Abstract
Ever since Donald Trump’s election in 2016, people have repeatedly spoken of a ‘right-wing identity policy’. But how is such a policy conceivable given the fact that the category of identity politics has been, so far at least, applied rather to disadvantaged and marginalized political groups? This paper explores this question and starts with an analysis of the ‘Cisgender’-category. Unlike familiar and socially embattled categories, like ‘white,’ ‘male’ or ‘heterosexual,’ it received relatively little attention so far and is insightful precisely because it is still relatively unloaded. This helps to illustrate the structural position of those whom have been considered privileged and their specific characteristics and problems. In a second step, this paper reconstructs a brief epistemo-political genesis of ‘identity politics’ and tries to demonstrate on that basis, that not only did some positions have no legitimate place that could be assigned to them, but that (third step) the interrelatedness of identity and politics as it occurs here necessarily formed the seedbed for that brand of right-wing populism which appropriates identity politics for itself. However, at the point where instruments of identity politics are used to fight against other identity politics, in other words, where identity politics turns against identity politics, it has reached its own limits.
