I recently read Alembic Offerings, by hippieish writer Erik Davies. It included this line, which intrigued me:

I cut my teeth in the post-structuralist 1980s, more interested in difference than identity.

It reminded me of how I had long been confused by identity politics. That is, for years — possibly decades — when I heard the term ‘identity politics’, I had supposed it to be about individual identity, about how each of us is different.

Which means I must have actually been confused by some of the things I read that used the term, since it means almost exactly the opposite.

My misunderstanding came from the idea of proving one’s identity, of identifying yourself, showing identity documents. Identifying a suspect, even. They all mean demonstrating that a person is a specific, unique individual.

Whereas identity politics is about memberships of groups.

It feels like a linguistic shift. I am a member of several groups, but none of them uniquely identifies me. Even the intersection of all of them doesn’t do that. So why does the politics of group membership get tagged with the term ‘identity’?

Well it turns out the Latin root of the word relates to similarity:

mid 16th century (in the sense ‘quality of being identical’): via French from late Latin identitas, from Latin idem ‘same’.

to quote the Mac OS dictionary. But different fields use it differently. From Wikipedia’s Identity (social science) :

Identity is the set of qualities, beliefs, personality traits, appearance, or expressions that characterize a person or a group.

Identity emerges during childhood as children start to comprehend their self-concept, and it remains a consistent aspect throughout different stages of life. Identity is shaped by social and cultural factors and how others perceive and acknowledge one’s characteristics. The etymology of the term “identity” from the Latin noun identitas emphasizes an individual’s “sameness with others”. Identity encompasses various aspects such as occupational, religious, national, ethnic or racial, gender, educational, generational, and political identities, among others.

But in its Identity (philosophy) we find:

In metaphysics, identity (from Latin: identitas, “sameness”) is the relation each thing bears only to itself. The notion of identity gives rise to many philosophical problems, including the identity of indiscernibles (if x and y share all their properties, are they one and the same thing?), and questions about change and personal identity over time (what has to be the case for a person x at one time and a person y at a later time to be one and the same person?).

So the politics version appears to come from the social science use of the word, unsurprisingly.

Funny old word, identity. I think, like Erik Davies, I’m more interested in difference than identity, in the group-membership sense.