This is a short series of video interviews on identity politics and the crisis of political rationality (interviews below)

Each interview opens the question of the political present and investigates the configurations of political reasoning through which it is understood. The victory of Trump, Brext in the UK, the rise of Cineque Stelle in Italy are understood as responses to the modern political and economic crisis, and in particular the economic crisis that began in 2007. We hear in these interviews how the contradictory responses of sections of the left that grew from the 1960s might be seen to exasperate the crisis of political rationality.

We the interviews dig deep we find that identity politics of course has routes beyond the 1960s into the imperialistic white supremacism articulated in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At the same time, the postmodern fragmentation of people into ever more niche segmentations can be seen to serve the age old method of divide and rule, at a great cost to concepts such as public good or well-being.

Here we hear Prof. Olivia Guaraldo reflect on the political present and how we arrived here. She interrogates the trajectory of identity politics from the early twentieth century, considering its virtues as well as its problems.

In the second interview, Dr Deidre O’Neill explain how class has become marginalised as an analytical category, thereby restricting adequate diagnosis of social problems. For Dr O’Neill, the problem lies not just in analytical shortcomings but also in the class dynamics of public engagement.