Venue: Koserstraße 20, 14195 Berlin, A336

Identity has become one of the most powerful mobilizing forces in contemporary democratic politics. Since the 1970s, social movements based around race, gender, religion, language or sexuality have challenged political structures, parties, and movements. While some have argued that identity politics offers unique opportunities for citizens to participate in the democratic process, others have maintained that it damages the fabric of democratic politics by setting different groups against each other. In this lecture, I step back from the polemic to consider the history of identity politics in Europe. I offer an interpretation of new forms of political mobilisation that places them within the larger context of the transformation of European democracy after 1945. I suggest that identity politics has been both a catalyst for - and an integral part of - a much wider crisis in models of democratic representation and state power since the 1970s. It therefore provides a unique insight into the way Europeans have responded to the profound social, economic and political ruptures of the post-Cold War age. 

Emile Chabal is professor of contemporary history at the University of Edinburgh. Much of his research has focused on France, in particular the transformation of French politics since the 1970s, Franco-British relations in the 20th century, and the complex legacies of colonialism. His publications include France (Polity, 2020); A Divided Republic: Nation, State and Citizenship in Contemporary France (Cambridge University Press, 2015). His current project is an intellectual biography of Eric Hobsbawm.

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