I find the current formulation of identity politics fascinating.
The Crenshaw essay emerged from a lot of thinking about how to introduce flexibility and nuance into descriptions of progressive politics. Those descriptions were also, it has to be emphasised, suggestions as to the shape of a future project of progressive politics.
I have to say, I find it ... interesting ... that the Crenshaw essay has emerged as the the key text - and I find the shape of identity politics that seems prevalent at the moment, which claims the Crenshaw essay as foundational (in some sense) quite baffling.
My favourite author in this area is Anne Marie Smith. She put forward an idea/model of political subjects as nodal - with identity ranging over a network of 'nodes' (you can be white, working class, female, straight, etc.). Those 'nodes' are areas of identity that have a political articulation at a given point in time (so it is possible to think of areas of identity that have no political 'meaning' at some points, but gain political meaning at others and may need struggling for to gain political articulation and validity - or equally, some points 'go quiet', and become less politically relevant). Likewise, your identity can change over time (you can change from being straight, or working class, etc.).
Importantly, Smith leaves space for people's political identities not leading directly to a political identification with their position (a more nuanced idea of how 'false consciousness' can happen, or political altruism - eg. you may be in a socio-economically powerful position but work for the end of oppression of those in a socio-economically disadvantaged position) - though her analysis goes beyond this.
Likewise, Smith's model also looks at how, within individuals and within societies, and within political groups and social groups, those 'nodes of identity' can play against each other, producing interference, 'noise', and conflict (how social and political interventions with a liberatory intention in one area/along one axis can end up delivering oppression elsewhere).
The current model of identity politics 'we' appear to have adopted is incredibly inflexible. It seems to be grounded on a real inflexibility - one 'is' a white woman, one 'is' therefore less oppressed than a black woman. The identities are bounded - which is bizarre, given that the Crenshaw article is founded on the acknowledgment that identities may be multiple.
And this reasoning fits incredibly well with what I am thinking of as 'the return of the idea of an identifiable elite'. Now this line of reasoning we may well remember from the Referendum campaign. Anyone remember all those trolls and shills, who would start ranting on about 'the liberal elite' and (of course) the Soros conspiracy and then justify their line with reference to Owen Jones' work on 'The Establishment'?
I know that Owen Jones' book was a rallying call - a determination to turn back the tide of woolliness that had arisen as a kind of slack acceptance in the wake of Foucault's characterisation of power as a network, without a centre (that could be 'decapitated' easily). BUT, I think what we are now seeing emerge is EXACTLY the situation which prompted Foucault to write.
There is something in this idea of a clearly defined, exclusionary network of power - with clearly bounded figures, exerting power - which lends itself horribly well to conspiracy theories.
Obviously, the truth lies somewhere in between - there are powerful, exclusionary networks, which reproduce power, with actual, real figures driving that network.
However, acknowledging that cannot mean allowing yourselves to fall into a dangerous lack of criticality, regarding everything as a seamless conspiracy by a homogenous 'elite'.
And it leaves absolutely no space for the idea of people acting against their interests, or for other interests, or - crucially - with no one, single, organising rational interest at all.
Conspiracy theories breed in this fertile ground. It's a consolatory fiction, in a way - there is a hidden, evil force. If it can only be uncovered by the wise, it can be 'decapitated' and stopped, and 'good' will prevail. Moreover, all the bad things that happen, all the conflicts that arise, all the opposing interests that emerge, can be put down to the evil work of those super-clever, shadowy figures organising together to thwart the ''good'.
The new, bounded, notion of identity politics plays into this perfectly. It relies on a model of a political subject, whose interests and political-socio-economic position are absolutely identical. Their progressive potential is based absolutely on who they are, rather than a more functionalist idea of what they do. It's so easy to sort people into 'good' and 'bad', to 'weigh' and hierarchise oppressions, to organise interests into groups based on this fantasy of bounded, immutable identity.
However, real life experience keeps showing us that political 'good' and 'virtue' are not conferred automatically because of an 'identity'. And, likewise, there is rarely a single, rational entity (good or evil) driving political events. Reality is just messier and more conflicted than that.
The political reality is far, far more nuanced, undecidable and conflicted than that. And, oddly enough, that is actually what the Crenshaw essay is all about, with its examination of pragmatics and function in a real - non-idealised - social-political context.
It's all very bizarre.