Identity politics and the need for a tomorrow

The article addresses what it identifies as two problems associated with identity politics: that of ‘exclusionary politics’, and that named as ‘wounded attachments’ by political theorist Wendy Brown. Developing from the work of two social theorists, Satya Mohanty, and Lynn Hankinson Nelson, it argues for a revised conceptual framework for understanding politicised identities. This, it suggests, can provide a way out of the apparent impasse existing between defenders of an identity politics often labelled ‘essentialist’ by its adversaries, and advocates of a postmodern conception of identity frequently denounced as detached from political and material realities.