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A review by books_ergo_sum
Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò
reflective
5.0
I loved this book so much. It reached directly into my brain.
I'd just finished When They Call You a Terrorist and (though a really interesting memoir) I'd had a vague feeling that that version of a BLM movement was susceptible to elite capture and then this book told me EXACTLY WHY—in a particularly clear and well-argued way (I’d expect nothing less from a Philosophy prof).
Basically, identity politics focuses on the ‘politics of deference’, ie the strategy of deferring to the own-voices of the most marginalized person in the room. And this is susceptible to elite capture because:
✨ deference is not liberating (à la Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire) and even has authoritarian tendencies
✨ and it ignores the question of ‘what kinds of privilege and power get you into the room in the first place?’
It was almost eerie how often this book preempted my thoughts. It covered Paulo Freire (who I just read), Franz Fanon (even quoting the exact quotes I put in my reading journal), wealth inequality and Brazilification (I read that Thomas Piketty book the other week), even the privatization of Cochabamba, Bolivia’s water by Bechtel (those riots began in 1999 and I’m still not over it).
And then! He actually had a solution—love when philosophers do that. Constructivist politics, let’s go.
I'd just finished When They Call You a Terrorist and (though a really interesting memoir) I'd had a vague feeling that that version of a BLM movement was susceptible to elite capture and then this book told me EXACTLY WHY—in a particularly clear and well-argued way (I’d expect nothing less from a Philosophy prof).
Basically, identity politics focuses on the ‘politics of deference’, ie the strategy of deferring to the own-voices of the most marginalized person in the room. And this is susceptible to elite capture because:
✨ deference is not liberating (à la Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire) and even has authoritarian tendencies
✨ and it ignores the question of ‘what kinds of privilege and power get you into the room in the first place?’
It was almost eerie how often this book preempted my thoughts. It covered Paulo Freire (who I just read), Franz Fanon (even quoting the exact quotes I put in my reading journal), wealth inequality and Brazilification (I read that Thomas Piketty book the other week), even the privatization of Cochabamba, Bolivia’s water by Bechtel (those riots began in 1999 and I’m still not over it).
And then! He actually had a solution—love when philosophers do that. Constructivist politics, let’s go.