ABSTRACT
In both academia and public discourse, it has long been a commonplace to link “postmodernism” and identity politics (Pluckrose and Lindsay). Often polemical, this move has been enabled by the vagueness of both terms. As a result of this, Jacques Derrida is often invoked as a major thinker of identity politics. This is in spite of the fact that the status and meaning of identity in Derrida’s philosophy is far from clear and, indeed, that Derrida might be more accurately thought of as a thinker of non-identity, rather than identity. This paper will help to clarify Derrida’s conception of identity, arguing that his interpretation of culture and inheritance support the importance of identity in politics. At the same time, these concepts also respond to critiques of essentialism and division that have been launched against identity politics.
