Identity Complex: Making the Case for Multiplicity

Michael Hames-García

ISBN 10: 0816649863 / ISBN 13: 9780816649860

Published by University of Minnesota Press, 2011

About this Item

Num Pages: 304 pages, 5 b&w illustrations. BIC Classification: JFSL1; JHB. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 215 x 143 x 16. Weight in Grams: 302. . 2011. Paperback. . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland.

Seller Inventory # V9780816649860

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Identity Complex: Making the Case for Multiplicity
• Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
• Publication Date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0816649863
• ISBN 13: 9780816649860
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

In seemingly exhaustive arguments about identity as a category of analysis, we have made a critical error—one that Michael Hames-García sets out to correct in this revisionary look at the making and meaning of social identities. We have asked how separate identities—of race, class, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality—come to intersect. Instead, Hames-García proposes, we should begin by understanding such social identities as mutually constituting one another.

Grounded in both theoretical and political practices—in the lived realities of people’s experience—Identity Complex reinvigorates identity as a key concept and as a tool for the pursuit of social justice. Hames-García draws on a wide range of examples to show that social identities are central to how exploitation works, such as debates about the desirability of sexual minority identities in postcolonial contexts, questions about the reality of race, and the nature of the U.S. prison crisis.

Unless we understand precisely how identities take shape in relation to each other and within contexts of oppression, he contends, we will never be able to eradicate discrimination and social inequality. By analyzing the social interdependence of identities, Hames-García seeks to enable the creation of deep connections of solidarity across differences.

About the Author

Michael Hames-García is professor of ethnic studies at the University of Oregon. His books include Fugitive Thought: Prison Movements, Race, and the Meaning of Justice, also published by Minnesota.