Jetsetting is now not the privilege of the elite so much as a veritiginous mundanity for a permanently dispossessed global workforce.
Identity politics is not politics at all, since it precisely negates the political as such by re-construing political positions in ethnic terms, subsuming 'ought' under 'is.'
Interpretation
What this quote means
Identity politics distorts traditional political discourse by focusing on ethnic and identity categories rather than broader political principles.
Mark Fisher's quote critiques the concept of identity politics, arguing that it undermines genuine political discourse by framing political issues in terms of ethnic identities. He suggests that this approach reduces political arguments to mere categorizations based on identity, shifting the conversation from discussing what should be done ('ought') to what is currently the case ('is'), thus negating the essence of political debate and action.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a university lecture on social justice, I might use this quote to provoke discussion on the effectiveness of identity politics in achieving equality.
More from Mark Fisher
All quotes βIf it is true, for instance, that depression is constituted by low serotonin levels, what still needs to be explained is why particular individuals have low levels of serotonin. This requires a social and political explanation.
The most powerful love songs always turn on the discrepancy between the act of declaring love and the knowledge that the ostensible addressee is no longer there, was never there, and could never be there.
Little Axe's records are wracked with collective grief. Spectral harmonicas resemble howling wolves; echoes linger like wounds that will never heal; the voices of the living harmonise with the voices of the dead in songs thick with reproach, recrimination and the hunger for redemption.
If people dying as a consequence of the implementation of measures cannot count as evidence that the legislation has detrimental effects, what would?
What many students most want from college, although they would never admit it, is an authority structure. There is a demand for an authority which they can then reject; they want to be told what to do, so they can disobey. It is a textbook case of bad faith, a flight from freedom.
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All individuals in all cultures use the same thirty basic moral categories, concepts, or principles, and all individuals in all cultures go through the same order or sequence of gross stage development, though they vary in rate and terminal point of development.
Maybe we ought to consider a Golden Rule in foreign policy: Don't do to other nations what we don't want happening to us. We endlessly bomb these countries and then we wonder why they get upset with us?
It's very difficult to escape your background. You know, I don't think it's necessary to even try to escape it. More and more, I start to think that it's necessary to see exactly what it is that you inherited on both ends of the stick: your timidity, your courage, your self-deceit, and your honesty - and all the rest of it.
No one has the right to be sorry for himself for a misfortune that strikes everyone.
We should not say that one man's hour is worth another man's hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing: he is at the most time's carcass.
CEMETERY, n. An isolated suburban spot where mourners match lies, poets write at a target and stone-cutters spell for a wager.