Course Objectives
Politics of identity is as old as politics itself. How one comprehends one’s relationship to others and how one comprehends one’s own will are deeply linked to one’s understanding of one’s own identity and that of others. But in recent years, a new kind of “identity politics” has emerged within the global “progressive” movement. This movement has, unlike previous identity politics movements, increasingly found itself at odds with materialists, socialists and feminists. This has reached a crescendo with this new identity politics comprehending “feminist” as an epithet hurled not just at feminists but members of all movements opposing this new politics, including the Christian Right.
Our Institute has chosen to distinguish this new identity politics from its antecedents and join scholars like Samir Gandesha in calling this new anti-feminist, anti-materialist formation “Identitarianism.”
Difficulty Level
This course’s lecture content requires no prior specialized knowledge and is based on general knowledge widely available to any high school graduate who keeps up with the news. The one challenging element of the course is the reading. Students will be asked to read an incomplete series of essays by our president, Stuart Parker, as well as some short texts by other authors. While these essays avoid academic jargon, they are an incremental text that introduces neologisms that are then used in subsequent essays. Like other LAI courses, the reading for this course is optional but will occasionally be referenced specifically in lecture.
Texts
At the beginning of the course, students will receive a series of Dropbox and web page links to download each of the videos and readings we will be discussing. This includes episodes of the TV series and two of the books as well as maps, book chapters, articles and other video content.
Class Schedule
This class met twice a week on Zoom at 1:00pm Pacific Time on Monday and Thursday afternoons. Recordings of the lectures are all available for download below and via Los Altos Institute’s podcast.
| Date | Lecture | Readings |
| June 4th | Identity politics: an overview | None |
| June 8th | Identity and the rise of modernity | Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Lexikon of the Hispanic Baroque, “Self-Fashioning” |
| June 11th | Philosophy and the nature of self | Film: Being John Malkovich |
| June 15th | Marxism and the late capitalist subject in the age of Facebook | Stuart Parker, “What we can learn about capitalism from the Ancient Mediterranean,” “The Politics of Privatizing Reputation”
Karl Marx, Capital, excerpts |
| June 18th | Gender, race, class and labour | Stuart Parker, “The Identitarian Activist Labour System,” “Neo-Ottoman America and the Need for Bernie Sanders”
Samir Gandesha, “Is Symbolic Politics an Impediment to Economic Equality?” |
| June 22nd | From James Buchanan to Oscar Wilde and back: the rise of sexual orientation as identity | None |
| June 25th | Gender identities before the twenty-first century | Claude Schaeffer “Kutenai Female Berdache”
James Thayer, “Northern Plains Berdache” |
| June 29th | The porn split in Second Wave feminism | Stuart Parker, “What the Casta Paintings Tell Us About Modern Gender Politics” |
| July 2nd | Yahoo and the Dance of the Seven Veils: technology and the self | Idires Shah, Sufi Thought and Action, excerpts
Idries Shah, The Commanding Self, excerpts |
| July 6th | Selves of desire, the Identity Industrial Complex and “cancel culture” | Stuart Parker, “Hustle-fuckery, Narcissitic Injury and the Politics of Etiquette and Emotion”
Mark Fisher, “Exiting the Vampire’s Castle” Greg Lukianoff, “the Coddling of the American Mind” |
| July 9th | Standpoint epistemology, “abundant history” and the epistemology of Identitarianism | Stuart Parker, “Age of Authenticity” I-IV |
| July 13th | Race, gender and class in identities in the contemporary matrix | Samir Gandesha, “Lessons of the World Cup in Our Victim Culture” “Not Only Differences Between Identities But Within Them”
Stuart Parker, “No Demographic Apocalypse for Republicans,” “Life Near the Colour Line” I-II |
| July 16th | Identitarianism, ego boundaries and the extension of property regimes into other bodies | Stuart Parker, “What is Identitarianism?” I-IV
Alex Greenberger, “The Painting Must Go” Andray Domise, “Missing the Point on Cultural Appropriation” |
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