Wounded Attachments: Late Modern Oppositional Political Formations

Abstract

Considers the production & conduct of politicized identities, eg, those of gays & lesbians, in late-capitalist societies to ascertain the kinds of political strategies that might be effective for these groups. The production of politicized identities in this period is taken to be a consequence of late-modern capitalist, liberal, disciplinary, & bureaucratic processes instrinsic to the period. Politicized identities have arisen in protest against this period's liberalism & its disciplinary instruments. To the extent that these identities posit a unified "we" disciplined by a fixed "they," they merely reiterate the term of the liberal discourse they seek to transcend & often end in a similar regulative, disciplinary, political program. This tendency to reiterate the terms of one's oppression is symptomatic of the politicized identity's desire in liberal-bureaucratic regimes. Friedrich Nietzsche's (1969) notion of forgetting is proposed as one method by which politicized identities may reorient their investments & so create more emancipatory political projects. D. M. Smith