Our societies are currently experiencing an “identity moment”. For generations, most political divides in the North Atlantic world were based on class and inequality. In recent decades, there has been a perceptible shift towards cultural and other identities, and many political struggles now concern the right to define oneself, to obtain recognition and to acquire equal rights within the framework of a state where many belong to designated minorities, be they ethnic, religious or sexual. However, majorities are also deeply involved in identity politics, as witnessed in the rise of populism and nativism.
This conversation explores the implications of the shift. Is the new identity politics about existential desires or political influences; are the new identities mainly collective or individual (or even post-individual); do they rely on essentialist or constructivist discourses ; how, as anthropologists, can we explore their internal diversity (from Indigenous groups to LGBTQ+ movements)? Is the new identity politics liberating or constraining, progressive or reactionary?David Berliner is Professor of Anthropology at the Free University of Brussels (ULB). He has published extensively about aspects of identity and cultural memory, often pointing out paradoxes and ironies. His latest book in English is Becoming Other: Heterogeneity and Plasticity of the Self (2024).
Thomas Hylland Eriksen is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo. He has published many books and articles on the politics of identity, including Ethnicity and Nationalism (1993/2010) and Globalization: The Key Concepts (2008/2014).
