Identitti
Interview with author, Mithu Sanyal
Mithu Sanyal is a German cultural scientist, journalist, critic, and author of two academic books: Vulva (2009) and Rape (2019), both of which have been translated into many languages and published widely. Identitti is her first novel, published 2022 to rave reviews in Germany, the United States and elsewhere for its thoughtful, provocative, smart and satirical look at self-definition, identity politics, social media and more.
The plot is carried forward by the student and mentee of a charismatic “Indian” professor of post-colonial studies who is outed as a White woman. Mayhem ensues, both in the heart and mind of the student, Nivedita, and throughout the campus and community. The NY Times Book Review called it a “bracing story, one in which Sanyal refuses to give us the easy way out.”
WWG Co-Founder Pamela Katz interviewed Mithu Sanyal to talk about the novel and its themes of identity with sharp focus on ambiguities and complexities in race and gender identity.
Many thanks to David Kleinman, video editor extraordinaire. Dave is a freelance editor and filmmaker in Brooklyn, New York. He has written and directed several short films as well as produced and edited podcasts and industrial/commercial videos. David lives with his partner, Hillary and their dog Wallace.
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Selected quotes from Identitti:
“Race Terrorist”
Race isn't formed through blood and soil, nor is it somehow 'original' or "authentic.' Race is a system, a way of fitting people into a framework, putting them into categories they're not supposed to be able to step out of. And under no circumstances are they to question the authority of the system itself. I am a race terrorist! I push the purported authenticity of the framework past the point of absurdity. I blow it up, and from its fragments I build a new world in which race is something we can enjoy, something we can play with, something that isn't deterministically set in stone by our supposed destinies."
"Your intolerance is founded upon some supposedly higher moral principle! In fifty years we'll look back on today and wonder what we were so upset about, why we were so nervous about people like me wanting to change categories.”
Race, Class and Gender
"Race isn't real, race is a sociopolitical construct. Class is a sociopolitical construct. Gender is a sociopolitical construct. Yet at the same time, all three are all too real, because out in the world they relate to realities that have become truths, but in and of themselves they are not real. These incarnated realities can have a major influence on us, indeed they do have a major influence on us, but the ways in which they do are different for each of us because their foundational realities are, in and of themselves, equally unreal. Which means, above all: They are not unchangeable.”
Race and Gender: Brubaker colloquy
"Oh, so it's okay to transcend your gender, but a category as obviously made-up as race should be more fixed and inflexible than sex?' Saraswati asked Nivedita.
AND THE INTERNET answered:
» Rogers Brubaker @wrbucla The individual may be understood, in the prevailing language of individual liberalism, as owning her body, but she does not own her ancestry. #transracial #TheTransOfBetween #TheTransOfBeyond
"What's that supposed to mean?" Nivedita asked.
"That your sex and gender don't depend on the sex and gender of your ancestors. Just because all your mothers were women, doesn't mean that you also have to be a woman," said Saraswati.
"But if your mother is white ...." Nivedita said, suddenly getting it. For one fleeting moment she saw the whole situation from Saraswat's point of view, and heard all the cacophonous voices from the Internet through her ears, and everything sounded like one thing: Essentialism! Please! Where are you from, Saraswati? No, where are you from from? No, where are you from from from?
"Correct!" confirmed Saraswati, adept as she was at tearing her opponents' worldview to shreds and then diving straight into the gaps.”
Resources referenced in the interview:
Kwame Anthony Appiah : The Lies that Bind : Rethinking Identities , et al.Rogers
Brubaker : Trans: Gender and Race in an Age of Unsettled Identities , et al.
Ronnie Gladden: White Girl Within
Philip Roth: The Human Stain
Mithu Sanyal: Rape: From Lucretia to #MeToo
Mithu Sanyal, Vulva
Comments? Questions for the author? Send to worldwithoutgender@substack.com