Sometimes books you read a long time ago stick in your memory. One of those books for me is D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. One of the things that makes this novel so exciting is Lawrence’s awareness of tensions and contradictions between the different “identities” and oppressions, here class and gender: Constance (Lady Chatterley) is an aristocratic woman, whilst her (male) lover, Oliver Mellors, is a gamekeeper.

I’ve been reading Horizontalism, a collection of accounts of various aspects of the movements in Argentina and how they’re grappling with so many of these issues. There’s loads of interesting stuff in there — enough for a whole post — but a few directly relevant to this affinity vs. identity politics question.

First, and this relates to the tendency amongst some people who believe in identity politics to attempt to measure oppression. This from the group Colectivo Situaciones:

“Some think, for example, that horizontalidad [“horizontalism”] is the number of minutes each person speaks, or a quantity of techniques that will make all communication work. The real question of horizontalidad is: What does it mean to organize ourselves?”

And the second quotation is from Paula, part of feminist and gay, lesbian, transvestites, transsexual and bisexual (GLTTB) collectives:

“What is it that makes a person different from me? If I only think about difference, then I am sort of pigeon-holing them and making a separation. Horizontalidad permits us to think not solely in terms of difference, but rather to live with other people and be able to have political discussions with them, without trying to define them. … [In the GLTTB movement] it wasn’t important if you were lesbian, transvestite, gay, heterosexual, or whatever. It wasn’t important. The question was not asked, and that’s interesting — no one asked, how do you identify yourself?”