Fractured

Alex Charnley, Michael Richmond

Description

Identity politics has smeared political discourse for over a decade. The right use it to lament the loss of free speech, while many on the left bemoan that it will be the end of class politics. It has been used to dismiss movements such as Black Lives Matter and brought seemingly progressive people into the path of fascism. It has armed the march of the transphobes.

In Fractured, the authors move away from the identity politics debate. Instead of crudely categorising race, gender and sexuality as 'identities', or forcing them under the heading of 'diversity', they argue that the interconnectedness of these groupings has always been inseparable from the history of class struggle under British and American capitalism.

Through an appraisal of pivotal historical moments in Britain and the US, and a sharp look at contemporary debates, the authors tame the frenzied culture war, offering a refreshing and reasoned way to understand how class struggle is formed and creating the possibilities for new forms of solidarity in an increasingly fractured world.  

Introduction

1. Whiteness as Historiography

2. Qualities of Testimony

3. The Lost Memory of White Feminism

4. Aliens at the Border

5. Storming the Ideal

6. Whiteness Riots

7. The Mad and Hungry Dogs

Conclusion

Sujets

• Economic Disparity
• Social Classes
• Minority Studies
• Ethnic Studies
• Gender Studies
• Social History
• Social Science
• HISTORY
• Sociologie, société et politique
• General officer
• Cultural studies
• Social class
• General

