QuoteProject
Identitarianism assumes that people are condemned to identify with the positive (ethnic/ gender/ nationalistic) predicates they possess, as if their subjectivity were exhausted by those properties. Exactly the opposite is the case: the authentic dimension of subjectivity consists not in any positive identity but in that which makes identifications.
Mark Fisher
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote argues against the idea that our identities are limited to specific traits, suggesting instead that true subjectivity transcends these identifications.

Mark Fisher's quote critiques the notion of identitarianism, which posits that individuals are defined solely by their inherent characteristics such as ethnicity, gender, or nationality. Fisher emphasizes that real subjectivity goes beyond these limiting labels; it is found in the very act of identification, which allows individuals to relate to a wider range of identities and experiences rather than being confined by predetermined attributes.

Themes

IdentitySubjectivityIdentificationPhilosophyEthnicityGenderNationalism

In practice

Example use cases

This quote can be used in a discussion about the limitations of identity politics.

More from Mark Fisher

Jetsetting is now not the privilege of the elite so much as a veritiginous mundanity for a permanently dispossessed global workforce.
Mark FisherRead
If it is true, for instance, that depression is constituted by low serotonin levels, what still needs to be explained is why particular individuals have low levels of serotonin. This requires a social and political explanation.
Mark FisherRead
The most powerful love songs always turn on the discrepancy between the act of declaring love and the knowledge that the ostensible addressee is no longer there, was never there, and could never be there.
Mark FisherRead
Little Axe's records are wracked with collective grief. Spectral harmonicas resemble howling wolves; echoes linger like wounds that will never heal; the voices of the living harmonise with the voices of the dead in songs thick with reproach, recrimination and the hunger for redemption.
Mark FisherRead
If people dying as a consequence of the implementation of measures cannot count as evidence that the legislation has detrimental effects, what would?
Mark FisherRead
What many students most want from college, although they would never admit it, is an authority structure. There is a demand for an authority which they can then reject; they want to be told what to do, so they can disobey. It is a textbook case of bad faith, a flight from freedom.
Mark FisherRead

Similar quotes

It is the pull of opposite poles that stretches souls. And only stretched souls make music.
Eric HofferRead
Whatever skills I have acquired, whatever gifts I have been given, I place them at Your service.
Saint AugustineRead
Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state...
Noam ChomskyRead
Integrity is fundamental to being men. Integrity means being truthful, but it also means accepting responsibility and honoring commitments and covenants.
D. Todd ChristoffersonRead
In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is. This is what makes American what it is.
Gertrude SteinRead
Not until we dare to regard ourselves as a nation, not until we respect ourselves, can we gain the esteem of others, or rather only then will it come of its own accord
Albert EinsteinRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.