Excerpt

The term “identity” has become commonplace in political discourse—so much so that we tend to think people have always sought to define their collective identities as specific and different from others, and as worthy of special consideration in the political sphere. However, even a superficial look at the history of the term “identity” shows that its use in politics and political theory became prevalent only in the 1970s. Moreover, acceptance of the concept was not straightforward. The notion of identity in politics was born to call attention to the fact that categories of people had been, until then, repressed by…