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Jodi Dean is the [[Chair ]] of the [[Political ]] [[Science ]] Department at Hobart and William Smith College. She is the [[author ]] or editor of 5 previous books including [[Empire]]'s New Clothes: [[Reading ]] Hardt and Negri (Routledge 2003).

I have long been critical of [[identity ]] [[politics]]. My first book (from my old Habermasian days) was oriented around a critique of identity politics. My later affection for [[Laclau ]] and [[Mouffe ]] was tempered by a critical stance toward their emphasis on the making of political identities, on the centrality of the [[construction ]] of a political identity in political [[struggle]]. Part of what I like in [[Zizek ]] is his critique of [[multiculturalism ]] and identity politics as relying on the subordination, [[displacement]], and even erasure of [[class ]] as the primary [[antagonism]]: class is not an identity [[category ]] but a marker of the fundamental [[split ]] around and through which societies actively [[construct ]] themselves.

I link the decline of [[symbolic ]] efficiency with the decline of the availability not only of [[categories ]] of identity through which to organize but also the [[absence ]] of [[conditions ]] of possibility for the [[formation ]] of collective political identities under [[neoliberalism]].