PANEL 16 / IDENTITY, POLARIZATION, AND POLITICAL REPRESENTATION: A REASSESSMENT
CONVENORS: GIUSEPPE BALLACCI and PEDRO MAGALHÃES (UMinho)
All enquiries about the panel should be and sent to [email protected] and [email protected].
The re-election of Donald Trump has reignited debate over the so-called culture wars and identity politics. Some pundits argue that the Democratic Party’s focus on these issues contributed to its defeat. The moment thus provides an opportunity to reassess the discussion on these topics.
The debate over identity in politics has long been polarized between two opposing perspectives. On one side are those who critique the inadequacy of the liberal focus on impartiality, detachment, and universal rights, emphasizing instead the importance of lived experiences and attachments, particularly those shaped by membership in historically marginalized groups, as essential to understanding and addressing social and political injustices. On the other side are those who caution that privileging such experiential perspectives and partial attachments over broader political values and ideological frameworks not only risks limiting the ability to build coalition and reach compromises, but could also lead to the ossification of group identities and siloed politics.
Furthermore, these dynamics must also be understood within the context of the public sphere’s profound transformation and the ongoing polarization driven by social media. Social platforms foster fragmentation, amplify emotional responses in discussions, and enable the spread of ‘fake news’ , ‘alternative facts’ and conspiracy theories’, thus stimulating polarization. Simultaneously, they reinforce the spectacularization and personalization of politics, reshaping the way political discourse and mobilization occur.
This panel aims to explore these issues from the privileged perspective of political representation—a topic closely tied to identity politics yet not often explicitly addressed in this context. Like other social demands, and perhaps even more so given the irreducibility of identities to material interests, representation plays a vital role in their politicization. The mediating role of representation has been emphasized by the constructivist turn that has shaped our understanding of political representation in recent years. This turn has highlighted the active, central role in constructing political subjectivitiesl, so as the diffusion of representation across all areas of collective life, far beyond institutional spheres.
The panel welcomes contributions related (but not limited) to questions such as:
All enquiries about the panel should be and sent to [email protected] and [email protected].
The re-election of Donald Trump has reignited debate over the so-called culture wars and identity politics. Some pundits argue that the Democratic Party’s focus on these issues contributed to its defeat. The moment thus provides an opportunity to reassess the discussion on these topics.
The debate over identity in politics has long been polarized between two opposing perspectives. On one side are those who critique the inadequacy of the liberal focus on impartiality, detachment, and universal rights, emphasizing instead the importance of lived experiences and attachments, particularly those shaped by membership in historically marginalized groups, as essential to understanding and addressing social and political injustices. On the other side are those who caution that privileging such experiential perspectives and partial attachments over broader political values and ideological frameworks not only risks limiting the ability to build coalition and reach compromises, but could also lead to the ossification of group identities and siloed politics.
Furthermore, these dynamics must also be understood within the context of the public sphere’s profound transformation and the ongoing polarization driven by social media. Social platforms foster fragmentation, amplify emotional responses in discussions, and enable the spread of ‘fake news’ , ‘alternative facts’ and conspiracy theories’, thus stimulating polarization. Simultaneously, they reinforce the spectacularization and personalization of politics, reshaping the way political discourse and mobilization occur.
This panel aims to explore these issues from the privileged perspective of political representation—a topic closely tied to identity politics yet not often explicitly addressed in this context. Like other social demands, and perhaps even more so given the irreducibility of identities to material interests, representation plays a vital role in their politicization. The mediating role of representation has been emphasized by the constructivist turn that has shaped our understanding of political representation in recent years. This turn has highlighted the active, central role in constructing political subjectivitiesl, so as the diffusion of representation across all areas of collective life, far beyond institutional spheres.
The panel welcomes contributions related (but not limited) to questions such as:
- To what extent can a constructivist turn bring new insights on how identity politics relates to political representation?
- How do different kinds of representation, such as descriptive, symbolic, liberal, etc., contribute to politicizing identities?
- How do social, political, and economic polarization intersect with identity politics from the perspective of political representation?
- How are the transformation of mechanisms of political affiliation and their evolution into identity-based elements reshaping representation?
- What can the history of political thought tell us about the dynamics currently affecting political representation?
