The Use and Abuse of Identity in Public Life w/ Samir Gandesha

The question of identity has become urgent for activism in the West though the issue has been important in many other parts of the world as well in a variety of forms. Political Identities form in opposition to oppression (or, reactively, as perceived victimization) and demand recognition, rights, and equity (or aggressively promote their denial). They also divide, become separated in privilege, get co-opted, and become instruments of domination. Can identity struggles lead to fundamental social transformation or must they necessarily be limited to the horizon of recognition and reform? Can the empowerment of identity be woven into solidarity or must it necessarily be doomed to fragmentation and the sustenance of the status quo? Samir Gandesha has been a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California at Berkeley (1995-97) and an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the Universität Potsdam (2001-2002). He is currently Associate Professor in the Department of the Humanities and the Director of the Institute for the Humanities at Simon Fraser University. He is co-editor with Lars Rensmann of Arendt and Adorno: Political and Philosophical Investigations (Stanford, 2012), and co-editor with Johan Hartle of Spell of Capital: Reification and Spectacle (University of Amsterdam Press, 2017) and Aesthetic Marx (Bloomsbury Press, 2017). Recorded in Toronto, 26 September 2019.