If We Were Kin
Race, Identification, and Intimate Political Appeals
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 19984040 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Laura Beard (0000-0002-9374-0782, Western Washington University, corresponding author), Lisa Beard (Assistant Professor of Political Science, Western Washington University) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Publication date | 2023-03-23 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | BOOK |
| Venue | If We Were Kin (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Oxford University PressNew York (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/oso/9780197517338.001.0001 |
| OpenAlex | W4360617897 |
| Open Library | OL42783748M |
| ISBN | 9780197517338 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
If We Were Kin is about the we of politics—how that we is made, fought over, and remade—and how these struggles lie at the very core of questions about power and political change. While reigning frameworks in the study of politics leave forms of identification sedimented in the background as a priori identities or prop them up front as a part of a mechanistic and calculated game, political identification cannot be captured by these frameworks and is a far more significant and profound political process than they allow. While this book stakes a wider claim about the centrality of identification to politics, it attends most closely to its deeper registers, and in particular to attempts by political actors within racial and gender justice and queer/trans liberation movements to get people to shift their foundational identifications. Drawing on the political thought of Sylvia Rivera, James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, and grassroots LGBTQ activists in Southerners On New Ground, If We Were Kin identifies a distinct lineage of calls which challenge atomized and hierarchical racial formations in the United States and advance powerful visions of political relationships rooted in mutuality and shared freedom. As the book traces through activist archives, political speeches, and original interviews, these appeals demand a rethinking of fundamental assumptions in the study of politics and provide critical resources for understanding how power works in struggles to constitute a we, how commitments toward or away from racial justice are cultivated through battles over identification, and the dangers and possibilities of identificatory appeals
Dystopia · Economic Justice · Grassroots · Identification (biology) · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Queer · Sociology · Vision · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Law · Race, History, and American Society
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 4 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |