Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò joins AAUP-TNS and the NSSR Department of Philosophy to read from Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (and Everything Else) (Haymarket Books, 2022). Táíwò will engage the audience in a moderated discussion of racial capital in university life, from the TNS strike to organizing for justice in Palestine.

This public dialogue will address the horizons that remain for action and organizing, in the university and beyond, as seen through the lens of identity and difference.

This is a public event, open to all. Register here.

On Elite Capture
“Identity politics” is everywhere, polarizing discourse from the campaign trail to the classroom and amplifying antagonisms in the media, both online and off. But the compulsively referenced phrase bears little resemblance to the concept as first introduced by the radical Black feminist Combahee River Collective. While the Collective articulated a political viewpoint grounded in their own position as Black lesbians with the explicit aim of building solidarity across lines of difference, identity politics is now frequently weaponized as a means of closing ranks around ever-narrower conceptions of group interests.

But the trouble, Táíwò deftly argues, is not with identity politics itself. Through a substantive engagement with the global Black radical tradition and a critical understanding of racial capitalism, Táíwò identifies the process by which a radical concept can be stripped of its political substance and liberatory potential by becoming the victim of elite capture—deployed by political, social, and economic elites in the service of their own interests.

Táíwò’s crucial intervention both elucidates this complex process and helps us move beyond a binary of “class” vs. “race.” By rejecting elitist identity politics in favor of a constructive politics of radical solidarity, he advances the possibility of organizing across our differences in the urgent struggle for a better world.

Speaker’s Bio
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University. His theoretical work draws liberally from the Black radical tradition, anti-colonial thought, German transcendental philosophy, contemporary philosophy of language, contemporary social science, and histories of activism and activist thinkers. His public philosophy, including articles exploring intersections of climate justice and colonialism, has been featured in The New Yorker, The Nation, Boston Review, Dissent, The Appeal, Slate, Al Jazeera, The New Republic, Aeon, and Foreign Policy. Táíwò is the author of Elite Capture and Reconsidering Reparations.

Sponsored by NSSR Philosophy, the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility, NSSR Anthropology, and NSSR Liberal Studies. Presented by the New School Chapter of AAUP and the Philosophy Department at The New School for Social Research

Photo Credit: Elliott Jerome Brown Jr.