The Revolutionary Road to Me

How can the left be credible when it can’t decide what a woman is? How can antiracists fight for equality if they promote fictions about race? If identity politics is the answer, why are so many Western left organizations being damaged by it?

As the culture wars rage, this compelling book examines why much of the Western political left has foundered because of identity politics. Identity issues have mired many good organizations in intractable conflicts and deflected them from their purpose. In ignoring poverty and inequality, the Western left has lost its way. Meanwhile, powerful social movements from the past – black, women’s, gay, and lesbian – are reduced to corporate slogans.

Attuned to the needs of activists and academics, this book offers intelligent explanations for how we got here. It examines serious problems with antiracism, transgender rights activism, and the work of LGBTQ+ groups. In showing how identities are outcomes of social and institutional forces, it argues that technofinancial capitalism uses identity politics to mould new labour processes for the Western middle class while accelerating economic inequality. Clearing a path through the vagaries of identity politics, the book offers arguments the Western left must face amidst formidable far-right and right-wing authoritarianism, climate emergency, and severe inequalities.

Acknowledgements


Chapter 1: The Heat of Identity

Chapter 2: The Self, the Group, and Identity Politics

Chapter 3: Identitarian Technocracy and the Liberal Middle Class

Chapter 4: The Queer Empire and Post-Truth Politics

Chapter 5: Proximate, Immediate, Emotional: Identitarian Antiracism

Chapter 6: Culture, Identity, and Antiracism

Chapter 7: Diminishing Utopias


Notes
Index

"This book provides a nuanced and clear-headed insight into debates about identity politics in the world around us. Bhatt’s strident intervention seeks to make readers rethink this whole issue."
Professor John Solomos, University of Warwick

"Reading Chetan Bhatt’s book is like watching a skilled surgeon dissect a diseased body. He exposes the neoliberal, economic and regulatory conditions in which a particular type of left wing identity politics has thrived within our institutions to devastating illiberal effects. What is so welcome about this book is that the narrative does not get bogged down in rehearsing the requisite academic literature – rather the prose, the diagnosis, the argument and analysis is driven by the careful use of examples. This is a must read."
Jo Phoenix, University of Reading

Chetan Bhatt is Anthony Giddens Professor of Social Theory at LSE.