Good God, there's a controversy in challenging identity politics. Challenging the legitimacy of identity politics has been the work of the Right for some time. Whether it be Andrew Bolt banging on about how somebody isn't completely indigenous and then getting caught up in 18C, or the George Brandis claiming people have a right to be bigots, it's usually the Right that pretends identity politics is all crap because when we talk about men, what we - allegedly - mean is everybody. Thus according to the Right, we do not need to change our language or culture because women and minorities are covered by men in "all men are equal under the law."
Ah, would that were it so, because what the conservatives of this country then do is pretend the issue has been addressed and continue to discriminate against gender and ethnicity. Which is why it is apparent that the true purpose of the Law and conservative institutions of this land resent injustice but the perfectly pitched practice of hypocrisy.
Be that as it may, it's not like the Left doesn't have issues with identity politics either - and it comes down to a very simple thing. Identity politics goes nowhere. It doesn't lead to a liberation, it doesn't lead to freedom from the things which oppress us. Considerer a moment a black American writer like James Baldwin. Baldwin would say readily that acknowledging and establishing the black culture within the white American cultural hegemony doesn't in of it self liberate him or his people. If we are to properly look at it with the proper Marxist critique in a cultural studies sense, it should be obvious to anybody with any amount of objectivity that identity politics is in fact a cultural dead end. The logical end point of being that kind of writer or artist or musician or cultural practitioner wielding identity politicises that it places you in a ghetto with your fellow identity politics purveyors.
This is what I call the 'SBS Stratagem', whereby the state sanctions a special space - in the guise of affirmative action - which invites people on the basis of their identity politics, than then quarantines them away from the mainstream. The 'SBS Stratagem' is there to provide a vent for the identity politics to express itself in the media, but in away that does not endanger the hegemony that already exists. It's a bribe offered to the minorities so that they can have a say, but in a way that does not compromise the Anglo-Irish hegemony within Australian society. To prove this point, you only have to look a the the overwhelming white-ness of the commercial channels and their product.
The really strange thing is how many writers and artists are totally dependent on this bribe, and how they never challenge it. Instead they hold it up as a sacred absolute that the state should sponsor their brand on identity politics. Which brings us to the righteous indignation hurled at the American author Lionel Shriver for expressing disdain.
Shriver, who famously wrote the book We Need To Talk About Kevin, spoke of cultural appropriation and political correctness in her keynote address starting off the back of a story of a group of American college students who were criticised for wearing sombreros to a Mexican-themed party.
She went on to lash out at critics of a white British author who wrote about the experience of a young Nigerian woman.
Critics of the speech said Ms Shriver's attitude and theories, which they accused her of hiding behind humour and under the guise of dangerous ideas, ignored issues of identity and culture.
One of those who walked out of the speech was celebrated Australian writer Yassmin Abdel-Magied, who wrote a blog post about it, said the address harked back to colonial rule.
"It's not always okay if a white guy writes the story of a Nigerian woman because the actual Nigerian woman can't get published or reviewed to begin with," she wrote.
*Groan*. Does it really? Does it really hark back to colonialism? Doesn't it hark back to colonialism much, much more to submit to the 'SBS Stratagem' where people allow their identity politics to not threaten the hegemony? I mean really... Cultural Appropriation? Have people thought through the idiocy of this problematic?
It's hard to discern Shriver's political views in the conventional leftist-or-rightist sense. I've not read her books (barely watched the adaptation 'We Need To Talk About Kevin' and laughed at it) so I can't really be certain. I've read an essay written by her just to gauge where she sits, and it's really interesting. It's clear she's done a whole lot of her thinking about many issues involving gender and identity. She is very nuanced about her own gender to the point that she disowns the gender political position.
As externals of identity like the shape of our ears and even our sex become medically malleable, we seem to be entering an era where everything about ourselves that we don’t like is subject to revision. I may have been born in North Carolina, but I feel like someone born in New York. I may have a father who was a seminary president, but I feel like the daughter of a coal miner. Can I expect my fellows to jolly along with this idea of myself, and inquire after my father the New York coal miner? The transgender reversal of pronouns has a disturbing quality of insisting that the outside world conform to subjective experience. Today’s widespread compliance on this point has the quality not only of “virtue signalling,” but of a creepy pandering, a condescending complicity. For women who transition to being male, having been born female is a fact, even if it’s a fact they’re not happy with. In actually changing birth certificates to identify babies as the sex this person came to feel like, we rewrite history. This way lies mass hypnosis—an Orwellian sense of truth. Because gender is not merely a social construct. It is a biological construct.
Clearly this isn't some right wing nut trying to deny people's identities exist. It's somebody who has reflected deeply on the nature of identity as a social construct (Hello Wittgenstein!) and therefore open to proceeding with the deconstruction - a legitimately 80s kind of leftist pinko philosophical move - and I emphasise that because whatever her political colours are, she's done her homework and has come to a conclusion that is unpopular but backed by a sinewy hard slog or logical reasoning. Her views on gender aren't a product of fashionable conceit. This is somebody saying your identity politics is "virtue signalling" that actually is creepy pandering and condescending complicity with the very thing that alienates you. She's dead bang on the problem of insisting the outside world conform to the subjective experience, leading to a slippery slope of fooling around with the legitimacy of truth and facts.
So what do the idiots who walked out have to say further?
"In making light of the need to hold onto any vestige of identity, Shriver completely disregards not only history, but current reality.
"The reality is that those from marginalised groups, even today, do not get the luxury of defining their own place in a norm that is profoundly white, straight and, often, patriarchal.
And in demanding that the right to identity should be given up, Shriver epitomised the kind of attitude that led to the normalisation of imperialist, colonial rule: 'I want this, and therefore I shall take it.'."
A festival volunteer Yen-Rong Wong, also responded to the speech in a blog post.
"As a semi-aspiring writer myself, and one who has sunk a significant amount of time and brain power to discussing subversive women and Othered characters in non-Western societies, Shriver's address was alarming, to say the least," she wrote.
"The publishing industry is chock full of white men, and advocating for their 'right' to write from the perspective of someone in a marginalised position takes opportunities away from those with authentic experiences to share. In other words, the subaltern continue to be silenced, and still cannot speak."
As a result of the backlash, Brisbane Writers Festival organised a "right of reply" event, giving writers like Ms Abdel-Magied, Rajith Savanadasa and Suki Kim the opportunity to continue the conversation.
I need a face-palm icon. Talk about the Regressive Left.
It's only earlier this year that there was a report saying the publishing industry in America at least, was predominantly white but female. It would surprise me none to find the same in Australia and the UK ("not that there's anything wrong with that, Jerry"). Cultural studies likes to rail against the patriarchy and white men holding all the positions of power and all that, even when the localised reality is really quite different. It's idiotic to put the theoretical orthodoxies ahead of facts on the ground. Lionel Shriver's obviously burst a lot of people's bubbles but she's right. Identity politics is borne of the bloated subjective and the demand for a personal exceptionalism, when in fact nobody's really interested in the stupid subjectivity of stupid people.
You can just imagine what the "right of reply" event is going to be like. A two hour session of people insisting on and legitimating their bloated subjective positions, which, ironically would prove Ms Shriver's point as to why it's so moronic and unproductive. Look, don't take my word for it; Helen Razer is bound to comment on this walkout and she won't be kind on these idiots.
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