The Metapolitics of Identity: Identitarianism and its Critics

Die entscheidende Frage lautet also nicht "wo kommst du her?" sondern "Wo wollen wir zusammen hin?"

—Mithu Sanyal¹

In der repressiven Gesellschaft ist der Begriff des Menschen selber die Parodie der Ebenbildlichkeit. Es liegt im Mechanismus der "pathischen Projektion," dass die Gewalthaber als Menschen nur ihr eigenes Spiegelbild wahrnehmen, anstatt das Menschliche gerade als das Verschiedene zurückzuspiegeln.

—Theodor W. Adorno²

Identitti

"Identity politics were big. And Nivedita's understanding of identity politics was small."³ To remedy this situation, the protagonist of Mithu Sanyal's novel Identitti decides to take up intercultural studies and postcolonial theory at the Heinrich-Heine University in Düsseldorf. Nivedita's teacher is Saraswati, named after an Indian goddess, and revered by her students, whose lives she transforms by creating a space for the representation of People of Color, by challenging the invisibility of whiteness. The opening act in one of Saraswati's seminars is to ask all white students to leave the room. If that sounds a lot like Audre Lorde, who did something similar at a lecture in Berlin (with the significant difference that she did so at its conclusion rather than at the outset), Saraswati also shares traits with Gayatri Spivak, bell hooks, and Priyamvada Gopal—all of whom Sanyal gratefully acknowledges as models for her character. But it is Rachel Dolezal to whom Saraswati owes her most fateful trait. In 2015, Dolezal made headlines and caused an outrage by passing for Black as a white woman; in the book, it turns out, Saraswati is the self-given name of a certain Sarah Vera Thielmann, a white woman who changed her pigmentation to pass as a Person of Color.

This bombshell sets off the novel, unleashing a shitstorm in the many tweets that pepper the narrative. Nivedita finds herself caught up in the maelstrom, both on social media—where she tweets as the titular Identitti—and among the interlocking circles of her classmates, roommates, cousin, and boyfriend, who all weigh in on the scandal. Eventually, Nivedita decides to confront her teacher, more or less moving into her inner-city rooftop apartment in the Düsseldorf neighborhood of Oberbilk. Additional characters arrive: first Nivedita's cousin Priti, and then Saraswati's brother who, it turns out, was the one who spilled the beans on her white background. These two...