The Prime Minister has recently denounced ‘the growing tendency to commodify human beings through identity politics‘. In doing so, he raises a number of important questions. The claim of ‘commodification’ of human beings and their relations is a powerful one.
The idea that humans or their essential relationships risk reduction to being treated as things (‘reification’, from German Verdinglichung) and thereby alienated from others was, indeed, one of Marxism’s central critiques of capitalism. In support of this thesis, Marxists could point to such charmless commercial terms as ‘human resources’ (assets on the company books) and, in contemporary discourse, to the claims that we should ‘open up’ our economies and suffer the consequent loss of lives to the coronavirus in order to avoid economic damage.
Mr Morrison’s thesis is not the traditional economic one, however, but is rather a social claim. He argues that it is the assumption of an identity by people themselves which causes this commodification and alienation. So, what is one to make of ‘identity politics’ and does it commodify us?
Certainly, it is true that identity can sell — and is in that sense commodifiable. One has only to go into a (physical or online) souvenir shop to see t-shirts allowing the wearer to display their Australianness, Christianity, disability or any of a hundred other identities. Mr Morrison is also undoubtedly right to point out that one can invest oneself so completely in an identity as to submerge the reality of who one is. Indeed, a man who invited the cameras to church to watch him pray during the 2019 election campaign is doubtless right to warn that identity can be used to mask a person’s individuating characteristics in order to sell products — or buy votes.
But identity is much more than a brand. On one level, there is the very human tendency to identify with others we see as sharing our world view, our language and culture or other elements of our outlook. On another level, however, identity is itself often influenced by external and unwanted factors.
As many First Nations activists have commented, Aboriginality (and degrees of it) was categorised, classified and subclassified precisely by colonisers in order to mete out horrors to the Indigenous population of this country (and others too).
'Arguably, it is precisely the commodification of groups by discrimination in the first place which has caused the groups discriminated against to attempt to claim the identities targeted for discrimination as rallying standards.'
Women’s issues have come to the fore in Australian politics recently not because ‘woke’ women sought to distinguish themselves from society’s mainstream, but rather because of allegations that women have been sexually assaulted in Parliament and subjected to harassment and unwanted sexual advances by political leaders — and a subsequent lack of political will to effectively investigate these allegations.
On a more personal level, it is not I who have chosen to be spat on in public, called a ‘retard’ by fellow commuters, had my cane or glasses snatched by would-be faith healers while walking in city streets or given the third degree every time I go through airport security. These things have been a consequence of having a visible disability. Indeed, other disabled people have fared far worse. Physical and sexual assault, lack of access to buildings or communications, ill-treatment by the justice system or enforced institutionalisation have all been unwanted consequences of an identity marker imposed by society on people with a variety of physical or mental characteristics distinguishing them from an imagined ‘norm’.
The LGBTQI+ community also have a long history of being the targets of discrimination, stretching back centuries. Even the Australian government admits that LBTQI+ people face multi-layered discrimination in accessing services from it, including the most basic of health services.
In the light of these histories, the question of ‘commodification’ can, I suggest, be seen in a new light. Arguably, it is precisely the commodification of groups by discrimination in the first place which has caused the groups discriminated against to attempt to claim the identities targeted for discrimination as rallying standards. So it is, for example, that many women’s groups have claimed the abusive term ‘slut’ as an act of defiance, just as many disabled people have embraced ‘crip’ or many LGBTQI+ people have adopted ‘queer’.
All this casts doubt on the Prime Minister’s claim that it is the politics of identity (rather than oppression on the basis of real or imagined identities) which commodifies.
Nevertheless, Morrison is doubtless correct to the extent that he questions whether identity politics can ever be an end in itself when looking to dismantle structures of oppression. So it is that the concept of ‘intersectionality’ arose among Black women scholars (such as Kimberlé Crenshaw, who was responsible for coining the term) in the 1970s and 1980s. These scholars noted that many people experienced multiple forms of discrimination and that remaining solely focused on one identity marker could obscure the broader picture of how different structures of oppression interact. Only by tackling the complex as a whole could discrimination be removed.
The Prime Minister’s remarks about ‘identity politics’ will therefore be welcome to the extent that they foster awareness of these structures and a determination to demolish them.
Fr Justin Glyn SJ has a licentiate in canon law from St Paul University in Ottawa. Before entering the Society he practised law in South Africa and New Zealand and has a PhD in administrative and international law.
Main image: Protestors looking at the camera (Getty Images)