism determination movements like Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka, Kashmir and North vitamin E in India, Kurds in Turkey sexual preferences like the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered LGBT movementTrade Union MovementsThere is a tendency to see id based movements as regressive because they are usually associated with right wing movements. But the sexuality movements have challenged conservative notions of sex and sexual activities.6. The Other ejection and Inclusion are critical criteria for identity formation. The we of a certain group can only be identified versus they of the other group. The process of be and controlling these boundaries of difference has been coined as Other-ing.This process of creating sameness and otherness amongst people, has been use to justify all manners of oppression and violence against marginalized, weaker, less powerful groups. Across history these have included Women, Blacks, Jews, Homosexuals, Dalits, Tribals, lower classes, People with Disabilities etc.The Ideal WomanIdentity Movements, which are right wing, have tending(p) a special place to women. For example, both Muslim fundamentalism and Hindu communalism brook an ideal woman as indispensible for society. These ideals are re lated to womens dress, behaviour, sexual action and motherhood. Nazi Germany glorified the blond Aryan woman, who bears children, accepts secondary status to her economize and the State.Muslim fundamentalism advocates a return to tradition as Islam is in danger, reinforces Muslim identity by rejecting Westernisation and especially by propagating the veil for women, role of a homemaker, and the return to or imposition of the Sharia Laws or Muslim individualised Laws.Roots of tradition are in the past and is not blossom to interpretation. Life and Laws flow from the holy book, and its meanings are fixed and non debatable. Women are regarded as guardians of Muslim culture and honoured as long as they perform their duties to be good mothers and raise their sons as warriors of Islam.8. Sita not DraupadiHindu communalists idealise Sita, the married woman of the mythological god, Ram. The qualities of Sita are that of a chaste pati vrata or ideal wife who follows her husband to the fo rest, bears him sons and immolates herself when her fidelity is in suspicion. Draupadi on the other hand was an articulate, self-assertive and proud woman who has 5 husbands, who she continually challenges and even seeks revenge.Women have been part of the internalisation process since their childhood. They too believe in many of these values and strive to maintain the roles propagated by fundamentalists. And for doing so, they are honoured and given status by their men and fundamentalist leaders. Many educated, professional and Westernised women have turned to their religion because it also offers them mental and physical security.Crisis in FeminismThe womens movement and womens rightist theory went into a crisis with the advent of post modernism and identity based movements. The former contested the category woman as also all universalisms. Women could not be considered a homogenous group and the using of we was politically incorrect. The slogans of women of colour were picked up by Jewish women, indigenous and later trey World women. Global sisterhood was laid to rest.These voices of other feminists introduced the notions of feminisms, rather than solely feminism. In addition, these feminisms brought in the notion of multiple oppressions, multiple patriarchies and womens movements. Feminist analysis shifted from standpoint feminism to various postmodernist feminisms. Studies on womens subordination across cultures, societies, and historical periods shifted to micro-narratives of class/race/and gender.10. Crisis in Feminist PoliticsThe coppice of multiple identities and allegiances which surround them came out into the public.The womens movement in India and the feminist groups are not that large or popular to have reached the masses of women to shoring up a gender based identity. In the absence of a popular secular movement, the majority of women align with their caste or religious identities. Large numbers of them participated during the Mumbai Riots o f 1992-93 after the demolition of the Babri Masjid against Muslims and in stand of the sati of Roop Kanwar 1987 against feminist groups and progressive movements asking for a ban. In the Shah Bano Case 1985, women back up a maintenance law formulated by the govt and Muslim leaders against their consume interests.Sometimes women are pulled into battles not of their making as in the case of the Cauvery River riots. Both Tamil and Kannadiga women had no knowledge of river water issues but were subjected to rape and molestation by the rival community.Domestic violence becomes occult in the face of other state wide violence like in Kashmir, North East and Sri Lanka. Women would like to address domestic violence but sacrifice their individual rights as women to community rights for self determination.10. Strategies unitary of the main problems with identity politics is that its assumptions can lead to an almost limitless number of small, atomised identity groups. Taken forward this l ogic comes to mean that at last each individual is her own group. Identity politics makes it difficult to bring together large groups to protest and collectively act for radical social change. In an oblique way, it supports conservatism and status quo and works against collective struggle.On the other hand, identity politics has introduced important elements and lessons within the womens movement. It has changed its lexicon, challenged its assumptions and visibilised many sections of women and transgendered people. Sexual minorities, religious minorities, women with disabilities and race and caste based womens groups have come into their own with vibrant movements.The lessons for the womens movement in general is that it has to respect and build bridge with different identity groups, take on board their agendas and issues and together move towards transformative strategies for a just society.