Identity Is Shadow Work

          Identity Is Shadow Work

 

          “Shadow work” is the unpaid labor one must do to stay in the system. Traffic jams, waiting for an elevator, navigating a phone tree, paperwork: all are shadow work.

          Identity is shadow work. The system requires identification, so you must maintain an identity just to participate in the system. But identity is not organic individuality; identity is mostly imposed illusion. The government issues an identity card to you, not you to it. Identity takes unpaid labor to maintain, and this labor is sometimes expensive and dangerous. Sometimes oppression is part of the identity.

          Identity is mostly illusion; politics require attachment; therefore identity politics is attachment to illusion, and attachment to illusion causes suffering. So identity politics does not liberate; it is part of what one must be liberated from.

          Fortunately, there is a liberating counter to identity politics: universality politics. What you and I have in common, we need not labor to hide from each other. When I am you, and you are I, then you are you, and I am I.