Black, queer, feminist

Abstract: This dissertation is a critical examination of the term “identity politics”. I describe, historicize, and defend identity politics as a Black queer feminist praxis which bridges the gap between love and the work of universal emancipation. I locate the genesis of identity politics in the work of the Combahee River Collective (CRC) and their iconic “A Black Feminist Statement”. I argue that we can understand the meaning of identity politics through two sites: (1) the CRC Statement itself and, (2) the subsequent debate between the authors of the Statement and their lesbian separatist comrades who objected to the CRC’s critiques of their identity politics. I track this debate across the 1981-1983 issues of the lesbian separatist literary journal Sinister Wisdom. Through critical interrogation of the debate in Sinister Wisdom in relation to the text of the Statement, I argue that the CRC’s identity politics should be understood as a praxis which seeks universal emancipation through activism and political solidarity that is motivated by a distinctly political understanding of love for oneself and others that is rooted in a Black radical tradition. From there, I turn to evaluating critiques of identity politics from Marxist and socialist political philosophers and queer theorists. I argue that although these theorists present trenchant critiques of a tendency in the modern left to conflate an agent’s socially situated identity with their actual capacity for political power, the CRC’s identity politics in fact anticipate and sidestep these concerns. I illustrate this by showing how the CRC’s conception of identity politics can be useful for contemporary Palestinian solidarity and prison abolitionist activist projects, despite the concerns of post-CRC leftist political and queer theorists. In the end, I conclude that identity politics, understood as a queer Black feminist praxis, should be adopted and defended by contemporary leftist activists.