Prediction: The prism of the political is not going to decompress anytime soon. The remainder of the 21st Century will be as gratuitously polarized as the 2015-2018 years have been, if not more so.
Reasons: While identity politics has been on the receiving end of a sustained backlash, no halfway popular commentator has managed to diagnose the precursors to ID-pol.
There are multiple precursors, to be sure, but what's the main one? Well, ever notice how much harder it is to spot social media users who doubt, even faintly, that The Personal Is Political?
It has become damn near impossible to find skeptics of The Personal Is Political (henceforth TPIP) throughout social media land. Widely held TPIP hints at the runaway normalization of Political Essentialism. Though confused and untrue, essentialism in politics is rarely treated as such by the non-essentialists who don't (appear to) believe in it. You never see skeptics saying things like "Don't be such a political essentialist, you look foolish!".
There are multiple precursors, to be sure, but what's the main one? Well, ever notice how much harder it is to spot social media users who doubt, even faintly, that The Personal Is Political?
It has become damn near impossible to find skeptics of The Personal Is Political (henceforth TPIP) throughout social media land. Widely held TPIP hints at the runaway normalization of Political Essentialism. Though confused and untrue, essentialism in politics is rarely treated as such by the non-essentialists who don't (appear to) believe in it. You never see skeptics saying things like "Don't be such a political essentialist, you look foolish!".
With the root not being called out for the sham it is, lingering notions of TPIP have been left to fester and grow. When TPIP rides shotgun, why even be nonplussed at so many politically engaged people revelling in hyper-polarization, whether consciously or unconsciously? What's so surprising about unspoken loyalty oaths, in such a context? Of course they'll take the mile. They'll do whatever it takes when so many intellectuals give them inch after inch by failing to rail against the essence of the problem.
True, I still make it a point to observe social media users from a healthy distance. If the user is adept at networking, or is just traffic-friendly enough to be visible, the user will without exception believe TPIP.
Now, TPIP tends to be an unstated conviction, and I can fathom it being an unwitting one too. No speaker has to go around declaring "The Personal Is Political" for the astute lurker to gather that this is what the speaker has internalized.
Some speakers are in touch with their TPIP beliefs, but won't state them outright, because icky connotations. I suppose identitarian is the label that's been reserved for them, or that they've reserved for themselves...
Overall though, ordinary TPIP-ers are nowhere close to recognizing how everything from their informal rhetoric — up to their formal emphasis on first-personal methods of gaining knowledge — lends itself to such an orientation.
So while all identitarians are TPIP-ers — they reflexively believe The Personal Is Political — not all TPIP-ers are identitarians. Self-unaware TPIP-ers recoil at identitarianism, even though they'll use phrases like "Political Identity" 100% uncritically. A huge part of their selves will be poured into their societal projects, molding their political wish-lists. If you're on social media like a meth-head on pipes, I'm probably talking about you.
Overall though, ordinary TPIP-ers are nowhere close to recognizing how everything from their informal rhetoric — up to their formal emphasis on first-personal methods of gaining knowledge — lends itself to such an orientation.
So while all identitarians are TPIP-ers — they reflexively believe The Personal Is Political — not all TPIP-ers are identitarians. Self-unaware TPIP-ers recoil at identitarianism, even though they'll use phrases like "Political Identity" 100% uncritically. A huge part of their selves will be poured into their societal projects, molding their political wish-lists. If you're on social media like a meth-head on pipes, I'm probably talking about you.
