Page 116 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

IDENTITY POLITICS

constructions. The implications of this have been explored by theorists
such as Mulvey (1990), who argues that cinema uses conventions that
invite identification with male characters while objectifying females.
Mulvey’s argument suggests a subordinate position for women is
created via the conventions of the media. But such notions, organised
around a psychoanalytical (and therefore transhistorical) concept of
‘the’ male gaze, have proven disabling and confining, giving very little
scope for challenging and changing the process and terms of
identification with media images.
See also: Image, Mode of address, Representation, Subjectivity

IDENTITY POLITICS

Social action organised around cultural rather than civic or political
subjectivities. Identity politics aims to provide a form of political
participation for those who are excluded from the traditional means of
representation. Examples of this could include the feminist movement,
gay and lesbian activism, ethno-nationalisms, as well as movements
based on disability, youth and the environment.
Although identity politics is sometimes said to have arisen from the
political upheavals of the 1960s, it is possible to recognise the
suffragette movement of the 1900s as an early form of identity politics
(see Parkins, 1997). In attempting to gain women’s access to the right
to vote, the suffragettes stand as an example of the grouping together
of people with a shared identity for the purposes of political activism.
Anti-colonial struggles throughout the twentieth century in the
British, French and other European empires were also important in
the development of identity politics. The civil rights movement in the
1960s and the rise of feminism brought such issues to the heart of
contemporary public life, and to the top of the political agenda in
Lyndon B. Johnson’s Vietnam-era America. They called attention to
the way that the traditional political sphere had failed so many, even its
own supposed beneficiaries. At this point, attention was called to how
‘education, language, lifestyle and representation were imbued with
social consequences’ (Shattuc, 1997: 2). The shift from public to
private politics was succinctly captured in one of feminism’s most
famous slogans – ‘the personal is political’.
The concept of identity is nowoften viewed as relying on shared
characteristics that are cultural rather than natural/biological. As a
result, political alliances based on an essentialist identity – one fixed in

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