The Neoliberal Co-Optation of Identity Politics

Geo-Political Situatedness as a Decolonial Discussion Partner

Jorge Juan Rodríguez || Responding to the 2016 United States Presidential election, this piece contests that the popularly deployed phrase “identity politics” is not Identity Politics as articulated by Black feminists of the Combahee River Collective but is rather a neoliberal co-optation of Identity Politics. By situating neoliberalism and the Black feminists that articulated Identity Politics as historical contemporaries, the piece argues that as the former spread to
institutions like universities it co-opted, depoliticized, a-historicized, and misappropriated the latter. The piece concludes by offering “Geo-Political Situatedness” as a theoretical frame that undermines neoliberalism’s co-optation of Identity Politics.

Key words: Neoliberalism

Rodríguez V, J. J. (2019). The Neoliberal co-optation of identity politics: Geo-political situatedness as a decolonial discussion partner. Horizontes Decoloniales/Decolonial Horizons, 5, 101-130.