The Myopia of Liberal and Marxist Anti-Identitarians

Abstract

The text presents a cartography of a series of recent works written by liberal and Marxist intellectuals who have articulated new critical discourses on Black identities and on sexual and gender diversity. It argues that these works are consolidating an anti-identitarian perspective and shows that several authors attribute to decolonial, Black, queer, and trans epistemologies what they describe as a new form of identitarian essentialism. Furthermore, neoliberalism is said to have appropriated identities in order to manage and neutralize their emancipatory force. Through the studies of Wendy Brown and Quinn Slobodian, the text contends that these diagnoses are misplaced, since the core of contemporary essentialism lies in the rise of the far right, which, in seeking to push neoliberalism to its ultimate consequences, attempts to erode democracy and dismantle the principal political actors committed to its defense.