Identity Politics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
by Cressida Heyes · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Peer-reviewed encyclopedia entry by Cressida Heyes, substantively revised November 2024. It traces the history and scope of identity politics, the philosophical debates over identity and essentialism, and current critiques and defenses, with an extensive bibliography.
More resources on Identity & Representation
Questions of Cultural Identity
Edited collection opening with Stuart Hall's essay 'Who Needs Identity?', which treats identity as a process of identification constructed through difference. Hall's Representation covers the 'representation' half; this covers the 'identity' half: the case that identities are constructed and positional rather than fixed essences. Contributors including Bauman, Bhabha, Gilroy, Grossberg and Frith examine national, ethnic, gendered and consumer identities.
Representation & the Media: Stuart Hall Lecture (Full Transcript)
The free, legitimate way into Hall's argument, shorter and easier than the textbook. Official transcript of Stuart Hall's 1997 University of Westminster lecture, introduced by Sut Jhally. Hall argues that meaning is produced through representation rather than reflected by it, and works through media stereotyping, the fixing of meaning and contested images.
Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (3rd Edition)
Open University textbook edited by Stuart Hall that sets out semiotic and discursive theories of representation, then applies them to museums, racial stereotyping ('The Spectacle of the Other'), masculinity in advertising, and, in this edition, digital self-representation.
Black Skin, White Masks
Frantz Fanon's 1952 study of the psychology of colonialism, combining psychoanalysis, phenomenology and personal experience to show how racism shapes Black self-perception, language and desire, and why colonized people come to internalize the colonizer's gaze. Grove Press translation by Richard Philcox.
The Location of Culture
Homi K. Bhabha's essay collection in postcolonial theory, introducing hybridity, mimicry, ambivalence and the third space. Readers gain tools for analyzing how colonial discourse produces unstable identities and how cultural difference is negotiated in literature, politics and ideas of the nation.