Another cultural anxiety that Apple’s ‘Severance’ cashes in on is the impermanence of self; are we who we think we are? Will we always be that way? What makes me “me”, anyhow?
Is an “innie” a real person or are they merely the really-real person out there ‘under the influence’? Which experience gets to have agency? Which actor is ultimately accountable?
In the background of all these questions is the fundamental paradox of individuality: inviolable and sacrosanct, yet conditioned, if not determined. “Individual” literally means that which cannot be divided, and yet, we all know that our human experience contains multitudes: we are classed, we are raced, we are gendered, we are enabled and disabled, enfranchised and disenfranchised, all before we even start to think about who we’d like to become. It’s no wonder that the politics of identity has been so foregrounded for so long.
Identity politics has been getting a bad rap from left and right because it has been reduced to a politics of representation, when what it fundamentally names is the politics of difference; that before sameness, there is differentiation; that before unity, there is distinction; that identity must be constructed; that commonality must be won; that publics are made, not found. And that fills us with anxiety. It’s much easier to fall on the fixity of the “really-real;” to short-circuit the politics by insisting that it’s somewhere out there because “innies” aren’t people.
The right’s denial of experience is easy enough to explain; it’s the very nature of fascism to set up false idols like nation or race or sex or caste that we are meant to simply submit to, no matter what. “Facts don’t care about your feelings” for them because fascism works from the outside-in: first, posit the social order, then fight like mad to force society to match. Despite everything they claim about the left, they are the real “social engineers.”
The left’s new-found allergy to the politics of experience, however, is more complicated. It has more to do with how “experience” has been commodified by rainbow capitalism to mean that particular people can speak for particular demographics, and how that commodification is reflected in some activist tendencies to legislate who can or cannot speak and how or when publics can or cannot be constructed.
So, it’s become fashionable for some leftists to echo right-wing tropes in their denial of “identity politics” wholesale, like the politics of identity can ever be simply denied; like “class consciousness” isn’t a form of identity formation in itself, like “awareness raising” doesn’t necessarily imply differences in perspective and standpoint, etc.
When pushed, these leftists will of course say that of course they don’t deny any of that, but I suspect they feel the burning desire to “own the libs” a tad too strongly to allow the full import of that admission to sink in; an identity politics of its own.
But, no matter; the “idpol” brand has been sullied, yet the material realities of perspective and difference cannot be wished away. Anyone who has ever designed anything knows that “user experience” is important, and if your model of that “user base” is monolithic, the thing that you’re designing won’t meet everyone’s needs, which you will find out very quickly. These are the facts that truly don’t care how you feel.
You can notice this confusion in conversation, sometimes. In how a sentence can start with “we” and mean those of us in the room and somehow migrate a few thoughts later to mean the organization as a whole, or maybe even everyone everywhere for all time, idk. “We” is one of the most abused words in the English language.
“We,” who? Me and you? Or people like “us”? Like us in what way? And for how long?
“We” is political. When I use it, I am making a claim. I am saying that I see you in this with me, and I expect the same from others who wield its power.
But many of “us” use it to mean “not you,” instead. Not a generous “we” or an inviting “we,” but a positing of a social order that one (i.e. you) must submit to. And that’s a fascist politics that can cut across the proclaimed “identities” of right and left.