Identity Politics, or: How to Love the Prison and Cage Oneself

Clemens Nachtmann argues against identity as a meaningful concept for emancipation or subject formation. His essay is concerned with the moralist and regressive qualities of identity politics. Nachtmann addresses identity as an un-useful phantasma, perpetuating a self-serving instrumentalization of the world in order to confirm preset perceptions of self. Hence, identity politics emphasis of difference is not an inclusive practice but equals normative thinking and creates communities in which conflicting elements are ignored. As a precursor for identity politics, Nachtmann points to postmodern thinking, which he defines as a bundle of strategic devices, rendering reality and truth into projections of discourse and leading to the dis-attachment from material realities. As a counter-position, Nachtmann argues for a criticism of the relation between identity concepts and the destruction of civic society.