You are here

Back to top

Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (and Everything Else) (Paperback)

Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (and Everything Else) Cover Image
$16.95
Usually Ships in 1-5 Days

Description


"Identity politics" is everywhere, polarizing discourse from the campaign trail to the classroom and amplifying antagonisms in the media, both online and off. But the compulsively referenced phrase bears little resemblance to the concept as first introduced by the radical Black feminist Combahee River Collective. While the Collective articulated a political viewpoint grounded in their own position as Black lesbians with the explicit aim of building solidarity across lines of difference, identity politics is now frequently weaponized as a means of closing ranks around ever-narrower conceptions of group interests.

But the trouble, Ol fẹ́mi O. T w deftly argues, is not with identity politics itself. Through a substantive engagement with the global Black radical tradition and a critical understanding of racial capitalism, T w identifies the process by which a radical concept can be stripped of its political substance and liberatory potential by becoming the victim of elite capture--deployed by political, social, and economic elites in the service of their own interests.
T w 's crucial intervention both elucidates this complex process and helps us move beyond a binary of "class" vs. "race." By rejecting elitist identity politics in favor of a constructive politics of radical solidarity, he advances the possibility of organizing across our differences in the urgent struggle for a better world.

Product Details
ISBN: 9781642596885
ISBN-10: 1642596884
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Publication Date: May 3rd, 2022
Pages: 168
Language: English

Heather's Picks

Akata Witch (The Nsibidi Scripts #1) Cover Image
Frankenstein: The 1818 Text Cover Image
The First Rule of Punk Cover Image
The Pisces: A Novel Cover Image
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants Cover Image
My Brilliant Friend: Neapolitan Novels, Book One Cover Image

how to not be a jerk recs

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America Cover Image
How to Be an Antiracist Cover Image
An African American and Latinx History of the United States (ReVisioning History #4) Cover Image
An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States (ReVisioning History #3) Cover Image
Women, Race & Class Cover Image