Damian Kropotkin
As you know, Jennifer, I am not particularly fond of Nietzsche's Greco-romanticism, nor his 'aristocratic' theory of morality. Nonetheless, I do agree with the proposition that identity politics is, as you describe, "a form of ressentiment, dressed up as if it were a system of knowledge. " Rather than the master/slave morality typology, I think a more fruitful means of explaining the manifestation of identity politics in the New Left is through its association with the kind of postmodern nihilism that has infected it ever since the 1960s. There are some important links between bourgeois liberal identity politics and the moral relativism/ absolute subjectivism which goes hand in hand with the prevailing neoliberal ideology. I don't think a Nietzschean will-to-power is to blame for it, however; there is a far closer identity between Kantian skepticism and the fetish of the self that culminates in identity politics...
Jennifer Frances Armstrong
Nietzsche's master/slave dichotomy makes sense if it is not systematised, but used to highlight particular reactions and to clarify that they exist. It's best not to take anything further by turning Nietzsche into a systematizer,because then you end up with good old fascism. I agree with what you say otherwise, especially about postmodernist links to identity politics. I'd never thought about Kantian skepticism, but there is no doubt a link in terms of the over-systematisation of "ethics". I had always throught the root of the problem of ascribing false identities to people based on surface characteristics was in Descartes and his determination to avoid seeing the subject as being rooted in the history and materiality and above all in a mode of subjective experience.
As you know, Jennifer, I am not particularly fond of Nietzsche's Greco-romanticism, nor his 'aristocratic' theory of morality. Nonetheless, I do agree with the proposition that identity politics is, as you describe, "a form of ressentiment, dressed up as if it were a system of knowledge. " Rather than the master/slave morality typology, I think a more fruitful means of explaining the manifestation of identity politics in the New Left is through its association with the kind of postmodern nihilism that has infected it ever since the 1960s. There are some important links between bourgeois liberal identity politics and the moral relativism/ absolute subjectivism which goes hand in hand with the prevailing neoliberal ideology. I don't think a Nietzschean will-to-power is to blame for it, however; there is a far closer identity between Kantian skepticism and the fetish of the self that culminates in identity politics...
Jennifer Frances Armstrong
Nietzsche's master/slave dichotomy makes sense if it is not systematised, but used to highlight particular reactions and to clarify that they exist. It's best not to take anything further by turning Nietzsche into a systematizer,because then you end up with good old fascism. I agree with what you say otherwise, especially about postmodernist links to identity politics. I'd never thought about Kantian skepticism, but there is no doubt a link in terms of the over-systematisation of "ethics". I had always throught the root of the problem of ascribing false identities to people based on surface characteristics was in Descartes and his determination to avoid seeing the subject as being rooted in the history and materiality and above all in a mode of subjective experience.
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