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Podcast: New Books in American Politics
Episode: Todd McGowan, "Universality and Identity Politics" (Columbia UP, 2020)
Description: The great political ideas and movements of the modern world were founded on a promise of universal emancipation. But in recent decades, much of the Left has grown suspicious of such aspirations. Critics see the invocation of universality as a form of domination or a way of speaking for others, and have come to favor a politics of particularism—often derided as “identity politics.” Others, both centrists and conservatives, associate universalism with twentieth-century totalitarianism and hold that it is bound to lead to catastrophe.This book develops a new conception of universality that helps us rethink political though...