By Russell A. Berman · Wednesday, April 28, 2021 Criticism of identity politics is hardly new. The insistence on—or “celebration” of—fractional community identities rather than a common good was presented as an explanation for Hillary Clinton’s defeat in the 2016 presidential election. No coalition of separate groups will ever be able to muster the political magnetism of an inclusive rhetoric of national solidarity. That is the first problem: how identity politics divides, rather than unites.
However in addition to the problems of fragmentation and exclusion, the very focus on “identity,” a cultural and psychological concept, has always distracted from material issues of political economy, redirecting debate toward symbols and selfhood. Christopher Lasch labeled this a Culture of Narcissism as early as 1979. At stake is both a tendency toward subjectification within contemporary society and a transformation of the—often primarily academic—discussion about this society, as critical attention shifted toward subjective elements rather than discriminatory conditions and economic processes. If you want to hide class difference, identity politics is just what you need.
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By Russell A. Berman · Friday, March 12, 2021 To read more in depth from Telos, subscribe to the journal here.
Former President of the German Bundestag Wolfgang Thierse mounts a powerful argument against identity politics in Germany and their political consequences. His comments here and originally here have elicited a robust discussion in Germany, especially because the current leaders of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), of which Thierse is a long-term member, reportedly responded that they felt ashamed at his “regressive” views. While the leadership represents the current left wing of the party, other voices from the center rallied to Thierse’s defense. At stake is the gap between alternative aspirations within this venerable party, once the foundational political organization of the German left with roots in the workers’ movement of the nineteenth century.
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By Russell A. Berman · Monday, October 26, 2020 From the beginning of Donald Trump’s campaign for the presidency and throughout his administration, the most consistent point of orientation in his politics has been the priority of the nation. It informed the slogan “Make America Great Again,” which initially shocked political sensibilities, since it implied the accusation that previous bipartisan political leadership had stood by during a decline or even facilitated a loss of greatness. The priority of the nation similarly underpinned the formula of “America First,” as the designation of a foreign policy that would give greater attention to national interest and therefore break with established patterns of multilateralism. Trump himself has embraced the term “nationalist,” and this marks his difference from both the free trade internationalism that used to define the neoliberal Republicans as well as from the multiculturalism that dominates the identity-political Democrats.
Between those two alternatives, globalism and fragmentation, Trump has opted for the nation. With that choice, he put his finger on the forgotten category—class—in an era of growing inequality. “Nation” serves as the organizing principle for programs purporting to achieve vertical integration, the “whole nation,” i.e., a promise—whether fulfilled or not—of an inclusive nationalism. Trump’s nationalism therefore is better described as a national populism. This aspiration for inclusion outweighs a simultaneous function of exclusionary nationalism, the differentiation from other nations, although that aspect clearly plays a role as well, especially in immigration policies.
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By Peter Yoonsuk Paik · Tuesday, November 6, 2018 Peter Yoonsuk Paik’s “The Korean Wave and the Impasse of Theory” appears in Telos 184 (Fall 2018), a special issue on Korea. Read the full article at the Telos Online website, or purchase a print copy of the issue in our online store. Individual subscriptions to Telos are available in both print and online formats.
South Korean popular culture has achieved startling success across much of the globe during the past decade. The first transnational form of popular culture that is not the legacy of an imperial project, the efforts to understand the significance of the “Korean wave” have been hampered by dominant scholarly approaches in the humanities that are not capable of grasping both its emergence and its appeal. This article argues that a key reason for the appeal of South Korean television and film is the fact that they explore the clash between tradition and modernity. South Korean media resonates with peoples across the world who are living out the conflicts between tradition and modernity and are thus eager for models for negotiating the competing demands of the two.
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By Mark Wegierski · Thursday, October 26, 2017 The following paper was presented at the conference “After the End of Revolution: Constitutional Order amid the Crisis of Democracy,” co-organized by the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute and the National Research University Higher School of Economics, September 1–2, 2017, Moscow. For additional details about the conference as well as other upcoming events, please visit the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute website.
This presentation compares two societies, which, although both claim to be “Western” as well as vibrant liberal democracies, are in many aspects quite different. Those societies have been shaped by their history and political culture to evolve in quite different directions. Nevertheless, they can both be seen as “post-revolutionary” societies.
Poland has had a very checkered history, from being a Great Power, to disappearing from the map of Europe, which has contributed to a strongly “erotic” sense of belonging among the Poles. Poland after 1989—the so-called Third Republic—has been in the difficult process of attempting a restoration of a more traditional Polish society, whose organic evolution and development had been so cruelly interrupted since 1939.
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By Telos Press · Wednesday, October 1, 2014 In this short video, filmed at the recent Telos Conference in L’Aquila, Editor Russell A. Berman talks about the central themes and concerns of Telos 168 (Fall 2014): The West: Its Past and Its Prospects. We have posted Russell’s full introduction here, and you can order your copy of the issue in our online store.
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