Identity Before Identity Politics (Cambridge Cultural Social Studies)
Cambridge University Press, 11/20/2008
EAN 9780521680486, ISBN10: 0521680484
Paperback, 202 pages, 22.8 x 15.2 x 1.2 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
In the late 1960s identity politics emerged on the political landscape and challenged prevailing ideas about social justice. These politics brought forth a new attention to social identity, an attention that continues to divide people today. While previous studies have focused on the political movements of this period, they have neglected the conceptual prehistory of this political turn. Linda Nicholson's engaging book situates this critical moment in its historical framework, analyzing the concepts and traditions of racial and gender identity that can be traced back to late eighteenth-century Europe and America. She examines how changing ideas about social identity over the last several centuries both helped and hindered successive social movements, and explores the consequences of this historical legacy for the women's and black movements of the 1960s. This insightful study will be of particular interest to students and scholars of political history, identity politics and US history.
Introduction
1. The politics of identity
race and sex before the twentieth century
2. Freud and the rise of the psychological self
3. The culture concept and social identity
4. Before Black Power
constructing an African American identity
5. Women's identity/women's politics
Epilogue. Identity politics forty years later
assessing their value.