This workshop is designed to encourage discussion and exchange. It therefore operates on the principle of pre-circulated papers, which all participants are expected to read in advance. Everyone is very welcome to attend the lecture on 30 June. Those wishing to participate in the workshop on 1 July should first contact Christian Jacobs [jchjacobs@gmail.com].

The working language of the workshop will be English.

Venue: L116, Seminarzentrum, FU Berlin, Otto-von-Simson-Str. 26, 14195 Berlin

 

Identity has become one of the most powerful mobilising forces in contemporary democratic politics. The emergence of a vast constellation of political movements based around race, gender, religion, language, sexuality and other individual or collective identities has profoundly affected older patterns of political mobilisation. By upturning existing hierarchies and forcing new issues on to the agenda, these movements have reshaped the relationship between different groups within societies. They have also transformed the architecture of democracy itself, with important consequences for the way we interact and engage with each other. Not surprisingly, this process has been controversial. While some argue that identity politics is a tool of empowerment and emancipation, others believe it has ignited vicious “culture wars” and destabilised shared ideas of citizenship. Today, some of the fiercest battles are fought over the value of identity as a political category.

Yet, despite the deep shift in the political landscape caused by the rise of identity politics, we do not have a comprehensive historical account of its origins and development, nor do we have a clear sense of how it has affected democratic norms and practices in different parts of the world. We have influential studies of specific identity-based social movements, and there has been excellent work on the philosophical and anthropological underpinnings of identity politics, but there is no overarching historical narrative to tie these together. This workshop looks to explore precisely what this narrative might look like and how we might conceptualise it in conversation with other disciplines (sociology, anthropology, political science etc.). In particular, it builds on work that has already been completed for a large British Academy-funded project on the history of race and political mobilisation in France and the UK since the 1970s (https://www.ed.ac.uk/history-classics-archaeology/history/research/research-projects/new-democratic-dis-order-race-identity).

 

Tuesday 30 June

16:00-18:00    Lecture: ‘Age of Identity: Democracy and Difference in Contemporary Europe’

Introductory keynote lecture by Emile Chabal as part of the FU Global History Colloquium.

18:00-19:00    Drinks reception following lecture

 

Wednesday 1 July

9:00-9:15         Welcome from the organising committee

9:15-10:30       Panel 1: Origins

• Andrea Rottmann (FU Berlin), ‘Amnesty International and the Global Negotiation of Homosexuality, 1974-1991
• David Bebnowski (FU Berlin), ‘"Between the Waves: Identity Politics and Intersectionality in the U.S. Left during the 1940s and 50s"

Chair: Michael Goebel (FU Berlin)

10:30-10:45    Comfort break

10:45-12:15    Panel 2: Race and identity

• Olivia Wyatt (Edinburgh), ‘‘Black is Beautiful’: Gender, Pigmentation, and Political Blackness in Modern Britain’
• Ary Gordien (CNRS), ‘Self-identifying as Guadeloupean: socializing ‘identity’ in a French postslavery and postcolonial setting’

Chair: Matthew Loveless (Bologna)

12:15-14:00    Lunch

14:00-15:30    Panel 3: Culture and power

• Christian Jacobs (FU Berlin), ‘The Politics of Culture. Far-Right, Feminist, and “Immigrant” Movements in France, ca. 1965-1985’
• Marius Huber (FU Berlin), ‘Ethno-Regionalism of the Revolutionary Far-Right in Germany, 1975-1985’
• Razak Khan (FU Berlin), ‘From Enforced Silence to Fearless Voice: Muslim Identity Politics and the Women’s Rights Movement in Postcolonial India (1985-2025)’

Chair: Alex Hensby (Kent)

15:30-15:45    Comfort break

15:45-17:00    Concluding remarks and general discussion

 

Organising committee:

            Emile Chabal (Edinburgh)

            Michael Goebel (FU Berlin)

            Christian Jacobs

            Marie Jacquier (FU Berlin)