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 septembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780745346588
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Fractured
An important and timely analysis rich in historical detail. It challenges crude denunciations of identity politics on both right and left, and reiterates that intersectionality is indeed political economy.
-Alison Phipps, Professor of Sociology at Newcastle University, author of Me, Not You: The Trouble With Mainstream Feminism
In these pages, Michael Richmond and Alex Charnley draw on the living communisms that are Black feminism, decolonial struggle, and trans solidarity to create a new revolutionary synthesis for a working class that, as they remind us, has always been divided. Combining years of experience of left organising with theoretic sophistication, this book demonstrates why, in material terms, capitalism produces constantly shifting relations (between oppressions) that take the appearance of divisions, and also how movements right now are labouring in and against those fractures. As new forms of soi-disant anti-identity politics rise up in the colonial heartlands (from gender-critical feminism to nativism), Fractured issues a powerfully argued appeal to the left to finally understand that Prioritising solidarity for those most marginalised or under attack is not about guilt or charity or virtue-signalling . It is part of what can get everyone free .
-Sophie Lewis, author of Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family and Abolish The Family: A Manifesto For Care and Liberation . Her essays have appeared in the New York Times , Harper s , Boston Review , n+1 , the London Review of Books and Salvage
Provides us with an astute, readable and utterly compelling history of our present predicament. This sharp, thoughtful, generous little book helps us see the many roads that lead to better worlds, arguing that to get there we need to abandon those noisy, nasty, noxious debates on identity politics . It clears ground, carefully tracing histories of resistance and reaction, reminding us that the working class is and always has been manifold - and therein lies our strength.
-Luke de Noronha, academic and writer at the Sarah Parker Remond Centre, University College London and author of Deporting Black Britons: Portraits of Deportation to Jamaica and co-author, with Gracie Mae Bradley, of Against Borders: The Case for Abolition
This is a stirring book, full of inspiration, insight, provocation. Fractured insists that if we are to grasp the radical possibilities of connection, we must first understand the political legacy of division. Expect to be educated, made to think, or better still, urged to reconsider.
-Vron Ware, author of Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism and History and Out of Whiteness: Color, Politics, and Culture
A sharp and lucid rejoinder to all the political trends that in recent years have imbued identity politics with magically divisive powers. Fractured is essential to understanding anti-racist politics today.
-Arun Kundnani, author of The Muslims are Coming!: Islamophobia, Extremism, and the Domestic War on Terror and The End of Tolerance: Racism in 21st Century Britain
A searing materialist critique of the historical origins of attacks on Identity Politics from the right, a clarifying text that analyses the strategic purpose of the imagined culture war that continues to engulf mainstream politics. Richmond and Charnley understand, fundamentally, that the purview of the left should be the creation, cultivation, and fierce defence of a liveable life for all. This book is evidence of an unshakeable commitment to those principles.
-Lola Olufemi, a black feminist writer, researcher and organiser from London and author of Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power and Experiments in Imagining Otherwise
Class reductionism sheds little light on our crisis-ridden times. Instead, Fractured uncovers both the historical entanglements of class and race and the multitude of solidarities that continually rise to oppose oppression. Richmond and Charnley gift us with the analysis, and hope, we need to fight on.
-Alana Lentin, a scholar who works on the critical theorisation of race, racism and anti-racism and co-author with Gavan Titley of The Crises of Multiculturalism: Racism in a Neoliberal Age and author of Why Race Still Matters
Fractured
Race, Class, Gender and the Hatred of Identity Politics
Michael Richmond and Alex Charnley
First published 2022 by Pluto Press
New Wing, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright Michael Richmond and Alex Charnley 2022
The right of Michael Richmond and Alex Charnley to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 4657 1 Hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 4656 4 Paperback
ISBN 978 0 7453 4660 1 PDF
ISBN 978 0 7453 4658 8 EPUB
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England
Simultaneously printed in the United Kingdom and United States of America
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Whiteness as Historiography
2. Qualities of Testimony
3. Black Feminism and Class Composition
4. Aliens at the Border
5. Storming the Ideal
6. Whiteness Riots
7. The Mad and Hungry Dogs
Conclusion
Notes
Index
Acknowledgements
We would both like to thank our editor, Neda Tehrani, who took on a pair of first-time authors and helped us chop up and reimagine a very unwieldy initial manuscript. You are so good at what you do. And we are grateful to everyone else at Pluto Press and in the extended production process, who have helped to bring this book to publication.
We want to acknowledge our wonderful comrades - Chlo , Jaemie, Mark, Tzortzis, Lazo - with whom we produced The Occupied Times and Base Publication for many years. The environment of radical pedagogy and communal production we all shared was what allowed the two of us to begin writing together. We would also like to thank early readers and encouragers who convinced us to persist with seeking a publisher: Sami, Harry Stopes, Tamar, Angela Mitropoulos. Particular thanks go to Kerem Ni anc o lu, Lou Thatcher and Mike from libcom for incisive feedback that helped us transform the project. Much love to Alana Lentin for all her support and teachings. Love and thanks to fellow members of the Left Twitter rabble. We ve learned so much from connecting on that hellsite for over a decade. You were told again and again to log off and bravely you resisted. Thank you more generally to online and irl movement archives and resources like libcom.org , 56a Infoshop in Elephant Castle and the Institute of Race Relations in King s Cross who are dedicated to keeping radical histories alive as well as to struggle in the here and now. Such spaces are only kept going through the hard work, volunteered time and comradeship of their collectives.
Michael would like to give thanks for his grandparents. Arthur Rubenstein, who instilled in me a love of history and a passion for social justice, and Ruth Rubenstein, my hero, who died before seeing this published but who believed that it would, even when I didn t. May both of your memories be a blessing. Thank you to my parents for your unending love and support, and your help in the darkest of times. I owe you everything. And what I don t owe to you, I owe to our dearly missed Milo. Love and congratulations to Matthew and Evelin on your new little comrade. Welcome to the world, Ilana. Get ready for the struggle! And to my number one Alex, who by the time this comes out will be my wife: thank you for being you, my beautiful best friend. Having the calm reassurance of a partner who gets published all the time was invaluable. I couldn t do anything without you; you are my everything.
Alex would like to give thanks to his Mum, for bringing political questions into our lives early. The inspiration we got from watching you hold a room and turn a conversation on its head taught us that there is nothing better than good conversation. To my brothers, for all the times we have laughed together. Dad, for art and the richness of its question. Kev, for telling me about history on long trips and for your wonderful cooking. Moggy, for reminding us what a laaarf!!! life can be. Gabe, thank you for Hathoo. Ness, for a smile as wide as the world. Imo, for all our seaside adventures together. Sophia and Aaron, thank you for the sofa and your generosity for all those years! Thanks to my wider family and friends. To Mike s folks, special thanks for being so warm and accommodating. To David, thank you for your kindness, tenderness and patience. And to my wife Nat, who has been my best mate since we were kids, for loving everyday more because we re together. And finally to Thea and Breya, our little comrades, who we could never imagine life without.
Introduction

In order to build solid political alliances in the future there has to be some awareness of the historical processes that have brought different groups together and kept them apart. 1
Vron Ware
Solidarity is the best weapon in the struggle of life. 2
Aaron Lieberman
Throughout this book we examine conservative propagations of identity politics - a political smear that has been monopolised by the right, but also has form on the centre and left. These discourses will often feature other terms: culture war , political correctness , multiculturalism , neoliberalism (mainly on the left), cultural Marxism (mainly on the right), free speech , and now gender ideology and wokeness . Each has their own meanings and contexts depending on where the reaction is coming from. Identity politics , and these related terms, act as ideological fram